How to Make a Good Book Cover

Images

Another majorly important factor to think about when it comes to cover design is the image you use. When choosing an image there are a lot of points to think about such as:

○ Does the image relate in some way to my story? (try and link it somehow to your story plot, such as a key event or topic.)

○ What sort of mood does my story give? (Is it happy and funny or dark and miserable? This will help determine your colour scheme.)

○ Do I use an image of a person or a symbol? (That is completely up to you. If there is a prominent symbol within your story I would go for the symbol. You could even put both a person and a symbol in the image.)

○ Do I want a simple image or will I have to create a photo-manipulation? (This depends on how complex you want your design to be. If you want a simple picture of a couple for example you should easily find one. However if you wanted a detailed design such as a man sitting down in the woods, watching a wolf with a sword in his hand and a dark figure in the background you will most likely have to put a bunch of images together yourself to make that scene. Unless of course you manage to actually find an image exactly like that, which is quite rare if I do say so myself.)

○ What do I want my background to be? (You should think about what sort of background will fit well with your image. For example, on my Nerd Racer cover I have a city skyline as street racing is usually set within a city.)

These are probably the main points I always think about when I am designing. I mean if I had used a girl sat on the sand at a beach as an image for my Nerd Racer cover, it's going to give readers a completely wrong idea about my story. So again, make sure to choose a suitable image for your story.

Most of you are probably thinking, that's good and all, but where the hell do I get good images from? Well, I also have a list of good website's to use too. Just be aware of copyrighted images if you are looking to publish out of wattpad as owners of copyrighted images can sue you. It's best to either buy stock images or look for images that are marked as creative commons. If you are simply making a cover for wattpad though copyrighted images should be fine since everyone knows most covers on here are full of them. If you're decent at photography too, you can even use your own photo's.

Non-copyrighted image websites:

○ Creative Commons

○ Shutterstock (You have to pay for these images, but it is full of amazing, high quality images.)

○ Adobe Stock (Again you have to pay, but images are amazing.)

○ iStockphoto (Another where you have to pay but again high quality images.)

○ DeviantArt (Depends on the owner of the images whether it is free or not. You usually have to message them to ask.)

○ stockphotosforfree.com (Free images, you sometimes have to give credit for the owner. Good images, but not as wide a range as the other websites.)

○ Bing (Bing images also has a creative commons section. When you search what you want in Bing images you will find the filters section just above all of the images. Click on License and then click Free to modify, share and use commercially. This will bring up all of the non-copyrighted images which should be safe to use.)

○ freedigitalphotos.net (Free images. You can pay for larger image sizes which means the quality will be better, but I find the free images just fine. A selection to choose from and you often have to give credit to the website if you use an image.)

Copyrighted image websites (for wattpad cover use only):

○ Pinterest (One of my all time favorites. I very rarely use anything other than this website. The images are endless.)

○ Tumblr (I used to use it quite often until I found pinterest, but there are a lot of good images to use from there too.)

○ We Heart It (I used to use this as well as tumblr which was again before I found pinterest, but I still love some of the images on there.)

○ Photobucket (I've used this once or twice, but there are a lot of good images to use on here too.)

○ Google Images (I think we've all used this at one point. You can still find some pretty good images on google and I even think you can find a non-copyrighted image filter. To do this go to the option button and click on advanced search, then scroll all the way down until you find usage rights. Click on the drop down box and select free to use, share or modify, even commercially.)

So I think that's it for this section. Video at the top is on how to make a cover in Gimp (I used this girls tutorials when I first started using Gimp and they helped me a lot, so take a look at her other videos too.) If you have any questions regarding this section feel free to message me.