Cover It - Some Basics for Cover Design

Welcome!

This book is not strictly a tutorial book.

It is a mixture of tutorials and information. 

The information covers a wide variety of subjects. From using things on Wattpad, to different things to consider when you decide to publish. I wanted to give everyone all the information I could to assist them with their design work or what to do when they finally decided to publish. Cover design is a huge part of your book and if you don't have the facts it can delay things.

I've already discussed a bit about covers in one of the chapters of my writing tips book on my main profile, VictoriaKaer, in the chapter titled "You Judge A Book By Its Cover ... We All Do ..."  This book will be more of a dos and don'ts of graphic design. It's more like a basic guide for design work.

We all know there are many different types of graphics out there but in this book, I'll mostly discuss cover design because that's a very large part of a book, especially for publication.  Much of the information I'm going to cover is common sense and much of it can be applied to either design here on Wattpad or for self-publication. If you're going through a publisher, depending on the size of the publishing house, you may have little to no input on your cover design. 

I must stress, I am not a graphic design expert, I've never been to school for design, and most of what I've learned is from other designers or by trial and error, and YouTube. I also learned quite a bit from a friend of mine whose job was helping authors to publish. She was a cover designer and had been to school for it. I'm incredibly grateful to her for everything she's taught me about design and I miss her a great deal. She passed away last year quite suddenly. 

Not everyone designs in the same way and not everything I tell you is the only way to do things, a lot of them are simply how I learned to do it and you may find a way that works better for you. I wanted to share my experiences and help those who are still learning to move forward as people helped me to grow as a designer. 

When I began designing, I started with free, very basic, photo editing sites. You couldn't do a lot, and they weren't meant for design work, but I managed. Then I moved on to using GIMP, which is also free. It's an extremely watered-down Photoshop look alike, though it works in a different way than a lot of Photoshop features do. After GIMP, I was using Photoshop CS6, which is no longer available. When I began working with CJM Publishing, they purchased Creative Cloud to get me started working with them. Everything before 2022 is pre-Photoshop CC. 

As soon as I have the time, I will go through the book and create examples using P-CC for the designs that work differently in P-CC than in CS6.

The chapter following this one is a list of things both designers and requesters on here should understand. There are some that are general Wattpad policies everyone should know others are simply common courtesy.

I've been here since 2012 on my writing profile and designers and design trends have come and gone, but some of the things listed are basic common sense things everyone should know and understand about designing on this site or requesting from a designer. Or simply just being a part of the site. Or a decent human being.

If you have any questions about anything in this book feel free to ask. 

If there's something you'd like to see a chapter on let me know!