How to Create a Simple Book Cover for Amazon's Kindle Part One

First, let me say this:

Cover designers are great!  I know a lot of them and really admire their work.  I love doing book covers, myself.  This tutorial is for a simple cover.  I'm going to take this in steps, over several posts. It's going to take me several days to write this up, so patience please.  If you feel that a cover designer would better suit your needs, by all means, I'm not advocating that you shouldn't hire one.

Now, onwards!

Step One:

I highly recommend going to google and using the image search to find best selling titles in whatever genre you write in.  I'm not saying that you need to copy them directly, but this is a great source of inspiration. Notice that most covers are very simple.  No crazy, loopy text.  No retina searing colors. Simple.  You want your cover to look professional.  I'm going to provide a lot of examples of what WORKS.  I've had a lot of indie authors email me and show me their covers and ask for critiques. My inbox and blog are open!  If you want me to give an honest and fair critique of your cover with suggestion for improvement, I'm happy to do so!  

Moving on.  Think about the mood of your book.  Dark?  Light?  Romantic?  Intense?  Genre has a lot to do with how you're going to design your cover, but theme and mood are also really important. If you've written a hard boiled detective noir novel and your cover is bright orange with some bubble sans font, well, you get my point.  You aren't going to reach your audience. 

Also note in your research what's over done.  Let's pick on romance covers for a moment.  I know they're easy prey, but bear with me!  Put an end to headless torsos.  There are just too many of these and you want to stand out.  I'm going to pick on the horror genre next:  No more blood spatter font. It's hard to read and gimmicky.  You don't want your cover to look gimmicky.  You want classy, simple and most of all?  You want it to linger in your potential reader's mind.  A tall order, I know.   But keep in mind what's the standard in the industry, what's overdone, and use common sense.  Note what catches YOUR eye.  If it caught your eye, the chance of it catching the eye of someone else is pretty high!

Step Two:

You're going to need a photomanipulation program.  For the purpose of this tutorial, I'm going to recommend GIMP.  It's what I  use.  It's an easy program to learn, though a bit difficult/tricky to master.  This first post is really going to give the basics of GIMP.  And don't worry if you're not the most computer savvy person!  I will include step by step photos on how to install GIMP and various brushes and fonts you'll need to work on your cover. 

FYI:  I use Windows 8.  If you have another version of windows and are having a hard time installing, please read the help guide on GIMP's website.  

Go to www.gimp.org.  Right there at the top right is a big orange button that says download.  Click away!

In order to proceed, you're going to need a torrent program as the download comes this way.  I recommend using bittorrent.  It's safe and easy to use.  www.bittorrent.com.  Follow the directions and download this.  Then you're ready to download GIMP and install it.

Okay, with bittorrent installed, you can download GIMP.

When your torrent is finished downloading, simply click on it and open it up!  Install GIMP from that folder.  Easy!  If you have any trouble, please message me or leave a comment here and I will do my best to answer.  Or, you can use the help guides on the GIMP website.  

All right!  You have GIMP installed.  Let's talk about some of the features of this program and how to use them.  For the purposes of this tutorial, I'm sticking to simple.  I may do a more advanced tutorial in the future, but this is definitely for beginners and I'm trying to make it as comprehensive as possible.  I include pictures because I'm a visual learner. I hope they help.  If you are having trouble with any of the steps, please comment or google what issue you're having.  There are a ton of guides on GIMP online!

1.  Layers!  

Layers are really important in GIMP.  Instead of trying to explain this with words, I'm going to show with pictures.  

In order to make a book cover, you will need to open a new layer in GIMP.  Click 'File' and then 'New'.  It will open up a dialog box.  Now, this is for ebook's only for kindle.  This is the size you need to use from Amazon's guidelines.

You are going to need to make sure that 'px' is selected.  This stands for pixels and your image needs to be 1563x2500 to comply with Amazon's guidelines and to create the best looking cover.  Click 'OK' to proceed.

You should get something that looks like this.  Now, consider this our blank canvas.  This is where we're going to put images.  One layer at a time.  This layer, we won't do a thing with it.  It will remain just as it is.  I find it's just a good idea to keep the background as is, even if we can't see it at the end of the process.

The way GIMP works, is that each image will be on it's own layer.  I will show you, in part two, how to choose images, where to get stock photos, and how to make them work for your cover.  I will create an original, simple design.  Feel free to copy it, step by step, so you can learn.  

This concludes part one.  I will start Part Two with where to find cheap/free stock images and talk about the importance of buying your stock or using stock that is free for COMMERCIAL use.  I will explain what the various licenses mean and tell you how much money you can expect to spend.  

I hope this helps!  Expect part two later today.  For now, my brain and fingers need a break, darlings. If you have any trouble, please email me:  rachel.zellers@gmail.com or leave a comment here.  

-- Lillian