My Two Cents: a.k.a My B.S. Center

Covers...You all Major Cover Critics

Covers...

You all Major Cover Critics

I get asked a lot how I make my covers. I'll just say this now, I'm no cover expert. I'm changing my cover constantly, because I realize how awful they are and start hating them. Some of the covers I make flat out suck. They look horrible, and if I'm stupid enough to post one, I get plenty of messages politely telling me to put the old one back up.

But covers are important. I've had people tell me they've put off reading one of my books because they didn't like the cover. I do the same thing myself. If you have a nice cover, I'm more willing to click on it and read the summary.

Summaries... that's a topic all its own.

Anyways, cover can be super hard. You can usually skim through the "what hot list" to see some really nice one. For my books, I prefer minimalist covers. The simpler the better (maybe because they easier to make, ha!).

But basically this is what I have:

--My format is 4x2.5 inches. (Wattpad has the exact pixel measurements if you google it)

--I do everything in the Photoshop Elements (it came free with my laptop). It's nothing fancy.

--If you can't get that, I've used Autodesk, SketchBook Express before. I think it's free. But that ones more of a drawing program than a picture editing.

Honestly, I have nothing fancy and sometimes it's shows, but I've made a few good...

Tips:

--Because I'm no pro at picture editing, I find objects with solid color background (white or black) are the easiest to work with. Anything else, you have to start trying to blend and it gets tons more complicated.

--People can be difficult to do. Unless you can find the perfect image, meshing photo together is a pain in the ass. You have to figure out lighting and color temperature. It's a nightmare. I've tried and failed many times. The current Hidden Peak cover took me hours, upon hours to do and it's still not quite right, for me at least.

--Typography/Font matter more than you think. I've spent many hours going through fonts looking for the right type to fit the story. It doesn't have to be anything special. Just if your story is a romance and all butterflies and roses, I won't choose a font that looks like it should go on the cover of a horror book.

Fun Fact: For my book series, I like the covers to all match somewhat. As you can see with my banner, once I did Demon in that style I had to do all the others. If not that, I like to keep the same font throughout the series. Why, because I'm weird and need a similar element throughout, or it bugs me...

Make them complicated or simple, but at least make one. The automatic book cover on wattpad, aren't very appealing.

I personally on many occasional have just found an image and put it up. No title, no fancy editing, just a nice photo. It works until I can make something better, but anything better than the automatic one.