Prisimpad: A Guide to Wattpad, Writing, and Whatever

ON WATTPAD: The Perfect Cover

3/25/18

So you've uploaded your book, but how do you get a cover for it? You could go with the bland generic cover Wattpad defaults to, but that's hardly a good selling point. There are two things that people will judge a book by: cover and blurb. If you can't draw a reader in with at least one of those, chances are they're not going to read you. So put effort into both those. Since this is a topic on covers, let's start there.

Not everyone has the talent or time to make their own cover. I have a degree in graphic design, but even I had limitations in what I can do. So if/when the time comes, I may have to job out my cover to someone else. For Wattpad purposes I always make my own covers mostly because I know copyright and not everyone on Wattpad does. I'm very particular about making sure I can use that image without any issue. I'll go into copyright briefly at the end of this chapter just because it is something important to mention even if you're jobbing out your graphics.

I won't give a tutorial on how to make your own cover. There really isn't time for that. So if that's what you're looking for, then you're on your own I'm afraid. But there are plenty of opportunities for a DIY cover. Wattpad provides a basic cover creator that you can get to by clicking on edit cover and pulling down the drop down menu.

It'll bring you to the page where you can put together a very basic cover. The key word is basic. Their cover creation tool is fairly limited but if you really don't want to hire someone, it'll take care of you in a pinch. Because of how basic it is, I really do suggest you at least go to the MDC instead to get your cover.

The MDC is like every other club on Wattpad. There are threads by users who advertise their shops. There are pinned threads that help keep things organized both for advertising a shop and for posting a graphic request. Or you can just stroll through different threads to find one who fits your needs. Though I'm focusing on covers for this, the MDC is not just for covers. You can get thread graphics, in chapter graphics, banners, trailers, and more. This is definitely another one that it would be impossible to fully cover in a post, even if I personally used the club myself.

The MDC can be intimidating because there are so many people clamoring for your business. Their quality ranges from amazing to meh and much like writing, that quality can be subjective.

I don't really feel right going into somebodies thread and doing screen captures of it, so I won't have any to show you a sample of a designers shop. But click on any one of the shops and you'll find the same basic information, but that information will change dependent on the person. Their thread will have some variation of rules, samples, a form to fill out to request, and maybe a queue so you'll know how backed up they might be. Some threads will go into deep detail and have all kinds of fancy graphics, others might just be simple. The quality of the thread doesn't matter, what you're looking for is the quality of their work you're hiring them for.

Before requesting, read their rules. I don't think I can repeat that phrase enough in this guide. Read the rules. Their rules will vary. They may say things like they don't take certain cover requests, or what their payment would be, or whatever. If you can't comply with their rules, don't request from them. It's that simple.

When requesting a graphic, be kind and be patient. If everything goes well, you'll have a cover graphic that you can save to your computer and upload to your book. Then you're done. Your book has a cover and is ready for people to have grabby hands.

Now let's go into what I mentioned about copyright. Unless the cover artist is buying the image or taking from legit free stock sites, it is entirely possible they're violating copyright laws. I've seen many a user who will take a random image off Google or DeviantArt and slap text on before calling it good. There's nothing wrong with just slapping text on an image and doing nothing else, I've done that many times, however it doesn't exactly make that image unique. And it certainly doesn't change if they have the right to use it or not. So whoever originally made that image can easily find it and say "wait a minute, I didn't give permission for it to be used like this." If that happens they can ask you to remove that cover.

Do it.

I know it might suck because maybe it was the perfect image for your book, but if it wasn't properly obtained the owner has every right to say stop. I've seen far too many wars break out because someone took an image off DeviantArt, used it, and then the author gets in trouble for it. I've also seen authors who hired a cover artist who paid for the image to legally use, but still didn't manipulate the image much and so another cover artist paid for the same image and had a similar cover for a different author. That first author accused the second author of stealing their cover when reality was, the designer didn't purchase exclusive stock thus anyone can use the same image.

If the image is obtained illegally (again meaning it wasn't purchased from a stock site or taken off a free site like pixabay) and someone asks you to remove it, remove it. Even pixabay I've seen images on there that I know first hand aren't legal to use, so you have to tread carefully with image use. Since you didn't make the cover, you obviously won't know where it came from, so don't fight it if someone claims the image is theirs.

If the image was obtained legally but it isn't exclusive (exclusive means the image is sold once and only once) and another author has that same image, don't make a fuss. You can't. Many stock images are sold to multiple people.

For the most part on Wattpad you won't get more than a cease and desist if the image is used illegally. This is a site where most of us don't earn money on our stories, thus it's not too big a deal for certain images to be used when they shouldn't be. Taking that cover and using it commercially would be a whole other ball of wax.

Still, there are a lot of really great cover artists ready to help you make the perfect cover for your book. Explore the MDC and find one that fits!