𝐏𝐒𝐘𝐂𝐇𝐄, a book of rants

How To: Make Legit Good Covers

Font:

The font I've used on the first cover is called "Alex Brush-Regular" on the app, Phonto.

Don't be fooled by the pretty name, this font is overused as fuck when making graphics. You need a font that sorta depicts the genre of the book or the vibe you are going for.

For example, I used the font "captureit" for the second cover and it has sort of a grainy texture to it, giving a kinda horror look.

That is kinda optional, but do make sure that whatever font you use must be readable.

And always make sure that your title font is bigger than the font you use to write your name in. Because ain't nobody wanna see who made the damn book and if they do, they will squint.

Picture:

Even if it's not fanfiction, never use the pictures of a celebrity posing for the camera. If you want a picture of Megan Fox, use pictures of her characters or her photoshoot pictures but never the ones that are taken from when she was in the met gala or sum.

And if it's a ship fanfiction, don't just get a picture of the two characters hugging or dancing together. That looks ridiculous and it just makes it seem like you couldn't be bothered to find two separate pictures of celebrities.

You may be lazy, but the whole world ain't gotta know that...

And also NEVER use pictures that are blurry or pixelated (pixelated means it looks like a bunch of squares are on top of the picture)

It makes it look like you didn't put enough into it. You can find good-quality pictures on Pinterest or Tumblr or We Heart It. Google is where I usually get my pictures but it isn't always clear. I got the second picture from Pinterest because I don't know how to get that filter and that's actually the only reason I find pictures in Pinterest for...

Genre:

Genre is the most important. A cover is supposed to depict the story inside the books and if your cover looks all lovey-dovey but it's actually a horror story, THEN PEOPLE WILL THINK IT'S A ROMANCE STORY, not a horror one.

So if it's a romance, put two people in it, maybe holding hands or doing anything that's considered romantic.

If it's a thriller or horror, red, black, and marron colors should be there.

If it's a comedy, light-hearted but bright colors are a good choice like yellow, magenta, and cyan.

I haven't sworn in a long time...

Anyways the next thing is the size:

Size is also so fucking important because if you make a square-shaped cover, it ain't gonna fit. (Yay I swore)

The official Wattpad cover size is 512x800. The way you set the size depends on the app you're using so check if you have a way of adding your own height and width in whatever app you're using. For some pictures, this pixel size is either too big or too small so you can just multiply by 2 if it's too small or divide if it's too big.

If you are using Picsart, select crop in tools and you will find a small bar on the top. Tap on it and enter the desired height and width, in this case, it's 512 and 800 respectively. And if it's too small or big, you can lock it by tapping the green button on the bottom left side with a lock icon and then free-hand crop it.

If it's Canva, use an E-book template by searching it up and zoom in on your picture if it's too small or big because it's the same 512x800 size.

If you use capcut -And don't ever use capcut unless it's for video making because your cover has a high chance of looking like pure crap- use an actual cover as a template and add your picture as an overlay and make sure it's completely covering the cover behind it.

In superimpose-which, I have never used because I'm broke as fuck so this may not be clear- use the ratio 2:3 which you can find under constraints.

And go and look up how to crop a picture in _____ if you are using some other app. Either way, make sure you have the right size because if you use another size and create a cover, Wattpad will automatically crop it and it may look like your celebrity's head had been cut off or the title isn't visible.

Text:

This is something I've seen in many crappy covers. No one ever bothers to put the username or name on the cover and that is unacceptable because then you wouldn't know who the hell made that book.

So please, put the damn username on the cover.

And that is most of my advice on creating book covers. Now onto other graphics...

Banners:

I haven't really seen a lot of bad banners so Idk how to fix this. Just follow the above advice and try not to mess up and you're good.

The size isn't that big of a deal in banners, any rectangle is acceptable.

And bonus points if you make it so that the cover and banner look like sisters (Because ain't no men read shit here on wattpad)

Aesthetics:

Okay so this is the crappy shit I have seen in here. But there aren't a lot of flaws so all you have to do is follow a certain aesthetic, and a certain colour pattern, add one particular filter to the entire aesthetic and you should be good to go...

And uhhh yea, that's basically it...Hopefully, y'all are gonna stop making crappy graphics from now...

Wait no, also don't use too bright colors like neon yellow or some shit because IT FUCKING HURTS PEOPLE'S EYES...

Okay, now we are done...

-V