Welcome back to Austen Promises and the Writer’s Journal!
Covers are a vital part of a successful book. It’s always best to get a pro to make your covers, but some of us like to do things ourselves. 🙂 My covers break every rule of graphic design, I’m sure, but I like them. I get compliments on them quite often, and I have a clearly recognizable brand that allows readers to find my books easily. 
There are lots of programs people use to make their covers. There’s Photoshop, of course. It might be the most popular. There’s a program called paint.net that I have, though I’ve not tried to make a cover in it. It’s a free download and is very similar to Photoshop, which I also have and am slowly learning to use. There’s a program called Gimp, and another Adobe product—at least, I think it’s an Adobe product—called InDesign. I know of people who make ebook covers in PowerPoint, and possibly some who make them in Word. There are online sites, like Canva, which is what I use for making ebook covers. Canva’s basic thing is free, though you have to pay for some of the “elements” that you might use. So far, I have always used my own images, ones I’ve found that are free for commercial use online or paid for, or, in some cases, taken myself, and the free elements in Canva. One of my friends has the paid version; I know that she can do a little more than I can with her version, but I’m not clear on what. I do know that she has started making her print covers in Canva, as well.
Speaking of print covers, there are a couple ways to do those, too. I have a Word document that I use, but the same basic options exist for print covers as for ebook covers. They can take a bit longer, and be more complex, because there are different things you have to consider, plus they’re like twice as big. If one uses Createspace to make their print books, they have a template you can use. My friend who has the paid version of Canva takes the template and uploads it, and makes all her covers in Canva now. I don’t like to wait until the book is finished to make the cover, so I keep on using the Word template. 😉
Like everything else involved with self-publishing, there are numerous aspects to cover-making. Today’s journal entry “covers” (see what I did there? 😉 ) just a small aspect of it. I had originally intended this to be the only journal entry about covers, but as I wrote, I realized that one post would be too long. So, keep an eye out for more! 🙂
Come back next Wednesday for another peek into my journal! <3
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