How to Make a Back Book Cover with GIMP

About this video

Dale completes his How To Make A Book Cover With GIMP series with the missing back-cover step, after earlier videos on the front cover and spine. His method is to model the layout on a proven example: find a top-selling paperback on Amazon, open See All Images, save its back cover, and drag that image into the GIMP cover file as a sample layer. He resizes the sample to fit the book dimensions — a 5 by 8 cover in his example — aligns it, then uses the move tool and repeated right-arrow taps to line it up with the left side of the spine. He then sets up text boxes over the areas where text will go, roughly matching the sample rather than copying it exactly, toggling the sample layer’s eye icon off periodically to check how his own text blends. He warns to keep relevant text and matter out of the pink bleed areas and away from the barcode, saying CreateSpace will reject a cover that violates those rules. Once the layout is set, he directs viewers to follow the instructions after step 28 in the first GIMP tutorial, and to shut off the sample layer before exporting the finished paperback cover to PDF. He notes you can go without back matter but questions whether you should, and defers what content belongs on a back cover to another video.

Key takeaways

• Use a top-selling paperback’s back cover from Amazon as a temporary sample layer to guide layout in GIMP.
• Resize the sample to your trim size (5x8 in the example), align it, and nudge it into place against the spine with arrow keys.
• Place text boxes approximately where the sample puts its text; it does not need to match exactly.
• Keep important text out of the pink bleed areas and off the barcode area, or CreateSpace will reject the cover.
• Turn the sample layer off before exporting the finished cover to PDF, following the earlier tutorial’s post-step-28 instructions.

Episode details: published July 13, 2017 · 3:28 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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