How to Make a Book Cover for Free

About this video

Dale shares five free tools for making a book cover yourself when you cannot afford a designer, while cautioning that he would not recommend DIY covers if you have no design experience. He advises drafting up to three versions and sharing them with peers to pick the most suitable. One is Canva, a drag-and-drop tool with access to over a million photographs, graphics and fonts, widely used by DIY publishers but with a hurdle in standing out; he is unsure its premium tier improves covers much. Two is Adobe Spark, a free online and mobile app launched in mid-2016 with a book cover maker similar to Canva but newer, which may help a cover stand out. Three is DIY Book Covers, which after an email signup provides a downloadable ZIP of ebook cover templates editable in Microsoft Word, plus manuals and tutorials. Four is the CreateSpace/KDP Cover Creator, whose templates, fonts, colors and stock or uploaded images he says are less limiting than expected — he claims he created a best-selling paperback cover with it in a few minutes. Five is GIMP, a free Photoshop alternative for photo retouching and image composition with a steep learning curve.

Key takeaways

• Make up to three cover versions and get peer feedback before choosing, rather than publishing the first draft.
• Canva offers a simple drag-and-drop interface and a large library of photos, graphics and fonts, but many DIY covers use it, making uniqueness harder.
• Adobe Spark is presented as a newer Canva-like alternative that may help a cover look less templated.
• DIY Book Covers provides Word-editable templates, manuals and tutorials after a free email signup.
• GIMP is powerful and free for image work but has a steep learning curve; the KDP/CreateSpace Cover Creator is the quickest built-in option.

Episode details: published September 5, 2017 · 4:45 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.

← Previous: Pricing Your Book on Amazon KDP · Next: Bad Book Reviews: How to Deal with Negative Book Reviews →

All Dale L. Roberts videos · Dale L. Roberts profile · Dale L. Roberts on YouTube