Book Front Cover Layout and Design

Creating a stand out front cover is a must to get your book noticed on web sites and in book shop shelves – if you are lucky to get your book that far.

The front cover needs to be smart, professional and not too complicated. Your potential purchaser will see it as an indication of the quality of what is inside if the outside looks good.

As you will probably be selling an eBook version, you need to have a thumbnail image which can be placed on web sites and will be used as the image on sites like Amazon. This has particular display issues as you must use fonts, images and graphics that are clear to read even when the cover is reduced to a thumbnail. Make sure that there is sufficient contrast between the background colours and the text. Don’t forget the back cover where you can add some text to advertise your book.

Web links:

An article from the Book Designer:
http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/01/book-cover-design-and-the-problem-of-symbolism/

a simple On line cover designer:
https://www.createspace.com/Tools/CoverCreator.jsp

A free free on line graphics program which has many of the functionality of PhotoShop:
http://pixlr.com/

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