People ALWAYS judge a book by its cover. A book’s cover page shows them if they can relate to the book and helps them decide whether to buy a book or not. A good cover page apart from being beautifully designed, should be easily comprehensible, have a bold title that’s visible even in the thumbnail size on eCommerce sites and tells a reader exactly what they’re going to get from the book.
All this might seem like a professional designer’s task and that is true, when you need illustrations and when you have no idea what your cover needs to look like. But if you have an idea and a few stock photos that are relevant to the book, the Cover Creator tool can help you create your own beautiful cover in minutes on our Xpress Publishing Platform.
Read on to learn how you can start designing your book’s cover page.
Choose the “Launch Cover Creator” option under Book Content Design.
Introduction To The Cover Creator
Cover Templates
Choose between five beautiful templates that have different types of text and image placement. This allows you to structure your cover page. Don’t worry, if you aren’t fully satisfied with your cover design. You can always go back and change it later.
Cover Creator
Once you pick the cover layout of your choice, the layout will open into a workspace where you can add the elements you want based on the cover concept you have in mind.
The Cover Editor Side Panel
The editor side panel houses all the features you need to add and style your cover’s background image, text and any other ornaments to your book needs.
Background- The Background tab allows you to add images from an existing selection of backgrounds or search from a vast library of stock photos. You can also upload an image of your own from your computer. This tab also has an Image Adjustments feature that allows you to add filters and use other image editing tools on your image to achieve the effect you want for your book’s cover.
Text- The text tab allows you to add a Title or Subtitle or regular text. You’ll see that these are already in a pre-set font size. The Text Style tab has options for you to choose the font size, font style and also your font’s color.
Shapes- The shapes tab allows you to add different shapes and badges to your book’s cover design. You have both framed and opaque shapes that you can style based on your cover.
Back and Front Cover Buttons
These buttons allow you to focus on the side of the cover you want to design easily as seen in the image above.
Barcode
The barcode on the back represents the ISBN for your book and the price you set. The Cover Creator tool will automatically generate it for you upon finishing your design.
Element Arrangement Tools
Here you can duplicate elements on the cover, push elements to the back or front, flip elements vertically or horizontally and also delete elements on your cover.
Getting Started – Creating your book’s Cover Design
Adding/Changing the Background Image:
After you select a layout for your cover design, the next step is to add the background image. There are different ways you can do this. You can upload a high resolution (300 DPI or above) image from your computer or search from our vast library of stock images like in the image below from the “Search for free Images” option on the left panel.
You can also use preloaded backgrounds and patterns for your book’s cover.
You can choose to have an image on the front cover alone and have a solid colored background for the back cover or add an image to the back cover as well.
Manipulating Images:
Once you’ve chosen the image you would like to use, you can use filters for images, change the brightness, transparency and contrast, etc. to get your desired effects on the cover.
Adding and Manipulating Text:
You can add text elements like Title, SubTitle, Author Name, Book Blurb and Author Bio to the front and back cover from the Text tab. You can also change the format of each element on the front and back cover, the fonts, font colors, their position and so on by choosing from different options on the left panel.
Pro Tip: For ideas on professional font styling, check out the bestselling books in the same category as yours on Amazon.
Once you’ve completed designing your book’s cover, click “Preview and Finish” to view how the full cover spread would look with the back cover and spine attached. The tool automatically adds the book title and author name to the spine. The end result is a print-ready professionally designed cover page, all set in the exact specifications your book needs.
And just like that, you have created a professional cover page for your book that matches international standards.