Tips for good Ebook covers: Drawings
About drawings, it's valid what we have said in this post about getting together images. Try to not make them by yourself. It's a general rule for everything. It's good you can create your own cover, but use good quality images, always, as the ones we're offering you or from the websites we told you in the post on how to look for images. It's possible to think that making everything by yourself will give a special touch, especially if you created the book, the cover, the formatting and everything else. For sure there will be among you some good drawers, or you have a friend of yours that is good in drawing. Still, a potential reader looking among the mass of thumbnails on a store will notice immediately if you have an amateur drawing. So, what to do if you don't want a photo but an illustration? Choose one among the ones we're offering you, or go to iStock and the others. It's very cheap, there are many good works and you will have a professional drawing. Illustrations, especially, always come with a JPG and a Vector file, so you can modify them with some professional editor. Here there are some examples that you can easily find on iStock.
Tips for good ebook covers: composite pictures
Let's suppose you have found some images which fit perfectly to your cover. The first impulse will be of putting them together, in some way. Well, it's better not to do it. In first instance you can do it just if you are a Photoshop or a Gimp magician. Meaning you are a professional in using graphic. Otherwise, 99% it will result into some sort of strange mixture. It's like that because every image has its own colors, its own style, its own saturation. It's not easy to create an harmony among your pictures. Putting a picture above an another will resemble a paper with something glued on it. The point is that your cover will have to resemble your writing or story, so it's better to let it look professional and clear. Another point is that on the stores your cover will appear as a thumbnail among dozen of others. If you put too many items inside it will confuse the potential reader, who will not understand the message, or mood, you would like to convey. To be short, it's alright to put some shapes to edit and better your background image, but don't mix pictures together, neither stick them one above an another. Make it very simple. One very good image conveys more than three or four which you think represent the book.
Book Covers Clichés: topics
As we saw in a previous post, you have to be careful about clichés when designing your cover. We'll see here other examples. About Africa there were especially landscape clichés, but they're not the only kind. There are others more symbolic that maybe we don't even know are in ourselves. Let's take an example: Islam. What are the first images of Islam today? Some of you will think about mosques and muezzin singing prayers; others to huge cities full of people in Islamic countries; to others still will come ideas of "jihad" warriors or similar types. One common stereotype of Islam is the veiled woman. Also, and especially, in the Arabic literature there is a kind of obsession for this "cliché". I'll show you here below what I'm talking about. As you can see, but there are examples coming out each month, it's a common feature inside texts of this kind. Now, there is a pro and a con in it. The pro is that these covers allow authors to be translated - and published - in Western countries to a wide audience. A veiled woman helps to convey a message of exoticism, therefore is good for selling the book. About the con, this could be one reason why readers leap to particular conclusions about an author’s narrative. Other examples could be authors who use repeatedly the same kind of subject in many books cover - but this will reflect only the author's style, not really a cliché. There is a phenomenon now going on for novels in English-language but published in Asia, that is using generally a cover of a half-partially clothed woman with long black hair, either in silhouette, or viewed from behind. The title is usually something along the lines of Bangkok Velvet, and the author is always a white man. Do you think you have spotted other clichés, or can you imagine which features are clichés? Or have you used them already in some book? Share your examples, write to us and we'll try to analyze them better, for you not to make this mistake anymore.
Tips for good ebook covers: looking for photos
Photos and images are everywhere on the Internet. Of course you are tempted to pick up any of the thousands of Google or Flickr images. But are you sure all these ones are for free? We could say that 99% they are not. In fact, if you don't have explicit authorization to use a photo, or you don't know who owns it, almost for sure you will use it illegally. As a matter of fact, you don't want someone to steal your writing, so it's better for you to inform about photos copyrights before using them. Photography is a profession exactly as writing, and owns to be paid. There are also some places in which you can get lots of free photos, but the other side of the coin is that these images are, usually, of very poor quality. There's a solution to all this. It's called iStock. It's a collection of professional photos that you can see in preview and then buy with a cost that is depending on the resolution. In this way you can download a preview photo for free - of course they are marked with their logo - and try it on your cover. When you're convinced, you can buy it. Apart from that, it's quite cheap. We talk of prices from 2 to 15 dollars, or more if you want the highest resolutions. Moreover, the website has a good quality control - mostly are photos from Getty Images - and a vast archive. They have a "term of use" contract, by which they allow you to use any images on you cover up to selling 499,999 copies. There are some other websites of good quality. One of these is Shutterstock, that is quite similar to iStock. The main difference is about buying: on Shutterstock to download images you have to buy a subscription of one month as minimum, in which you can download at maximum 25 photos each day. The good deal is that they are also in vector format, so if you can use Illustrator or another program to edit images, you can adjust them and modify them as you wish. Dreamstime works in between iStock and Shutterstock: you can make a monthly plan or you can buy with credits. Still, it has a section with free photos. We'll give you another option. In this website, called Freeimages, as the name says there are free photos you can use, with suggestions of paying images on iStock. Even if you can find something interesting, it's not really good quality and the number of photos you can find are quite limited. The third option is excellent if you want something very special: we're talking about the official site of Getty Images or Corbis. Quality is magnificent, prices are higher.
Tips for good Ebook covers: photos
Background photos are extremely important when you’re making your cover. Although a cover conveys a mixed message of images, texts and colors, the first impact one reader has is on the photo. So, how to choose a good one? There is a very important rule to follow: be original and give the mood of your story, not the facts. A thing that is quite fundamental, as we saw in some precedent articles, is to avoid as much as possible clichés. In second instance, you have to understand that is not necessary to put an image which you feel to be perfect for the reader, to let him understand the novel. This is the wrongest thing you can do. Let’s make an example. You have a detective story in your hands. Maybe you found a photo that depicts perfectly your detective. Or you found an image the coincides perfectly with the main evil character, or with the victim. In these cases, what you are doing is just taking away the imagination from the reader, that is the most important thing while reading. It’s not a movie. Let readers form their proper image of characters and settings. When you are selecting a background picture, avoid anyone which will represent any person or object of the story. It’s just not nice to give to the reader, for example, a photo of one character, before one can actually step into the story and read about it. You have to choose an abstract image, one which will convey what is the general mood you’re conveying inside the story. But avoiding clichés. For a detective story maybe it’s better to stay away from foggy streets in the night, for example. But the use of a big fingerprint is not so much misused, as image. Still better to use a more abstract photo, which will not remind the reader exactly what is about the story – in the example before, a fingerprint could suggest the reader that the story will focus on its finding. Here below there are some more examples of Indie authors. In fact , are the kind of authors who make these mistakes more often, say because they want to spend not so much money, or they just don’t know how to do it or choose it.
Tips for good ebook covers: general rules
Every format has its own characteristics. Apart from the size, to design a cover for a paperback book is quite different than to do it for a Kindle ebook. Not only paper-book covers are seen - by all of us - in colors, while on our Kindle we see them in shades of gray. Also, ebooks are usually shown in miniatures, or thumbnails, on the stores. This changes quite a lot how you have to make your cover design. But let's start from the beginning, there are many useful tips. Which are the most important features of a kindle cover? Here there are four simple rules to follow: 1) First of all, it should stand out from other covers on the store's shelf; 2) it should convey the mood your story; 3) if you propose yourself to publish a series, with more books to come, it would be a good idea to start a brand, with common features that will be present in all of them 4) the cover has to be of high quality. If the quality is lacking, the reader will think that the writing will be poor too.
