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How to design a captivation cover.

Cover design by Jeff Bennett
If you are publishing in a small niche, you might not have the budget for big time cover design. Costs for cover design can range from a few hundred to thousands. Such costs were not always an option in the early days of Red Bike Publishing. So, how do you get a world class book design? Well, you do it yourself.




Here are a few ideas you can use in your book cover design:

If you have In-Design or some other software meant for book design, then use my favorite choice. Do research and find out what  everyone else is doing. This means that you go online to Amazon.com and google: "Best-selling books in ____" then name
Cover design by Jeff Bennett
the genre. Bam, a list of books and cover pics is made available. Now all you have to do is see what catches your eye. This does not mean that you copy the cover pixel by pixel, that would just be wrong. However, it can clue you into what color schemes, fonts, art and placement are most popular. Your book might use a popular color scheme, but the art and wording would be unique to your particular book.

Use your book cover design software to build your cover. Pay special attention of endorsement, title, description, about the author and other text placement. There is no magic formula, but paying attention to what is selling is a good practice. Stock cover art can be purchased online. I prefer istockphoto.com.

Cover design by Tyler Snell
Design a rough image on PowerPoint and ask someone with software and skills to turn it into a book. This sounds over-simplified, but if you do the work, you can have the art transposed at a fraction of the cost. You can design the color, font, placement
and use Istockphoto.com to pick the artwork. Then send the PowerPoint design to the cover designer. Be sure to ask for the cover according to the requirements of the book cover printer (InDesign, pdf, etc.).

Use book cover templates. You can download these yourself and design your cover. The creativity process is pretty much limited to the template, but you get a professional product. If you plan on publishing with Create Space, consider using their in house templates to get you started.

Cover design by Jeff Bennett

Once you design your cover, make a jpeg image and see what it looks like. This is how it would display on your website and Amazon.com. Make sure image is clear and the font can be read as a thumbnail. If you can't read it, your potential audience won't be able to read it either.

Best of success in your cover design.


 Jeffrey W. Bennett, ISP is the owner of Red Bike Publishing. Jeff is an accomplished writer of non-fiction books, novels and periodicals. He also owns Red bike Publishing. Published books include: "Get Rich in a Niche-Insider's Guide to Self Publishing in a Specialized Industry" and "Commitment-A Novel". Jeff is an expert in security and has written many security books including: "Insider's Guide to Security Clearances" and "DoD Security Clearances and Contracts Guidebook". See Red Bike Publishing for print copies of: Army Leadership The Ranger Handbook The Army Physical Readiness Manual Drill and Ceremonies The ITAR The NISPOM
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