I posted this to the Milford blog this week, but I’m so taken with it, I thought I’d post it here, too.
Whether you’re self-published or traditionally published there’s a good chance that you’ll need to shout out about your new book release. It’s only a smallish number of best selling authors that have the might of their publisher’s publicity department behind them. The rest of us might get a few hours of a publicist’s time if we’re lucky. So that means getting your shoulder behind your own book and giving it a shove. To do that it helps if you have some good images.
There’s a website called the Free Online Book Mockup Maker
I’m reasonably good with Photoshop, but this site makes life really easy. Instead of a flat cover you can present your books like this.
Or like this.
You can download your mock up as a .jpg or a .png. A .png file gives you the option of adding a background picture, like this.
There are choices of template, so check it out and enjoy playing with it.
Thanks to Jane Friedman’s Electric Speed email for the link to Derek Murphy’s DIY Book Design
If you’re an indie author (or even if you aren’t) there’s a really interesting lesson on book cover design on Derek Murphy’s DIY Book Covers site . It takes forty-three minutes, but listen – it’s time well spent. I learned a lot, especially about keeping it simple. I’m very lucky, my editor asks for my input of the cover image, so this gives me some information on the kind of thing that works (and doesn’t).
Remember, it’s not the job of the cover to sell the book, its job is to get the potential reader to pick it up. The sales pitch is the cover copy on the back. All your cover needs to do is to entice a potential reader to pick it up and turn it over.
