Your Book's Cover

So-called "book designers" will try to convince you to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a book cover design. That's a foolish waste of money -- money that can better be spent on cars, furniture, recreational drugs or vacations.



Don't be intimidated by people in expensive offices who use software you never heard of on 47-inch 3D monitors. Don't feel bad because you don't have an Ivy League art degree or never heard of "Bodoni" or "Baskerville."

​

You don't need to go to Yale to learn the difference between "portrait" and "landscape" or what "grayscale" means. Even a homemade cover design can win a prestigious award. 



You don't need to buy new software and enrich Adobe or Microsoft. With our easy-to-use templates, anyone who can click a mouse button and type on a keyboard can produce a perfectly serviceable book cover. For more design freedom, you can use almost any software you have -- it doesn't even have to be a "graphics program." Some really nice covers have been made with spreadsheet software. Experiment. Explore. Adapt. Innovate. 

The cover at the left is dull, boring and forgettable -- and produced by a highly paid professional designer working for Knopf, one of the "Big Five" New York publishers. This silly cover has just blue letters, and not even one picture. The blah book is easy to ignore. The dumb designer didn't even notice that two letters in the author's name are in lighter blue than the other letters and forgot to use lowercase letters. Most fourth-graders can do better. 

The powerful cover at the left was produced quickly -- for free -- with a design template. There was no need to hire a big-buck, big ego "professional." The eyecatching photograph is absolutely perfect and cost less than ten dollars! Note the attractive use of "negative space" below the title.

The vibrant cover of the book at the left employs an innovative strategy to appeal to book buyers. It has such a wide variety of colors and typefaces that at least one color and typeface is sure to appeal to every potential reader! The spine is printed upside down, but the type is so small that few people will notice.

Author/designer Jimmy Clay tells us about the book at left: “I do not have the best credentials for writing this book. I have not worked in the publishing industry, and I know little . . .” His captivating and colorful cover was produced with PowerPoint -- a program normally used for slide presentations -- but it's better than what many pros produce with expensive software like Adobe Photoshop. If you hire outside professionals, they'll get the money you could keep for yourself.