To make a book cover in Photoshop, you can create a new document with the desired dimensions and resolution. You can then add your background image or color and any text or graphics you want to include.
It’s also essential to think about your design’s typography and layout to make it look good and easy to read. There are many online tutorials and resources available that can guide you through the process in more detail.
In today’s world, visual appeal is everything, and having an eye-catching book cover is crucial to pique readers’ interest. Adobe Photoshop is a popular program that helps you make beautiful book covers independently.
In this blog post, we will guide you step-by-step on how to make a book cover in Photoshop so that you can showcase your book in the best possible light.
Making a Book Cover: Before You Open Photoshop
To make a book cover before opening Photoshop, you should gather inspiration by researching similar book covers and creating a mood board.
Next, figure out the most critical parts of your book’s story and develop ideas for pictures and fonts.
Finally, sketch out your visions and create a rough mockup of your book cover before moving on to the digital design process in Photoshop.
So let us make sure you understand what it involves!
Research and stock image seeking are part of my primary tasks before Photoshop.
As a creative professional, you know how important it is to research and choose the right stock photos before working on Photoshop projects.
These tasks may not be glamorous, but they are essential to ensuring that your final product meets your client’s needs and exceeds their expectations.
Studies are an essential part of any successful project plan. It lets you gather information, spot trends, and learn more about your client’s industry and the people they want to reach.
By doing thorough research, you can learn more about your client’s needs and preferences, which you can use to guide your design choices.
Along with research, finding stock images is another essential task that should be considered.
Even though you might want to use the first image that pops up in a search, finding the right image can make all the difference in the world.
A well-chosen stock image can help to convey your client’s message, evoke emotion, and add visual interest to your design.
Of course, you must have a solid foundation before you can start your Photoshop project.
This means you must do a lot of research, choose the right stock images, and know precisely what your client wants.
By doing these tasks properly, you can set yourself up for success and create designs that truly stand out.
A book cover is a marketing tool for selling your book. Artwork comes first, then marketing.
How effectively a cover conveys its genre contributes significantly to its success.
Readers have preferred genres and are seeking books that match them, so make sure your novels attract the attention of your genre’s audience.
If you’re writing in a genre for which I have already created covers, I’ve done genre research and am familiar with specific design aspects.
However, like other cover designers, I watch bestsellers (especially Amazon Kindle sales since I deal with independent publishers) and build mood boards.
Moodboards help me notice similarities across genre-specific covers.
Here’s a mood board I made just for urban fantasy school covers. Are there any parallels?
1. Figure dimensions. With a few exceptions, the figurines are nearly the same size. This is because they take up about the same area on the cover.
2. The colors. These covers are all relatively high contrast, with a burst of brilliant, almost fluorescent dye amid the gloom.
3. Fonts. Serif typefaces reign dominant in fantasy in general. Of course, you could see a script for a paranormal romance or a sans serif for the author’s name now and again, but serif fonts are the standard.
4. Design components Most paranormal and urban fantasy subgenres include large moons.
The characters on academy covers are often dressed in tartan skirts or school uniforms. Old structures or gates are often used to identify the institutions in the issue.
They are generally typically placed outdoors at night. A school crest is usually included in the text design. Most, if not all, have a magical glow or effects that indicate they are fantasy.
When I start to create an academy cover, I strive to strike all of these elements so that academy lovers browsing Amazon can instantly identify their genre.
While I don’t believe writers should go through the trouble of creating mood boards, I do think they should be conversant with the frequent components of covers in their genre.
How do I make a book cover in Adobe?
If you’re starting in the publishing design business, it might be challenging to determine which book cover design software to use to produce your book cover.
You can build a cover using practically any design software; however, specific tools are more specialized for producing professional-quality covers.
Professional cover designers choose publishing software as a standard because it gives you greater control over print specifications and typography; Adobe Photoshop isn’t ideal for producing inner layouts,
but it works very well for creating covers that are drafted as a single page (with the back cover, Spine, and front cover as one image).
Adobe InDesign is the most popular option, with QuarkXPress providing a strong, albeit simpler, alternative and the newly debuted Affinity Publisher quickly gaining traction.
Learn how to make a table in Adobe InDesign paperback book cover.
Designing a book cover is the kind of job that every designer looks forward to working on.
However, it may be a difficult job to get, and when the chance arrives, a rookie designer may be unclear on how to approach it.
If you are unsure where to begin, here are some easy beginning ideas to help you build up your document and demonstrate that it is not difficult.
The fundamentals — binding and page count
For the time being, we’ll focus on creating a paperback book cover. In particular, an excellent or burst-bound book has at least 72 or more pages. Why is this format and page count used? Most paperbacks, in reality, are either fantastic bound (collection of signatures bonded into the cover) or burst bound (loose pages glued into the body).
If you have an option, always choose with perfect binding; burst binding is the form of binding that frequently leads to pages coming out if you ever read the book).
And if you have less than 72 pages, you generally don’t need a spine on your cover since the reader may be saddle-stitched (i.e., stapled). So building up a body like that is no more complicated than setting up an ordinary page inside the book itself.
The Backbone
If you’ve never made a book cover before, the Spine of the book may take you by surprise. How thick is it intended to be, specifically?
You rapidly learn from experience that you must get this measurement from your printer. It’s usually included in the quote/job setup; if your print rep doesn’t have it, you may need to remind them.
The printer calculates this width based on the measurements they have for the various paper stocks, the number of signatures (bundled groups of pages) required for the project, and so on.
Examine books with a comparable amount of pages to get an informed approximation.
You may need to create a cover design before involving the printer, but make sure that your final press-ready cover adheres to the specs provided by the printer.
The multi-page strategy
This is my favorite approach to putting together a paperback cover; as I previously indicated, you frequently need to set your body together before you get the printer’s final spine specifications.
With that in mind, an assembly method that saves time when making subsequent alterations to your cover measurements is preferred.
How do you make a digital book cover?
A book cover is a kind of visual communication. Prospective readers will form opinions about your book’s genre, subject matter, style, and message before reading a single word.
This is why seasoned writers and publishers devote significant effort to researching, planning, and designing their covers.
There are several approaches to creating fantastic book cover designs, particularly for digital publications, but here are a few to consider.
Examine the covers of other books in your category.
Before you begin creating (or hiring a designer), look over book covers in your category, paying particular attention to digital versions.
For example, you might look at your category’s novels leading the Apple Books rankings.
What catches your attention? Are there any standard color palettes or imagery?
Do they include graphics, images, or just type?
Do book covers in your genre use specific typographic styles?
This entails examining typefaces (fonts), type-styling, and the balance of text and graphics.
The cover should match the book’s tone.
Spend some time thinking about your book after you’ve spent time browsing book covers on Apple Books and making a list of features common to your genre.
This could be a good moment if you haven’t previously written your Publisher Description copy for your book.
How are you summarizing your book?
What are your book’s main activities, concepts, or settings?
These might be sources of inspiration.
What is your book’s intended audience, and what do they anticipate seeing on a book cover?
Do you want to surprise and challenge the reader’s expectations, or do you want to satisfy those expectations?
What is your book’s general tone?
List three adjectives that describe the overall mood or style of your novel. Is your book, for example, suspenseful, romantic, energetic, or contemplative? Use these adjectives to help you create your book cover.
How do you make a book cover from scratch?
“Really shouldn’t pick up a book by its cover” But, let’s face it, we all do it.
Readers enter a bookshop and are pulled to the book with the most visually appealing and aesthetically appealing cover before ever reading what it’s about.
That is why having the correct cover design is critical to achieving your objectives.
If you’re publishing your book on a tight budget, you may believe you don’t need to design agency or freelancer since you have some excellent ideas. This may help some writers but may harm others.
How it may help:
- Your cost benefits will be great. Hiring a professional service might be costly. A well-prepared student should be able to discover a service that stays within your budget, although not spending that money would be ideal.
Many software, such as Adobe Photoshop or Gimp, may assist you in creating a beautiful book cover at a reduced cost.
- Nobody knows your book like you do. You understand your storyline, characters, and themes, which gives you insight into the novel. This might be useful when creating a thoughtful cover influenced by the book.
- You will get satisfaction from designing your cover. Writing a whole book and creating the body yourself would be fantastic. The book would be all yours, something you could be proud of!
Ways it may harm you:
- You may not be knowledgeable enough about book sales to design effectively. Designers specializing in book cover art understand precisely what appeals to the audience and creates the highest sales. With hundreds of thousands of books released each year, you want yours to stand out and expert designers’ know-how.
- Your book may not seem as professional. Though you may be an excellent designer, you may be too connected to the project to evaluate it objectively. The cover design might seem tacky and amateurish, putting you at a distinct disadvantage with book consumers and sellers. This lack of trustworthiness might destroy your book before it ever hits the shelves. It is essential to get constructive input from someone knowledgeable about design processes.
- You may not be aware of your intended audience. Professional designers will know precisely who you’re aiming for and what they want to see, while writers may have a different perception of their audience. This disparity might be disastrous for a book’s reception. Distinct genres need other styles, and book cover designers know this. Their perspective may impact how your target audience receives your book.
Though it may seem like a fun and creative procedure, we suggest you choose a professional agency to create your book cover. Book covers are an essential aspect of your marketing strategy!
They entice customers and result in purchases, reviews, referrals, and so forth. However, creating your cover may make it difficult to sell to large book purchasers and harm your exposure.
Many low-cost book designers are skilled in cover design and have the knowledge and abilities to make your book stand out.
While your vision is undoubtedly essential in the design process, leaving the physical component to the specialists may be wiser.
Most designers will provide an author with a few alternatives from which to pick, allowing you to determine how your book will appear.
And if you disagree with their ideals, let them know! Designers cherish an author’s input, and you will eventually see your vision come to life.
Working with a book cover designer can help you get the cover you want and the sales you need.
What is the spine of the book cover?
A book’s Spine is the outer edge of the book where the pages are collected and bonded.
The Spine, in addition to serving as an anchor point for the pages, also serves as the hinge motion that enables the book’s cover and pages to open and shut.
The Spine’s Printing
The spines of hard-cover and perfect-bound books are usually broad enough to print on. On the other hand, the width of a book’s Spine is determined by the number of pages and the thickness of the pages.
The more surface area the Spine provides for printed information, the wider it is.
The printing of the title and other features on the Spine of a book allows the reader to be identified while the book is standing vertically on a shelf or lying horizontally in a stack.
Some books cannot have printing on the Spine.
For example, the Spine of a saddle-stitched book is made by creasing the book’s cover. As a result, the spinal edge is somewhat thin.
As a result, the Spine of a saddle-stitched book is too narrow to print on. Likewise, the Spine of a coil-bound book consists of a plastic or metal spiral coil; therefore, it too cannot receive printing.
Elements of a visually appealing book spine
Remember that the Spine of your book is generally the first thing a prospective reader will see on a retail or library shelf. As a result, your book spine design must be appealing and instructive.
Even if you have a small area to work with, you can utilize your book spine to create a strong first impression.
Understanding recommended practices and looking at some solid samples is the best approach to start your book spine design.
What are some excellent practices for designing book spines?
The odds are higher if you’re dealing with a conventional publication; they have a graphic designer on staff who can design your entire book cover—including the Spine.
However, if you’re self-publishing, you’ll need to learn certain spine design best practices. Here are a few pointers:
- The Spine of your book should match the front and back covers.
If you’re utilizing an image or a gradient, carry it through to your Spine rather than changing the color of the Spine.
Most online and self-publishing companies will give you a book cover template that includes the spine size. Follow the instructions to ensure that your spine text fits inside the allocated area.
- On the Spine, provide your book title, author name, and (if appropriate) publisher because you don’t have much room to work with, don’t go overboard with the spine text.
- Use a legible font so readers can quickly identify which book belongs to them.
There are certain things to avoid, just as some best practices for book spine design. And they are the following things you should learn.
What should you avoid while designing a book spine?
The critical thing to avoid when designing a book spine is an unreadable, crowded spine. The Spine should be neat and straightforward to read. The book’s title should first catch a prospective reader’s attention, followed by your name. Never try to jam too much material into the Spine. Less is more when it comes to spine design!
What are some excellent examples of book spines?
Once you’ve decided what to do and what not to do with your book spine, Taking a peek at several examples is recommended.
After that, examine the spines of some of your favorite books. Is the Spine informative and straightforward? Is it consistent with the color scheme or graphics on the front and back covers?
Keep in mind that some writers receive book spine design assistance.
Perhaps a literary agency or publisher introduced them to a professional book cover designer.
So please take advantage of their efforts! Even if you are self-publishing and designing your cover, you may gain professional help from their successful spines.
How do you make a spine book cover?
We already know your book cover design’s crucial, but may the Spine be even more significant?
The Spine is the first object that catches the eye while looking at a bookshelf in a shop, library, or house.
The Spine is what attracted the consumer in the first place, not the book cover.
The spine and book cover are both utilized in packing. I’m talking about your book.
The body and Spine of your book should be visually and graphically consistent. The Spine’s structure should be fascinating, and you should be able to hint at the book’s genre.
There are a few methods to make your Spine stand out from the other books in its category.
1. Color is crucial!
You don’t want something too flashy, but you do want a distinctive spine. This is particularly true for slimmer books. Because you don’t have much room, you must make every inch matter.
The simplest method is to choose a bright color that stands out more than the 600-page monstrosity sitting alongside it.
Color schemes are also essential. Again, analyze your client’s needs.
Feel when they read your book. Different colors represent different things, which may immediately impact how your audience perceives your book.
While the colors you pick are essential, contrasting them is much more critical.
The most appealing books use contrasting colors, such as a light typeface on a darker backdrop or vice versa.
This is beneficial when marketing your book because the Spine will be visible from a distance and up close.
The book’s Spine must stand out from the crowd and entice the consumer to come up and take it off the rack!
2. You’ll need a suitable font.
Sans serif, blocky text appears to stand out more on the Spine of a book than thin, serif fonts.
This is typically actual best to avoid script fonts (or fonts that are difficult to read).
For more delicate books, bold, simple text is even more critical. Because you don’t have the same amount of visual space as larger books, your text selection is vital!
3. Have fun with it!
This is critical when considering how to design your Spine (and cover). Your Spine should be eye-catching and exciting but not overpowering.
The Spine of a book only requires the title, author’s name, and, if space allows, the logo of your publishing company.
However, intriguing and appealing photos might make your Spine stand out if you have a more critical book.
People only see the books’ backs on a shelf, so you want your home bookcase to look appealing.