It’s perfectly acceptable for you to design, or have someone design, your cover. However, Amazon provides this nifty little tool called Cover Creator to help you get the dimensions just right. The layouts and font choices are limited, but if you’re a newbie like me, Cover Creator will add a bit of professionalism to your ebook.
Launch the Cover Creator when prompted after you have uploaded your manuscript on the Content Page. The components are slightly different for print and ebooks, so in this section, I’ll just be talking about the steps for creating a cover for an ebook.
Next you’ll be prompted to choose an image from the gallery, upload a JPG, PNG or GIF image from your computer, or skip this step if you don’t have an image you want to use. Make sure the image you choose is public domain or you have permission to use it so as not to violate copyright laws.
After you’ve uploaded or choosen and image, Cover Creator generates a variety of potential cover designs. Since the program uses the book details including author, title, subtitle and ISBN, (in the case of print books), the image that you upload should not have any of these items on it. Notice in the image above that my image already had text on it so I needed to upload another image.
If you accidently chose the wrong image or if you get a poor resolution notification, you’ll have a chance to change the image in a moment. Your image should be 300 pixels per inch (300 DPI) at the size you want it to appear on your cover.
Choose the color scheme you would like to use. You can choose from already paired colors or pick your own.
Select a layout for the print part of the cover.
Finally choose a font and select the orange “Preview” button.
Make sure to preview your cover in color, greyscale and thumbnail modes. Make sure the text is readable and the image looks good.
If you like how everything looks, you can hit “Save & Submit.” If you don’t, then you can “Start Over.” If you want to change your image, click on it and you’ll get the option to choose another image or change its size, position or rotation.
Voila! Now you’ll see a checkmark with “Cover uploaded successfully” next to the thumbnail of your finished cover.
Assignment: Use Cover Creator or upload your ebook cover.
