Creating Your Book Cover

The third and final video for your book creation. Earlier, I went over creating your print interior using InDesign. I also showed you one way to edit your ebook. Now I’m going to do a quick and dirty book cover, mainly to show you how to set up the file properly, and how to create your own UPC code. You should take more time and do a better job with the design and art than I will here in less than an hour.

Some links you’ll need:

The CreateSpace Cover Guidelines

A Free UPC Code Generator

And here’s the tutorial. Hope it’s useful:

 

 

11 responses to “Creating Your Book Cover”

  1. Hugh C. Howey Avatar
    Hugh C. Howey

    And yeah, the spine is upside down, and I should have made the ‘C’ in Collector much larger, so it pops up by the word “The.” Would’ve looked nice. :)

    Reply
  2. michael blackbourn Avatar
    michael blackbourn

    Perfect. I now have no excuse not to wrap up my book.

    I noticed you put the ISBN in the UPC, and on an inside page … How far down the create a book wizard do you have to go in create space to get the numbers so you can then add them into the PDF for print and eBook.

    Thanks!

    Reply
    1. Hugh C. Howey Avatar
      Hugh C. Howey

      Not far. Once you set the book up (just the trim size), and save your progress, it’ll assign you an ISBN.

      Reply
      1. michael blackbourn Avatar
        michael blackbourn

        Thanks! This is all a huge help.

        Reply
  3. Shayne T Wright Avatar
    Shayne T Wright

    Hugh,

    Thanks for the knowledge sharing. This alternative method for book covers compliments how I currently prepare covers / contents. I look forward to applying it to my latest novella I plan on finishing / releasing over the Christmas break – Sisters of Salvation #2, Un-natural Fight Club.

    Regards,

    Shayne T Wright

    Reply
  4. Monday Must-Reads [12.15.14]

    […] Creating Your Book Cover | Hugh Howey […]

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  5. Jeremy Gray Avatar
    Jeremy Gray

    Great tutorial! Of course it comes out two days AFTER my novel Grooveworld was published. :) I was really on the fence on picking cream paper. I had a feeling it would look better, but one thing Createspace doesn’t tell you right away is that the cream paper only works on specific book sizes. By the time I got that far into the process, it would have meant redoing all my margins and checking for widows, etc, and I was on a tight deadline. But I’ll have to choose cream for the next book. (And I’m glad you pointed out the spine issue in the vid, I was starting to wonder if I had done it wrong!)

    Reply
  6. Rosemary Avatar
    Rosemary

    Your 3 videos have been very helpful. By the way, what software did you use to record your screen with sound? I have a windows operating system. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!

    Reply
  7. decayingorbits Avatar
    decayingorbits

    This is another great tutorial. My only complaint is ID is a windows-based application, and I have a Mac.

    Does anyone know of a Mac-based analog to ID?

    Great stuff, Hugh. Merry Christmas!

    Reply
    1. decayingorbits Avatar
      decayingorbits

      Never mind — I’m an idiot. I now have ID through Adobe’s Creative Cloud — something I didn’t even know existed. It’s quite awesome!

      Reply
  8. Cara Avatar
    Cara

    Instead of cropping your background image to the edge of the book cover, you can just press “w” on your keyboard to switch to preview mode in InDesign. It’s much faster, and more accurate, than potentially mis-aligning the boundaries to the edge of the bleed zone.

    Reply

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