In my ongoing struggle with the technical side of self-publishing on the cheap, I had cover trouble. They say people judge a book by its cover. I think this is unwise but there’s no doubt that first impressions count. I designed quite a striking cover for Consarn Christmas and Other Stories. I typed the title and my name in a word document then transferred over a robot/clockwork picture I obtained free from www.FreeImages.com. After that, I chose the background colour, a bright yellow that reminded me of the old SF books put out by Victor Gollancz years ago. It seemed suitable.
After some more wrestling with the computer, I changed this Word document to a jpeg and used it for my book cover on Draft2digital, Amazon and Smashwords. They all accepted it but Smashwords wouldn’t put it in their Premium Catalogue because the cover didn’t have enough pixies. Or was it pixels. How do you add more pixels?
After some deep thought I googled ‘Free Book Covers’ and top of the list, I think, was www.canva.com. Their system was so easy even I could use it. I found a design very similar to my own, substituted my photo for the well-dressed young man in the original, rewrote the title and Hey Presto! I replaced the old one on Smashwords with it and today they e-mailed me to say that Consarn Christmas and Other Stories had been accepted into their Premium Catalogue. That wasn’t essential because I’ll get to most of the same retailers through Draft2digital but all those red warnings popping up on Smashwords every time I logged in were annoying.
If even a techno-flubber like me can make a book, anyone can do it. Of course, you should write something worth reading before getting to this stage.
Eamonn Murphy
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