Self Publishing

Book Cover Design

The final step in completing your book is to create your book cover. The cover of your book is a very important element of your entire book publishing project. Your book’s cover is the first thing your potential reader will see. I know we have all heard the “don’t judge a book by its cover”

If the content of your book is good and you are confident that readers are purchasing a quality piece of work, then the cover should also represent a quality piece of work.

The below steps will help you in this process:

Software to use for making book covers
The below software suits are industry standard when making book covers and will give you the bet results:

• Adobe Illustrator
  
• Adobe Photoshop
  
• CorelDRAW
  

Programs like MS Publisher can be used; but, they will not give you professional results and lack many features.
If your budget is limited when it comes to software, you can use a free open source software like GIMP to help make your cover.

Color Management and Images

To make sure that the printer can match the colors you see on your monitor, make sure you set the color mode of your cover file CMYK. This includes any images on your cover. If your printing you cover in Black & White, your cover should be set to grayscale.

You should set the resolution of your cover file to 300 dpi. Any lower will cause your cover to pixelate when printed.

Cover Bleed

When any image, color or any content on your cover needs to go to the edge of the cover you need to extend it past the trim (cover) edge. The printer will then trim the cover to correct size. The process insures that the element goes all the way to the cover edge without leaving any white border. This is known as “bleed”.
Most printers want a bleed of 1/8” to ¼”. So you need to take this into account when setting up your cover. Contact your printer to see what they require for bleed.

Spine

Unless your printing  a spineless, like a spiral bond book, you need to add a spine measurement to you cover.

The below measurements will give you a sizes for standard paper sizes, for you to calculate your spine size:

• 60lb. Paper:  Number of pages x 0.00225 = spine width in inches
• 70lb. Paper: Number of pages x 0.0025 = spine width in inches  
• 80lb. Matte Paper: Number of pages x 0.0024 = spine width in inches
• 80lb. Gloss Paper: Number of pages x 0.0021 = spine width in inches
• 100lb. Matte Paper: Number of pages x 0.0032 = spine width in inches
• 100lb. Gloss Paper: Number of pages x 0.0028 = spine width in inches

(click image for larger view)

FREE COVER TEMPLATES

For your convenience, we’ve provided some free templates you can download to set up your book. Download cover templates here.

Making a “print ready” PDF

When your cover is done, it’s time to make it ready for the printer. PDF’s are the standard when it comes to sending your file to the printers. Some printers many accept native files, but the only to guarantee that the printer will print exactly what you see on the monitor, is to send them your layout in PDF format.

Remember when making your PDF, that all of the cover elements must be made into one single file, that includes the front cover, back cover and spine . You should also embed all fonts.

Some programs like Adobe Photoshop will have the capabilities to create a PDF built into the program.
If you your layout program doesn’t can’t make a PDF, you can use Adobe Acrobat or Nitro PDF Professional.


ISBN & Barcodes

If you’re planning to sell your through a bookstore, you need a International Standard Book Number and a barcode (which goes on the back of your book ).

If you’re in the U.S.A., you can get a barcode from Bowker

In Canada you can an ISBN from Canadian ISBN Agency

In the UK, you can get your ISBN from: Nielsen

You can make a barcode for free at http://www.tux.org/~milgram/bookland/

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