New!

Paperback Book Cover Templates from Book Creatives – $95!

For those wanting an inexpensive but attractive looking paperback book cover for self-publishing through your favorite printer or publisher, I’ve worked up a (fast growing!) selection of layouts that I can quickly personalize to achieve your vision. I’m starting this service with paperback templates only, but I expect to be offering templates for hardcover jackets also in the near future.

Benefits:

• Created by a professional book cover designer with year’s of experience.
• No learning curve, no software - just make a few choices.
• Premium royalty-free stock image for use on your cover included* (I hate disclaimers too, but this one probably won’t bother you.)
• Huge font selection.
• Sized correctly for your book’s page count and trim size.
• Formatted correctly for your printer of choice.
• Fast! Usually finished within 72 hours.

How it Works:

1. Choose a layout from my library that suits you (click on a cover to see full layout) and write down the template number. Note: I’ve downsampled the template images as much as possible (from 300 dpi to 72 dpi - then reduced image quality to 60% for jpeg export) to keep file sizes down, but they’re still bandwidth intensive and there’s just no getting around that while still trying to give you a fairly accurate representation of what the templates look like. Downsampling this much reduces image clarity, color saturation, and makes text appear blurred a bit – but rest assured your hi-res cover will be sharp and crisp!

This first group features a background image peeking out from behind a solid color or textured panel (these particular panels are textured which I feel adds adds to the overall richness and visual appeal - but you can specify a color of your own choosing and whether or not you want a textured finish: here’s a link to a neat website with loads of info on color trends and palettes COLOURlovers) with various layout styles for back cover text and title positioning.

This group features a full landscape background image. While choosing your background image at Shutterstock, you’ll use “keywords” or combinations of keywords to search for pictures, such as ‘denim’ like I used to find the faded texture for layout 02e - which I designed to look like a well worn, home-made psalm cover I once saw. You’ll notice on layout 02c I used a separate background for the back cover text box, while the text box on layout 02b uses a transparency to make the text more legible against the background – Well, you can specify those options too if you like…yes, they’re templates, but I designed them to accommodate a bit of customization within the framework of the layout.

This group is a hodgepodge of styles that incorporate author photo’s – but you can use that same space for additional cover text instead if you like. Note that on layout 03a the front cover title has a special effect applied. These kind of effects are an “extra” which you can request, but incur an additional fee because they take more design work. I charge $35 per hour for modifications or alterations, but I bill in quarter hour increments. For example, the special effects I applied to the title text on 03a took me 12 minutes to do, so the charge would have been an additional $8.75 for the client. Not much all-in-all, but if you’re prone to changing your mind on font’s, or cover text, or other design changes – maybe you’d be better off opting for a full custom cover design. My prices are very competitive!

This next group relies on typography, color, and structure instead of images. Check The New York Times Bestseller lists and you’ll find these styles are a staple that convey a strong identity and message. Font choices & their positioning are key elements to these styles which excel at conveying professionalism. Note the Caduceus on layout 04c, it could just as easily be a logo or other professional symbol. Shutterstock has many of these types of graphics available - the most suitable being in “Vector” format. This allows for extreme size adjustments without degrading the graphics quality.

2. Some of my templates will accommodate background images, so depending upon the layout you’ve chosen you can further customize your cover by choosing a royalty-free stock image from the huge selection at Shutterstock and selecting your favorite. Don’t buy it! I have an account there and I’ll supply it as part of my service. Just make note of the image ID to include with your order. Example: Image ID: 9923110

3. I choose cover fonts very carefully to suit readability and genre, but you can optionally choose a specific title (and/or text) font for your cover if you prefer:

by theme : Adobe Type Library: Font Themes

or style : Adobe Type Library: Font Styles

Note: Please limit yourself to one text and one title font selection.

4. Assemble the information I’ll need to complete your cover:

• Printer’s name (IE: Lightning Source, Lulu, BookSurge, iUniverse, etc.) so I can make sure that the completed cover fits their specifications.
• Trim size (6×9, 5.5×8.5, etc)
• Page count (it must be a final page count to determine the correct spine size).
• Author photo (digital-300dpi) if you wish to include one.

Text Files: Title, subtitle if any, author bio if you wish to include one, back cover summary text (some layouts will accommodate more text than others) and reviews & endorsements (blurbs), author name (some folks use pen-names after all), ISBN and retail price (price just in barcode or also on cover?). Also include the publisher name, address, and logo if you’d like that info on the cover.

Once finished, I’ll send you a link by email so that you can download your new cover.

* SHUTTERSTOCK IMAGES LLC STANDARD LICENSE restricts any image from their library used on your cover to be reproduced no more than two hundred fifty thousand (250,000) times before requiring an upgrade to an enhanced license - which isn’t included in my service. But hey, if you’ve sold a quarter million copies of your book, you can certainly afford to shell out a few hundred bucks for a license upgrade!