Don’t have a lot of money to dish out for a book cover? Well you’re in luck. In this video, I’m going to show you how to create a book cover for free, using Canva. So stick around.
How’s it shakin, Write Righters? Keith Wheeler here, and if you want to continue to get all of the hints, tips and tricks on how to make self-publishing easier to understand, then be sure to subscribe to the channel and smash that the little bell icon so you can get alerted each and every time I put out new content.
Recently, I’ve been getting quite a few inquiries about my book covers. That’s right, I read and respond to every message I get. Youtube comments, emails, facebook, twitter, Instagram, carrier pigeon, smoke signal. If there’s a way for me to get the message, I WILL respond!
Any, this particular message reads, “Hey Keith, a little birdie told me that you actually made one of your book covers completely for free using Canva. Is this true?” Thanks for messaging me, and the answer is, that birdie lied to you, because I have not done 1 book cover for free using Canva, I have done over 10 book covers, completely free and I’m going to show you exactly how I do it.
I’m currently working on a fun softball themed book, so I’m going make the book cover for that in Canva, right now. So I’m going to flip the screen around and let’s get started.
The first thing I do is go to Canva.com and create a free account. Once I log in, I’m going to go to the top and select “Create a Design”. I’m going to pick book cover. Feel free to scan through the premade layouts, they’re a great way to get some inspiration. If you want to use one of these layouts, just click on it and then you can replace each of the elements. This layout right here I used as the base for my book self-publish authors, Please Don’t Beg, How to get book reviews and keep your friends. As you can see, I made some changes, but this was the base of it.
For this cover, I know exactly what I want to do, so I will create it completely from scratch. So, the next thing I need to do is get my pictures. For that I will pull up pixabay.com. This is one of my favorite FREE stock image sites. You want to make sure, where ever you get your images, that they are royalty free for commercial use so you can use them on books you plan to sell.
Next, I look for the images I want to use. I’m going to search for softball. I’ve already scoped out the images I want. So it’ll be this one, I’ll download it. And then go back and get this other one.
Please give this video a thumbs up and share it with someone else who you think will benefit from it. Remember, if you want to continue to get all of the hints, tips and tricks on how to make self-publishing easier to understand, then be sure to subscribe to the channel and hit the little bell icon so you can get alerted each and every time I put out new content. I’m Keith Wheeler and until next time remember to write right.