If you’re not a graphic designer yourself, you can still have a gorgeous book cover that draws readers to your work. Here are a few great tools to use when creating your book cover:
1. Book Cover Creator
For a simple but effective start to figuring out what you want your book cover to look like, check out Book Cover Creator. Even if it doesn’t end up being your final book cover, it’s a lovely way of seeing your ideas come to life in a tangible way – and will often spark off more ideas or a clarification of what you really want your book cover to look like.
2. Canva’s free book cover creation template
Online image editing service Canva has templates for several book-related items (such as social media posts you can use to promote your book once it’s published).
Read a guide to using Canva’s book cover design template here.
3. Book Cover Express
If you know that design isn’t your strong point, it’s probably a good idea to hire someone experienced to do it for you. Book Cover Express has designed a number of big name book covers, and with 30 years of publishing experience and more than 1500 covers, they definitely know what they’re doing.
4. Hire a designer
The final option, of course, is that you hire an independent designer to create your book cover. You can even use AI to find book cover art ideas and finesse your prompt (or leave it open to your designer’s knack for creating illustrations based on stories).
This has advantages in that you can be a lot more picky than you could be with a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) tool. Designers know how to make the design serve the concept, the content, the individuality, of your project. Reedsy has a selection of book cover designers offering their services in their publishing marketplace.
Looking for inspiration? Here are 90 Beautiful Book Cover Designs in Different Styles to get you started… Let us know which are your favourites?
