Indie Publishing Secret #12- Revisiting the Cover

Indie Secret #12-Your Cover....
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I've had a lot of emails asking about Createspace's cover designer. I thought I'd go into a bit more detail.

1. Not all templates allow you to upload your own photo. If it doesn't give you the option to upload your own-then you can't use that one with your own design/picture. It will only the allow the background you see on the template. Only a few are like this.
2. One template is made for you to put your professionally done cover in. When you click on it, it lets you know it is that one
3. When you choose a template, you can use your picture or choose one from their gallery if you'd like.
4. You can not change the placement of the title, author name, author picture, and back blurb because it is a template. However, you can unclick "visible" for several of these and not have to worry about them. For example, I put my picture on the last page of my book instead of the back cover by unclicking the "visible" box. You could unclick the visible for the back blurb-but I don't suggest that. You want that.
5. If your picture doesn't work just right-you can edit it with free software like Picasa or use Photoshop or some other editing software to make it work. Just edit and reload until you get it right. 
6. The most important thing about your cover picture is that you remember the picture has to be high resolution. If it isn't it will send you a message telling you it may be blurry when they print your cover. Make sure you heed that warning-even if you love how it looks on the screen.
7. The spine does not show until you submit your cover. You submit by pushing the submit button at the bottom of the screen. This does NOT lock you into that cover. It only creates the entire cover for you. It takes a few minutes-but you could change it however many times you want. Just re-submit when you think you have it how you want it. 
8. Keep in mind as you look at the picture without the spine, that the ISBN is on the back of the book. So, check out it's placement to kinda know where everything is on the page. If it's too hard to understand that concept, simply press submit and get the whole view. No harm, no foul. You can do that as many times as you like.
9. Also, remember, you need to add your price on the back of the book somewhere. I used Photoshop. You can do it for free in Picasa or use a different edititing program. You can't, however, use Word. If you do, you end up with a Word document and you can't upload those for your cover.

I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.


Happy Covering!! And get to reviewing my book, Watched, so you can win the $10 Amazon gift card. Just put your review in the comments of either of my blogs to enter.