Want to get your books noticed and more importantly, make KDP book sales.
Then let me show you how to make stunning book covers like this and catch
customers attention. Now,
if you've not been to this channel before then welcome my name's Paul Marles,
and I do videos on how to make it, keep it and grow it.
And that's your money I'm talking about. And if you do like videos like that,
then please do give the thumbs up,
hit the subscribe button and smash that notification bell to receive
notification of when I produce more videos like this.
So one of the main issues publishers have on KDP is not getting
any sales. Now this can be for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest,
that I see, is the book cover design.
They often not dull or the color choice is wrong.
They have poor quality images or poor font choice and size.
And this is a big issue because the cover is your sales page.
It attracts customers attention, gets you clicks and hopefully sales.
Now just take a look here on Amazon. On the first page,
they all have vibrant, colorful eye catching colors.
So what I'm going to show you today is how to create a stunning and
colorful KDP book cover with the aim of attracting customer's attention
and hopefully getting that all important click and therefore sale.
And with the method I'm going to show you,
you don't need any special artistic skills.
I'll show you how to set up your book cover template,
where to get images and what fonts to use.
And these types of covers are great for books like plain lined notebooks and
journals, coloring books and kids books.
So the first thing we need is our software in which we're going to create our
book cover. And today we're going to be using Affinity Designer.
Now we need vector editing software,
and that's because basically we need to use vector images.
Now these are images that come in the .svg, .eps
and.ai format. The reason we use these is because these images,
simply put,
are made up of shapes that are easy to add color to. Now,
I'm not saying you can't do this in Canva or Photoshop,
but it would probably require a lot of work arounds.
And what I'm gonna show you today is a lot easier. I'm using Affinity Designer.
You could do this in Adobe Illustrator or free software like
Inscape,
which you can download to a Mac or Windows or web based software like
Gravit Designer. Next,
what we need is the template for our book.
So we're going to go over to our KDP dashboard. Now,
if you're not already opened your account at KDP,
you can do that and it's completely free.
So once you've done that and logged into KDP,
it'll take you to the reports page.
Now you need to click on the help link at the top of the page. And then,
on the left hand side menu, click on format your paper book.
Then scroll down to where it says,
download a cover template and click on the link.
And then we need to fill out these options, binding type paperback,
interior type black and white, paper type white paper,
page turn direction left to right measurement, unit inches,
interior trim size. Well for this,
we're going to create an 8.5 by 11 inch book.
So we'll click on that and page count,
let's go for 110.
And then we can click on calculate dimensions.
This will give us the dimensions of our template,
but what I'm going to do is just click on download template and download it to
our computer. And this is the template that we've just downloaded,
but this is what we need.
The overall dimensions for setting up our page on Affinity Designer or whatever
software you are using. So when we go to Affinity Designer,
we click on new to open or set up a new document. Now, document units,
we're going to set to inches. Color profile, I always use sRGB.
And then we put in our page width and page height from that download
of the template. So
17.498 by 11.25 and click on create.
And here we have our blank art board for our cover.
Now what we need to do next is just drag in our template onto this.
So find where you've downloaded it to and just drag it into place like this.
And then we can just drag that into position so it fills our document.
Then we're going to click on the lock here on the right hand side,
just to lock that in place.
Now you may not be using the same vector editing software that I'm using today,
but what I'm showing you,
you can duplicate in your particular software platform.
Now left hand side, click on the rectangle shape tool.
Then start in the top left corner and just drag down to the bottom
and then just enlarge your image.
And we're going to drag this to the second dotted blue line of our spine.
Then on the right hand side,
we've got our options here for the stroke color and the fill color.
Now the stroke color, we don't want a stroke.
So we just click on that button with a red line through it.
Now click on the fill button and move our slider across to black.
Now we're using the HSL, hue, saturation,
luminance sliders because they're very easy to add color to particular image
components. Then right hand side, layers panel.
Just click on that and call it back cover,
becasue this is going to be the back cover of our book. Now I've chosen black.
You can choose whatever color you like. Again,
click on that black back cover layer and click on lock.
Now next we need the components for the front cover of the book.
So we're going to need a patterned background. First of all. Now,
as I mentioned,
these are going to be vector images because they're easy to color in. Now.
There's lots of places you can get these or you can make them yourself.
Today I'm gonna be using a zentangle pattern.
Now you could go to YouTube, learn how to create these yourself,
create something original or even just go to somewhere like Amazon and buy a
book on how to create these types of patterns. The other option,
which is what I'm goiong to do today,
is that you could pay for one of these types of patterned backgrounds.
Now I'm going to get mine from Vecteezy. I have an account here.
I Think it's about $109 or $120 a year for the professional
account, which means I can use all these images commercially.
And there's no limit to the number of products I can create.
Now remember they do need to be vectors. If they're not and they .png or .jpg
files,
you can convert them into vectors using a like
Vectorizer. But that will be the beyond the scope of this particular video.
So over at Vecteezy I've entered zentangle and we've got all these patterns
here. Now, good thing about these is that they are already colored in,
but you may find yourself with a black and white lined image,
which you can then color in and I'll show you how to do that in one second.
So we're going to choose this image and download it. Now,
this downloads in the .eps format.
So I'm just gonna take that and drag it into Affinity Designer.
And here we have that image. Now, if it is black and white and it is a vector,
I'll show you how easy it is to color in.
So you've got all these different components of the image, all in shapes.
So you can just click on a shape using your sliders. You could just add color.
You can see how easy that is and change the color. Click on another shape,
again, move the sliders and add even more color.
And you can see how easy this is.
Now for speed we've already got the,
the colored version here on the left hand side. So left click of the mouse drag,
a bounding box around the whole document. Command C or Control C to copy,
go to our template and Command V or Control V to paste.
You can see that it's quite large and it's covering our whole template.
So holding down shift, left click of the mouse,
just reduce the size of that and drag it across and click on
Command G or Control G to group all those different components of that
patterned image. And then we want to drag that group,
right hand side here on the layers panel,
to be below the black back cover rectangle.
And we can move that in position however we like.
So that's our patterned background. Next.
We want our quote or our main body of text on the front of the
book cover. Now, as in the patterned background,
you can either do this yourself or you can buy an already made
quote. Now, if you wanted to do this yourself,
I've actually done a video on how using fonts that you've already got on your
computer or that you can download.
You can create these sorts of quotes in different fonts yourself,
and I'll leave a link to that video down below in the description. Today,
I'm gonna take the paid option and go and buy a quote.
And for this I'm going to go to Creative Fabrica.
So I'm just going to search for nurse quotes.
And in the left hand side menu,
I'm going to click on print on demand so that I know that I've got the
commercial license to use these on print, on demand products like books.
So left hand side. Yeah, I'm gonna choose this particular one.
And it says here commercial and full print on demand usage allowed.
I'm just going to go ahead and download that to my computer.
Find where you've downloaded that quote to. And in this case,
it's in the .svg format, which is the vector format.
And I'm just going to drag that in to Affinity Designer. And here we have it.
Now I want to rearrange this and here you can see,
we can click on the individual components,
which is the beauty of a vector image.
So I'm going to move this heart and ECG or EKG symbol
below there. I'm going to move better to the center of the document.
Move that up a bit. And also same for this symbol center. Move it up a bit.
Then left click and drag and put a bounding box around all of
this Command C or Control C to copy.
Go back to our book cover and just Command V or Control V to paste.
Then left click the mouse, just drag this over to the front of the cover.
And you can see, it looks a bit messy at the moment.
Now we need to reduce the size of that.
So holding down shift and let click the mouse, just drag,
reduce the size and move it to around the center of the front
cover. Now, whilst all these components are selected,
click Command G or Control G to group them all together.
Now in the right hand side layers menu,
just call this quote or rename it quote.
Then right,
click and click on duplicate and rename the bottom quote layer to
quote background.
Now click on the quote layer and click on the fill button at the top here.
And we want to change this text to white. So using our sliders,
just slide across. Click on quote background.
Now for this,
we need to click on the stroke button and we need to move the slider
to color the stroke black. Click on the stroke tab.
And now we need to increase or sickness of this stroke.
And like magic it makes our text visible. Okay,
so now we need to add some color to our quote.
So click on the quote layer.
Now I want you to hit shift Command G or shift Control G
if you're on windows to those components.
Click on quote background and click on the lock key or lock button to
lock that in place.
Now we can click on our individual components here of our quotes and we can
color them individually. So I'm going to click on nurses,
go to the color tab at the top here. Click on the fill button.
Move the luminosity slider to 50, the saturation to 100.
And here you can now change the colors of your word or letters to
whatever you like. And we're gonna have this in a pinky color.
Then go to the next component. And I want this in a red.
So luminosity 50 saturation, 100, that's already red.
So we'll leave it like that. And same goes for the other decorative components.
I'll speed this up so not to bore you. Then click on, make it game,
same routine,
have that in the green and I'll do the same for better and the heart symbol.
And there have our quote in bright,
vibrant colors on a bright vibrant background.
So the next thing we need to do is add our text to below our quote.
So left hand side, click on the text tool, or it says here, artistic text tool,
then click on over our patterned background. Now for the size of the text,
we're going to use 30 points. Going to change the color of the text.
So in the fill box top, right, move the slider over to the white,
and we're going to use a font called Krungthep. And here we have Krungthep.
Now I'm going to type in my byline.
So the first line is going to be motivational
and inspirational.
I'm just going to move that to around the center of our cover and then
holding down option key. Left click of the mouse,
just drag downwards to move or create the next line.
Double click that. And I'm going to type in coloring book
for nurses. Click on our move tool.
And then just move that again into the center and into place. Now,
holding down shift,
just click on the line above the one we've just created so that it selects
both lines. We want to click on Command G or Control G to group those together.
So we're going to rename that layer byline.
Now we want to right click on that layer,
click on duplicate then the bottom of those byline layers.
We're just going to rename to byline background.
Now clicking on the byline background, making sure that's selected.
We need to go over to the stroke button at the top
And move the slider so that's black.
And then we click on the stroke tab and like we did with our quote,
we need to increase the thickness of our stroke and you can see already
just moving that, that it makes our byline stand out on the front cover.
I think you'll agree that looks pretty good. Looks very bright, vibrant,
it's attractive, would catch customers attention.
So next we want it in a format that we can upload to our KDP
platform. So what you do next is click on file,
click on export and make sure you choose PDF.
I've got here PDF for print. In your software platform.
It may say something along the lines of, you know, high quality print.
I normally pick the highest quality. Make sure raster DPI is 300.
Then click on export, call it book cover and save it to your computer.
And then this is ready then to upload to the KDP platform where it asks you
to upload in the cover section. Now,
if you want to create an interior for say a coloring book,
with a similar method to what I've shown you here, then watch this video next,
where I show you how. Thank you very much for your time.
It's very much appreciated.
Don't forget to hit the subscribe button and until next time goodbye.