This topic was split off of the Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing thread because it sort of veered off from the original topic.

Here is to discuss what sort of book cover you will do, whether you will make it yourself, and what that entails.

My original post:

Eruheran,

If you want to do it professionally, I would suggest Adobe InDesign ... very expensive software, but there is no substitute. I don't own it myself, but am mulling my options. The real problem is working in the CMYK color-space, which most software does not do.

-Robert

I own InDesign, but am not familiar with working in CMYK. I've made my bookcovers in Photoshop at 300DPI

eru

Eruheran,

The problem with CMYK is that some colors you can create on the computer screen CANNOT be printed. Very strange that!

The problem area is usually in the bright blue range. When you print, it comes out purple. This happened to me. I had this fabulous 3D meteorite on my book cover ... glowing blue ... really cool ... and then it printed in purple and ended up looking like a HUGE RAISIN !!! Yikes !!!

Anyway, that is the danger you can run into. If you have the "REAL" photoshop, and not the "elements" version, then you should have all the tools you need ... but you'll probably have to learn some CMYK features of the software you haven't learned yet. For instance:

I would bet that there is a CMYK "mode" that will display your colors as they will be printed ... it will turn those bright blues to purple so you can see your goofs.

Also, you should be selecting colors using PANTONE, and I am quite sure that Photoshop will allow this.

Another thing you need to worry about is what is called Total Ink Coverage ... when you print a book cover you must not go above 240% ink on the page, or the ink gets too thick and won't dry properly, so the printer won't even attempt it.

Here is a link: http://www.newselfpublishing.com/TotalInkLimit.html

Think of it this way ... you have four inks [C]yan, [M]agenta, [Y]ellow, and Blac[K]. Theoretically you could cover a page 100% with all four inks, making the page covered at 400%. How do you know if your graphic goes beyond the 240% limit? Photoshop can tell you !! (I'm not sure where the feature is hidden, you will have to research that.)

Also, the reason the PANTONE colors are important is that there are different kinds of the "same" color ... for instance you could attempt to make a black area black with only the [K] at 100%, and you'd think that would work, but it will actually come out somewhat gray-ish. PANTONE has black definitions for other "blacks" that include other inks to make it richer.

Anyway, thanks so much for pointing out Photoshop ... I really should have included that with InDesign as necessary for self-publishing books professionally.

And "YES" ... it can be done without these expensive tools. You could typeset it just in Microsoft Word, and you could create your graphics in other software (such as Xara), but in that case you should definitely order proof copies and expect more difficulties.

-Robert

*nods* Very interesting. This summer as I wrap up the draft of my book and the editing I am going to begin looking at doing my own cover, and I will research this in more depth then

eru

CTRL + Y
Should change your document to show in CMYK in Photoshop. Don't forget to gamma check too (I recently printed a document and it ended up with large black sections because I forgot to gamma shift for my laptop screen).

That's what Ctrl+Y does! I was working on a web design project and all of a sudden my colors messed up and weren't as vibrant - eventually I had to start a new document Thanks for letting me know, though

eru

if you press CTRL + Y again, it goes back to RGB

I'm amazed at all the awesome information that is coming into this subforum. It's threads like these that make me think I might be able to do something I thought would have been impossible. Keep up the good work, folks!

I used Photoshop CS3 for all of my covers, and it has worked very well.

Aside from editing, I'd say covers are the number one most important thing to get right when creating a book. Readers just aren't going to adhere to "don't judge a book by its cover." Nothing says "self-published" like a poorly created cover. Even if the story is excellent, it's usually the cover that will draw someone to the book. It's definitely something to take a lot of time and put a lot of effort into.

Thanks for moving this to a new thread ... I kind of pulled us off-topic!

Since I am absolutely and utterly inept when it comes to photomanipulation, I hired a cover designer to make the cover for my first self-published book. (Or, I should say, for what will hopefully be my first self-published book.) I do not have the skill or resources necessary to make a marketable cover. As Molly said, a captivating cover is essential. It doesn't necessarily have to be complicated, but if it is well-done and intriguing, it can help interest people in your book.

As I'm planning on self-publishing an ebook with Kindle, my cover is a flat image. I simply sent my designer Amazon's specifications for the cover image, and he did the rest of the work.

Dieki Kondrael designed my first cover, for the record. I chose him because I knew I wanted a celestial image for this story, and celestial images are Dieki's specialty. I've always admired his heavenly work. However, I'm keeping a running list of other graphic designers that I might ask for future books.

'Heavenly' work? No pun intended. Dieki's work be amazing

To any of you who have designed your own covers; does Photoshop CS3 work for designing print covers?

eru

I design covers on a simplified version of Photoshop, Photoshop Elements 5.0. However the covers I make are nowhere near the standard of what a good cover should be, and I have no idea what requirements are for covers or what standards are used... *realizes this post was rather useless*

Photoshop Elements is actually excellent software. I'm not sure if it handles CMYK, though, so you could end up with purple instead of blue in some spots if you're not careful.

Yes, that's what I used for my print covers. From CreateSpace (and probably most other self-publishing places) you download a Photoshop template that is to the exact size of your book. It has all the guidelines of where the spine is, etc.

That sounds interesting. Makes me want to self-publish.

*is asking because he is considering offering a book covers service *

eru

Ooh! *ears perk up*

Stay tuned...

eru

You do that, Huey!

And yes, the heavenly was a pun on the fact that it's his celestial work that I especially like.