Cover Art

So, you want to make an eBook cover free? No? Well, that's what we're doing today.

I've finished up a new story featuring Alan (the main character from "Moving In, Moving On") called "The Language of Ice Cubes", so I'm going to need an ebook cover. Here's how I do it.

First, I find an appropriate picture. In this story, there's a ghost palm tree so I grab the nearest picture of a palm tree I've taken. I make sure there's a big blank space for the title and author name, but you knew that.

Then I open up GIMP (it's free!) and drag and drop in the picture. Right now it's too big. We're shooting for 500x800, which is 0.63:1. I'm going to choose an exciting portion of the picture that has enough space for the title and author name.

To save a lot of fiddling and annoyance, check on Snap to Grid (View --> Snap to Grid) first. Then find the Rectangle Select tool and click and drag until you've got a good-looking 0.63:1 rectangle, like so:

Rectangle Select

Note that the ratio is at the bottom of the window while you're dragging the rectangle. Once you've done that,  Copy the selection to the clipboard (Ctrl-C). Easy so far...

Second step is to get ourselves a new image. Do this:
Edit --> Paste as --> New Image

You should now have an image of the selection, so save this new image (you can close the old image to reduce clutter). Now, this new image is probably not 500x800, but that's easy enough.

Go to
Image --> Scale Image
and input Width 500 and Height 800 and behold!

Blank

Great, now we have a blank canvas upon which to put our title. Find the Text button (it looks like an A) and put each word of the title in as a separate text box. You can find the layers to the right for when you move it around. Remember, you can use the arrow keys to nudge the text boxes around. It'll be easy with a bit of practice. Here's the basic one:

Text

Now, use your eye for color and layout to make it look pretty. If you want to test out the contrast, you can use this tool: Color Contrast Analyzer. This is useful for backgrounds that aren't as obvious as Light Blue and Black. Such as Foliage and Gold for the author name in the final here.

.xcf

Save your file now, as an .xcf so that you can play around with it later. We'll also need a .jpg, so go to
File --> Save as...
and replace the .xcf with .jpg and save (see below)

There, that was easy! Anybody can do it.

Or you can give me $50 and a picture and I'll do it for you.

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"The Language of Ice Cubes", magical realism with a dash of romance.

Alan just wanted something to do, but he soon discovers that maintaining a relationship in small-town Thailand is a more challenging proposition than he expected. Can he (and she) find a way through to happiness?

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250 words? Yes
Book "Lived Too Long To Die"
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Reading - ?

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