Create Ebook Cover

I am one of those "geeks" who buys almost every software (short of Adobe Photoshop) that has something to do with grapics. Seriously, I'm bitten by the bug and there's no cure that I know of. Mind you, I'd probably ignore any available treatment anyhow :-)

Since I do lots of online stuff I must have tried every known avenue - software, tutorials, action scipts, templates ... from here to kingdom come - to produce decent looking e-book covers.

And sure enought, I can get the job done when I put my mind to it. Like the example to your right here. This is for a project I tested out. Not too shabby if I dare say so myself (uhh... I just did, didn't I?). And yes I'm a martial arts buff - no brownie points for figuring that out :-)

But the time... it takes so darned (pardon my French) much time!

It is absolutely possible to buy a set of grapics from a professional designer. That is, if you really, really need the pro look and you insist on getting rid of lots of cash...

Or, you can surrender and purchase Photoshop + some suitable action scripts ... again a costly affair. I have tried this, and also tested out the excellent, free and very powerful GIMP. These tools are not as simple to use as you perhaps may have been led to believe. And also, you need to fire up these memory-eating software 'beasts' just to make a simple cover. Not good.

Then, quite by chance, I stumbled across something called ECover StudioFX. From my testing so far this really looks to be the timesaver I sorely needed!

The results are great (I have supplied some extremely quick-fix examples for you below, and will get you some more original ones), and it's super, fast.

I suggest you check out for yourself how to create ebook cover with this stand alone application. And the price? Almost unheard of, silly cheap :-)

Just used a an scan of an old book and took it from there. How long did this take? Well, how does three minutes in total sound to you - sounds good to me!

Needless to say, you can make other types and styles of covers as well...

In order to make an original ebook cover I reckon you would spend some time on an original image/graphic, adding text and all that. Once you have that, making any type of cover with ECover StudioFX is easy as a walk in the park. Really - I'm impressed big time!

The image below are in transparent .png format. It does look slightly more "jagged edged" here than the originals saved with the software - I guess that has to do with saving it here.
You'll also notice that the shadow has been "chopped" a little on one of the covers - that's just me being a little fast on the trigger to crop the image :-)

Naturally, you would need to trim the image/e-cover and size it so that it sits well on your page, but that's very easy to do - you can resize all you want inside the software.

Just found and older image I had lying around and slabbed it on. One minute of tweaking, and voila...
I think that in order to have the best results this image was a little on the large side (size-wise). In the detailed tutorial video that comes with the ebook maker software, the optimal sizes are clearly outlined for you.

Yet again a fast and simple e-book cover to make. What did take some time with this one was to make the fornt image/graphic itself. Using the software to make the a-book cover image itself was done in no time.

As you can see on the left side of the cover (the shadow), I have again been a little quick on the trigger - a wee bit heavy handed when I cropped the image...

By the way - if you're at all curious about the subject or the book itself, then please do feel free to visit this lens and read more about it: Martial Arts Maniacs.

Another software I tested, and which really seemed promising is the eCoverCreator3d. This e-book cover software is a server (web) based solution - you log into a members area an can create your covers from there.

For one it is very quick at what it does and also a cover creator that is easy to get your hands around and use.

It has a number of templates built in and also features a design editor. In effect, you can either upload your own cover images, or use the design editor to make an e-book cover if you don't have an image to use (the cover you see here is a very quick example..). You can enter texts, use various design elements, change colors and so on.

This software would have been perfect ... if it wasn't for one major thing. The images being rendered are all left with an ugly jagged edge. The makers confirmed to me that this was actually the case. This is a major let-down and makes it a no-go for most uses. It simply can't be used if you want things to look like an actual cover image. A big shame...