Treat yourself to a sensual thrill! Buy a sexy novel at http://www.sexynovels.com/.
In my last entry, I discussed means of finding reviewers willing to critique your book, and the pros and cons of putting out a POD edition of your masterpiece. Today, I’ll touch on electronic covers.
Electronic Covers. What Are They, And Must The Self-Published Author Get One?
When a work of literature is sold as an e-book, quite often the author will commission a graphic artist to make him or her an electronic cover. The more eye-catching this work of art is, the better.
A cover of this type is a .jpeg file. It can be used not only to adorn the initial page of the electronic version of the book, but also to advertise the book on the author’s Web site. For this latter purpose, it must be put into a smaller (thumbnail) format. The thumbnail version can be sent to other Web sites, should the author opt to pay the cost of promoting his or her book on some other site.
The artist can use the same design to create a 300 dpt .tif file, in case the author ever decides to sell a print-on-demand paperbound edition of his or her book. Printing companies cannot use .jpeg files to make paper covers. A .tif file must be created in the book size the printer uses, so the author should study the specifications demanded by the printer he intends to employ, before contacting the artist. The POD version of my novel is a paperback 5 x 8 inches in size, so that is the size of the .tif file.
Commissioning an artist to create an original design for a graphic image can be costly. Query first regarding cost, should you contact an artist. If you can’t afford to hire an artist, you can use a program such as WordArt to create a colorful title page. That’s better than having no striking initial page in the e-book you sell.
All of my covers have been created by a graphic artist named Mia Manders, of Rocketshipmedia.com. (http://www.rocketshipmedia.com) To see what my thumbnails look like, go to this URL: http://www.sexynovels.com/catalog.html
Most of these images on my catalog page are 275 x 212 pixels in size. The image I use in the .PDF file of the e-book is 3.85 inches x 2.98 inches.
Why this particular size? When the buyer opens the .PDF file, the first thing he or she sees is this image. It must be small enough to fit on the page so as to be fully visible before the buyer does any scrolling down the page. If it’s too large, so that the viewer must scroll down to see it all, the impact of the image gets woefully lessened.
When you import a graphic image into the program you use for creating your Web pages, you can alter the original size. Right-click on the image to see what its properties are, and then re-format it, should that be necessary.
A striking, unique cover-image helps sell books!
Alexandra Adams 5:08 PM
