Does your cover suck?

During the process of learning cover design, I came across the website DIY Covers. I signed up for their mailer. The guy who runs the site, has been designing covers for 20 years or so. He made several templates anyone use and has a page where you can design your cover using the templates or create something from your photos. You can change the colors, add elements to the covers, etc. It's a nice place to work on ebook covers if you don't have photostop or paintshop pro. And it's free. He enjoys helping Indie Authors, which is why I like him so much. He's been adding more features to his site, including one feature that I've been using with my covers. It's called "Does my cover suck?" Here's the link. https://diybookcovers.com/covercritic/

**Your cover does need to be in JPG format to upload.

This feature will "test" your cover to see if it is in the correct genre. It will look at everything in the image, including font, title, placement, etc. Then it will tell you how you can improve it if it's lacking.

Once I heard about this feature, I began testing all of my covers. If you click on the "question mark" at the top of the page, it will show you how the "grade" system works. A lot of my covers were getting a "6" score. I was hitting most of the genres I was aiming for, which is a good thing, but it was telling me the choice of fonts I was using for the covers were totally off. I knew my covers could be better, based on what I was seeing across the board from other authors. I don't need to be better, but I wanted to be close, and my covers weren't there yet. I began working on the covers to improve them. I may have gone overboard, changing a lot of covers, but it was worth it to bring that "grade" up. I did it with many of my new covers, so I'm happy.

The same guy (same site) also has a feature where you can get a 3-D render of your book. I use that a lot, too. I believe it was the first thing I found from DIY. I have a lot of the pages bookmarked, lol. https://diybookcovers.com/3Dmockups/ This feature is awesome for marketing. Still free! He has a lot of free things going up on the site, and he's coming up with more for later. He does have a package that you can pay into to get more. The promo graphics are nice too. When you click on those, you can change them out and add your book instead of the ones he used. When you click on those, it'll take you to the page where you can design covers--same tool. It has overlays and other features that are nice.

I just chose one of the promo graphics you can choose from. Edit the promo and save in either PNG or JPG, and use it across your platforms or website. Such a cool feature to have in your arsenal as an author. There is another website where you can make mockups for your cover, but I stopped using it because their "free" choices are limited, and they don't have many to choose from without a background. All of these on this site are free (the mockup choices). You can do tablet, phone, paperback, or hardbound in different angles. Make each one, and then combine them like you see in the picture above. It also has selections for multiple, but you can only use one cover for them. That is the one part I don't like lol.

Samples, based on my books...

Here's the tablet version for Farmer Takes a Wife (coming soon!). I could easily do the same for paperback and phone, depending on what my marketing needs are at the time.

See? And the shadow at the bottom of the image is included. I don't need to add that part--it's already done. When you save these to your device, you do want to choose PNG every time. That way you don't have a background--all you get is the image, which means you can change out the background and it won't affect your image one bit! You'll have a sharp image every time!

This is one I made with the new cover for Heart of Thirst. I already made the tablet version for the cover. I added that to the promo graphic. The original said "available now", so I changed it to "coming soon". I'll be using this once I have a narrator for the book. This cover was recently shared in my June's mailer. All of my books are narrated through Audible, (ACX), which I love because you have the choice to "split the royalties" as payment for the recording. I can afford that!

Okay, so I shared more than the site "does your cover suck". Sorry--not sorry. I'm all about helping other Indie Authors out when I can. Explore this site and see what else has been added because there's way more than what I shared here. I love it!!!

Please share with other authors, traditional or indie! It doesn't matter. Thank you!!

#helpforauthors #supportingauthors #coverdesign