Indie Author Lifeline

Indie Author Lifeline: Write, Publish, Travel, Repeat

How To Create Book Covers Using Power Point

DISCLOSURE: This post may contain affiliate links. I receive a commission only if you decide to make a purchase through my links—at NO cost to you. Please read my Disclosure for more info. Thanks!

This is a super helpful guest post by Author Nancy Moser. Here she teaches you how to create book covers using Power Point. Here’s Nancy:

Whoever thought you could use Power Point to make book covers? It’s not hard at all. I used this method to create covers for 21 of my books.

Here is how to create book covers using Power Point – Paperback

how to create book covers using power point

PREP WORK:

  1. For print you need an ISBN. You can take the one Createspace assigns you, but then they are listed as the publisher. I wanted my books to be under my own Mustard Seed Press, so I bought the numbers from Bowker. There’s usually a 10% off deal online. I buy 10 at a time, so it’s $25 or less each. You do NOT need an ISBN for eBooks.
  2. For images I use iStock or Shutterstock. You can buy a bundle of images for about $10-15 apiece. The clincher is, you may have to use them within a year, so don’t get carried away. There are deals all the time for 10-15% off. I use these images for backgrounds too.

PRINT COVERS:

  1. Once you know how many pages your book is (by creating a Word file that is the size of your finished book, putting in all the front and back matter), you figure out the size of the cover according to which paper you use: On Createspace:  Using white paper: multiply page count by 0.002252.   Cream paper: multiply page count by 0.0025. That’s your spine width. For example.  If you have 300 pages in your print book on cream paper that’s 300 x.0025 = .75” spine width.
  2. I choose to make the books 5.5” x 8.5”. But 6” x 9” is done too.
  3. When figuring a print cover there is a .125” bleed on all sides, where they cut the cover. So you have to figure that into the cover size.
  4. Figure your height and width: For an 5.5 x 8.5 book, the height is .125” bleed + 8.5 tall + .125” bleed (top and bottom) = 8.75” high. For the width:  .125” + 5.5”wide + spine width (.75” in our example) + 5.5” + .125 bleed = 12” wide.  So our print cover is 12” wide x 8.75” high, including bleed. The spine is 8.75” high x .75” wide.
  5. SIZE IT: Go into Power Point (PP) and get yourself a blank slide. Under DESIGN/Slide Size/Custom Size enter your cover dimensions (12 wide x 8.75 high). When given the choice to “Maximize” or “Ensure Fit,” click on Ensure Fit. Now your PP slide is exactly the size of your cover!
  6. BACKGROUND: If you want a plain color background, you can click on DESIGN/Format Background and choose something there. Or you can insert an image to all or part of your cover.
  7. IMAGE: Insert your cover image on the front (the right side of the slide.) Remember, the finished size of the front and back will be 5.5 x 8.5 (with .125” bleed on three sides.) You can click on Format Picture, and size it.
  8. TEXT: To add Text, INSERT/Text Box. You can Format Text Box to have a border or fill, or not. Use this for your Title and your Name.
  9. BACK COVER: Insert a Text box for your blurb. Create another area Lower Left for your picture/short author blurb, and perhaps your website.
  10. ISBN BOX: Createspace will insert that. Just leave space for it. 1.5” x 2.5” (approximately) in the lower right corner of the back.
  11. SPINE: Insert another Text Box and size it to spine size (8.5 x .75”)—but have it be 8.5” wide and .75” high until you get your text in there.) Type in your title, your name (first and last, or just your last name). Then rotate it 90 degrees so it’s up and down. Add your publishing logo (if you have one.)
  12. TEST IT:To test the size/spacing: INSERT a Rectangular shape, and size two of them 5.5 x 8.5 (front and back) and one 8.5 x .75 (the spine). Format the shape to have NO FILL, and a thin line (a light blue is usually good, just so you can see it.) I move those empty shapes into place on top of my cover, butting up against each other, to make sure the images and text fit into the three shapes.  When it’s good, I simply delete these “test” shapes.
  13. SAVE AS a jpeg and choose to just save one slide (the slide you’re working on) or all slides (if you’ve tried a few.)
  14. Createspace will require a PDF, so once you have your finished cover, make sure it’s all alone, just one slide in the file, and SAVE AS PDF. You’re done!

How to create book covers using Power Point: EBOOK  

  1. From a print cover: Open the PDF. Crop it to just the front, or use a Snipping Tool. Voila!  An eBook cover. Also save as PDF.
  2. Or follow #1-14 (minus the spine) with your size being just the front of the book.

BTW, a great FREE program to increase the size of a jpeg (pixels) is Irfanview. Open a jpeg, go to IMAGES/Resize and choose pixels over 2000. Save.

I hope this helped. It’s a very basic how-to, but it’s worked 21 times!