How to Publish with KDP: Part Six A

/ harmonykentonline

Image courtesy of bigstock.com

Hello SErs. Harmony here. As promised earlier, here is the sixth installment (in two parts) in the post series dedicated to taking a step-by-step look at how to get your finished manuscript from your computer and on sale on Amazon in both ebook and paperback.

If you’d like to take a look back at the previous posts in this series, please click on the links below:

 

Outline: https://wp.me/p7OGru-29c

Part 1 (Software for Writing) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-29t

Part 2 (General Formatting Necessities) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-29J

Part 3 (Ebook Conversion) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2ah

Part 4 (Paperback Formatting) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2eS

Part 5 (Image Software for Making Book Covers) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2gi

To make it easy to browse back and forth, I’ve set all links to open in new tabs. As this series progresses, I will update the links for you so that each post includes links to all past posts in the series.

So, here’s Part Six A: Making Your eBook Cover, Part A–Using Amazon’s Create Tool

First of all, I need to apologise because I realise that I’m not walking you through how to set up and login to your KDP account until much later in the series! Ooops!

Ahem … so, once you are all logged in and ready to go …

Note: Cover Creator isn’t supported for kdp.amazon.co.jp

Amazon has a great video, as well as lots of other tips, to introduce you to their cover creator at: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201113520#cover_creator_intro

Step One: from your KDP dashboard, after you’ve set up a new ebook and entered the details, you will then go to the ‘edit book content’ page, which is where you upload both the interior (more on that in future posts) and the cover.

Select ‘Launch Cover Creator’ … see below …

 

The following screen will show …


After clicking on ‘continue’, you will be shown the following …

As you can see, you will have a choice to choose an image from Amazon’s image gallery, from your computer, or to skip this step altogether.

I would highly recommend that you take the time to have a unique image if you can. The last thing you want is to end up with a generic book cover that looks the same as any number of others who use this same creator and its templates.

Once you’ve either added your image or skipped that step, you will be ready to choose your design. Browse the images and click on the one you want.

Next, you will arrive at the ‘style and edit’ page, where you can play with the colour, font, and layout.

When you’re ready, you can click on ‘preview’ to see what your finished eBook cover will look like.

If you’re happy, select ‘save and submit’.

If you want to make changes, then go back, or click on ‘start over’ if you want the nuclear option.

While this is the easy way of making a book cover, it isn’t the best. Amazon’s image gallery, templates, and layouts are limited, which means the repetition and useage levels are high. In short, you’ll see that style of book everywhere.

Your book cover is what will attract your potential reader’s attention. After that, it will be the book description (blurb), and after that the reviews and the ‘look inside’ feature in most cases. But if your cover isn’t great, any browsing reader most probably won’t get further than that. So, no matter how good your blurb or your writing, they’ll never see it.

That’s it from me for today. I hope you’ve found this post useful. I’d love to hear from you in the comments below, and I’ll see you all again on Wednesday, March 18th, where we’ll be taking a look at making your book cover for your eBook part B–uploading your own jpeg.

 

©Harmony Kent 2020

(If you're reading this post on or after March 18th, 2020, then here's the link for Part 6 B in the How to Publish with KDP series: https://wp.me/p7OGru-2hQ. Please note, the link won't work until March 18th, 2020.)

24 thoughts on “How to Publish with KDP: Part Six A”

  1. Reblogged this on Archer's Aim and commented:

    It’s been a busy week at Story Empire. Harmony Kent shared this post Monday about KDP cover creator – something I’m using now for the first time with print. Thanks to Harmony for another timely post!

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  3. This post will be super helpful to those who need to create their own covers, but have never done so before. I’ve been very lucky to have a very good friend who is a graphics designer, and swears that she will ALWAYS do my covers for me. But if I didn’t, I’d be looking at other options just like this one. Sharing this for sure, as I know many folks will benefit from learning these steps. Great post! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

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  8. Before I went with a publisher, I uploaded my own books. I’m sure I’d heard of the cover creator but always created my own. I agree that its best to have a unique cover. I’ve read articles where there are multiple books with the same cover image. Not good!

    Liked by 1 person

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  10. I haven’t published a book on my own because I’ve always had a publisher do it, but I remember learning years ago when people in my writing group were trying to master the process. Some things are the same, some different. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that aspect of publishing, but it’s great to have these posts as a resource if I did. Nice work, Harmony.

    Liked by 1 person

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  11. Pingback: How to Publish with KDP: Part Six A | Welcome to Harmony Kent Online

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