Ebook Covers

I've read on J.A. Konrath's blog (and others) that the ebook cover is one of the most important selling tools on Amazon. Recently, I've been checking out different imaging software programs to see how hard it really is to do my own covers.

I began by using Irfanview. It's an easy little program that allows you to turn out an ebook cover in twenty minutes. The program allows you to resize, crop and/or rotate your image. You also have limited color enhancement. The text portions are added directly to the image. All in all, it's a nice program for a simple ebook cover. The ebook cover image on the right was done using Irfanview.

Last month I blogged about learning another imaging program called Paint.NET to see how it would work for my ebook covers. The blog header image above was done using Paint.NET. In addition to all of the features found in Irfanview Paint.NET software allows you to change or sharpen colors as I did with the image above. It also allows you to layer over the image. This can be useful when adding text to the image. This software is much more useful than Irfanview for a more complicated ebook cover.

For a simple cover download  Irfanview Software. For a more complicate cover download Paint.NET Software. 

You can't beat the price. Both are free!