Notes on a cover for a self-published novel.

This isn't going to be nearly as long as my formatting note.

First of all, find yourself a good artist, like Matt Hubel (matt@matthubel.com).  I would suggest starting at www.deviatart.com, no there is nothing deviant about it.  A lot of artists publish their work there, many are just starting out, probably college age and take commissions.  Make sure you specify the size you want so it fits the front of a book nicely and ask for space for title, name, etc.

With the art work in hand download a free to use image editing program.  I use Phoxo and it is easy to use and does everything I need.  Give yourself a day to do this the first time.  I can now sort a cover in a couple of hours, but it does take a bit of messing around to get the hang of.

For Createspace, download the cover template correct to your final page count from their site.  Open it in Phoxo or whatever program you decide to use and build it from there.  One little trick I learnt was to build a new layer with the lines of the spine and margins included.  I work in black as my main colour on my book cover and I couldn't see the template.  With a layer with white lines that I delete at the end, it made it much easier.

Finally make sure you save the file in it's workable format, not just the JPG or TIFF formats.  I did that the first time so when I needed to make an amendment, I had to start from the beginning.  Very annoying.

That's it really.  Nothing else to it