Barcodes!

Yes you can tell I’ve been doing a bit of Book Covers rather than writing.

What’s up with Barcodes?

Barcodes have information about your book for stores to scan. Usually it’ll be your ISBN number, and if you see a 5 digit number next to that, that gives pricing info. (usually you’ll see 90000 which means no price details in this barcode)

So when you publish your book, you’ll need an ISBN number.

You can get this in various ways. Depends on your country. Best way to find out is to google how to get ISBN number in your area. For example, in my country you can get a free one as long as you give a copy of the book to the national library.

And… how does this relate to my book cover?

(Why do I always make these questions sound so… sassy?)

Let’s keep it simple. Do you have a barcode? (You can get one by providing your ISBN number to various online pages), then give that to your book cover artist.

Follow this step:

Do you have a ISBN number?

Yes No

Is it a Free KDP one? Either stop here? Or get one/ free one from KDP

Cool you can ONLY use that

ISBN/Barcode for KDP.

If you want to publish at

local printer or Ingram,

you gotta get your own.

Give your ISBN number to your Cover Artist.

Tell them whether you want them to get a Barcode for you and put it in a specific place. If you don’t, KDP will slap it on for you automatically on the bottom right corner at the back of the book.

Simple!

What's the big deal? Page numbers.

Hello. Are you an author? Editor? You want a book cover? Okay.

Let me talk to you about:

PAGE NUMBERS.

I get it. Page numbers change. Something went wrong with the editing. Something went awry when uploading it. But I just need people to know WHY it’s a pain in the butt for us. And WHY we will charge for this. There’s no issue of changing it - but please don’t expect people to do this for you for free.

You see - when we set out the book cover from the start - we need to know the page number to know what the SPINE width is. This not only affects the spine, it affects how wide our images need to be.

Why don’t you just make the image big? And then match it later?

That’s usually what Cover Artists do.

However this is just like asking an Artist to draw you a beautiful bird - then later come back saying you don’t have space in your wall and now need to cut off the tail part.

Or the book turns out to be a lot wider than expected. So now you have this empty space to fill. You really DONT want to stretch the image. It risks dropping the quality of your images.

So this is what happens when you change page numbers:

• Go and put the correct page numbers in the template generator and get a new one, and place it on your file.

• Shift the guides to make sure nothing is now touching the edges and bleed area.

• Shift elements in the book cover to make sure things are centralized.

• If the Book has borders or any effects surrounding the borders, this will need to be elongated/shortened.

If it’s a significant amount of page numbers.

• Please don’t do this to your poor artist.

• In addition to all the above - they’re likely going to have to a: Cut a portion off their image, or go add more things to the image. The latter is a lot harder as they’ll have to edit it just like they edited the original image.

All this will take 15minutes to one hour depending on the book cover. While the Cover Artist may be gracious and change this for you as a favor, please don’t expect multiple edits.

What should an Author do?

It’s always a good idea to tell them what the approximate book page number would be. As above. It’s easier to change a few pages, than going in blind. Tell the Cover Artist this is an approximation. Then as soon as you know the final number, let them know. The faster the better.

If it changes later, please expect it to count as an edit.

So…

There’s this idea that digital work is super quick and effortless. A simple press of a button and things are automatically done. This isn’t the case. As you wouldn’t tell a seamstress to change the size of the clothes for free, you shouldn’t expect your Cover Artist to change this for free.

Premade Book Covers

If you’re an author, a good looking book cover is a must.

However as an author, unless you’re one of those people writing your books overlooking a beach in your million dollar mansion, we hesitate when we see $400-1000 price tag.

Honestly, most authors get about $5-7 per book they sell, so you gotta sell a lot of books just to cover your bookcover. Come on. I get it.

Someone wrote that instead of buying boats, they write books.

Yeah, let’s not go there.
I mean, if you can afford it, then it’s an amazing investment. You get one of a kind book, and it draws people to buy your book. You want to give your baby every chance it can to shine right?

One way to get a good looking book cover, know exactly what you’re getting, (my refusal to give authors infinite edits on their book covers has given some cold feet) a premade book is a good way to go.

You can find these online. You are likely able to find them through Facebook Groups, Instagram, Etsy or just google bookcoverdesigns, and a bunch of them will come up.

Once you find one you like, you can ask for minor changes. Font changes, colour changes, or placement changes.

They will likely look like this:

Basically they will change the Author Name, Tag Line, Title etc to your own book.

Likely they will let you change other things, but you should be expecting to be charged. It takes time to change things. Not everything digital can be changed with a snap of a finger!

Things that will likely not cost:

• Change the font and I know which font I want or a similar one.

• Change the colour of the font

• Change where the author’s name and title is, or change where the characters are.

Things that will likely cost about $10-$20

• Change the colour of person’s hair, clothes, things on them

• Change the colour of the book

• Add a small character in the book

Things that will likely cost you a bit:

• Change the person on the book cover. or change their hair shape etc. (I will explain why in future blog)

• Add a character or remove a character.

• Change the landscape. (At this point just get an original book…)

PROS:

• You get a really good idea of what you want from the start

• Cheap

• Good way to find an artist you’ll likely stick with long term

CONS:

• They usually use images from Stock Images, so you’re not getting an UNIQUE book cover. Likely, there’s going to be someone with a similar book cover to you.

Yeah, don’t get a Premade if you’re the above baby.

Tips when you’re choosing your Premade cover.

• DO A GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH. If the image comes with pages and pages? Don’t use it. This means you have a good eye - but a lot of people also do, and they used that image already. You don’t want the same book cover as your neighbour author.

  • Extra: Don’t let your guard down because nothing comes up with the book cover images. Google image search isn’t that clever. If there’s a font on the image, it’s probably unlikely to pick that up.

• If you are asking the designer for changes this and that, don’t be surprised if they tell you that this is now going to be an original book cover and they charge you accordingly. A lot of people think something they want changed is simple, but it could mean the designer has to go buy another photo or redraw/re design the whole thing.

• Know what size or platform you will be publishing first. Sometimes you will get a size from the designer, that your platform won’t accept. It’s handy if you already know, and they can give you the right size from the start.

• Subject to Copyright: usually means that you can’t take that book cover and sell it yourself. It’s fine for you to use it to promote your book, like making mugs, stationary, banners etc. * double check for fine prints though*

Best of luck! If you have questions, let me know :)