How I Designed My Cover

I'm pretty happy with my cover design.  It may not be great by professional standards, but not too bad for a novice's first time out.  It also was fairly simple and cost less than $20.  Here's how I made mine.

1. Went to KDP page to find the info on the size the cover needs to be.  You can find those here.

2. As recommended by the ebook, How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget by Stephanie Zia, I browsed through Shutterstock and bought a cover image I liked.  The one I chose was not a literal interpretation of the content of my book, more symbolic with the hands forming a heart over the yarn.  Also, there is room to put words in the lighter areas.  See the original at right.

3. I opened up MS Publisher, added the pic, and then played around with Word Art and deepened the colors.  When I had things where I liked them, I asked for opinions from several groups of friends.  I kept tweaking until satisfied.

4.  Back in Publisher, I grouped all objects together and saved them as a picture, and converted that image to a jpg.

That's all there is to it!  Use whatever publishing program you have at hand, though I wouldn't recommend MS Word.  There are stock covers available to use on KDP, but in my opinion, they don't make me want to buy the book, even if it's free.  Just a little bit of time, effort, and the amount of money equivalent to a lunch out with your hubby and you're done.