Generic book cover?

[crich70]

I'm thinking of working through the epub versions of W.H.G.Kingston's books over at Gutenberg cleaning up the text (removing the Gutenberg text) and putting in a standard cover image that looks better than what Gutenberg puts in the files. Does anyone know of a generic image of a book that could have different titles added to it (for each book) that would look good? I want to have a standard image (not unlike the way the pbook version of the Harvard Classics has) that will work to make the separate books seem like a set and yet look good.

Edit: I found a template that I think looks good for a cover image. I put the individual titles in using an Edwardian Script font (in a yellowish gold color).

[Sweetpea]

I made my own. I took the design from one of the Fictionwise classic covers.

[crich70]

If anyone is looking for a good texture for a book cover I found mine here:

http://lostandtaken.com/gallery/tag/book-covers

Best of all the textures are free to use.

[HarryT]

Is gold on red really readable on a grey-scale screen?

The reason I use stark white on black for my book covers is for readability. That trumps artistic merit, to my mind.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Is gold on red really readable on a grey-scale screen?

The reason I use stark white on black for my book covers is for readability. That trumps artistic merit, to my mind.

It's actually more yellow than proper gold. I'm thinking the red will come out as a dark color on the grayscale and the contrast will allow the title to show up well. At least when I changed from color to grayscale in GIMP there was a good contrast between the two.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Is gold on red really readable on a grey-scale screen?

Yes, perfectly.

[HarryT]

I've done some experiments and personally I find that the resulting "light grey on dark grey" is not that easy to read. I think it needs higher contrast, but obviously this is very much a matter of personal taste.