Photoshop cover templates/tips for Kindle?

[pstjmack]

I am a Photoshop novice and am trying to work out how to do a decent basic cover layout for a Kindle ebook. Can anyone either walk me through the basic procedure or point me to a template that works for this? All I need is the most basic title/author/image layout.

[dgatwood]

I'm not sure how you could usefully create a template for that, because making it look good will depend on your image, the length of your title, the length of your name, etc.

Start with a reasonably sized image. For Kindle, I think they recommend 600 (w) x 800 (h).

Choose an image that has some areas without a lot of detail (solid sky, for example) and place the most important info—title, author—in those areas using the largest font size that will fit comfortably.

Use more than one font, but not too many. For example, you might use a heavy sans-serif typeface for the title and a medium-weight serif typeface for everything else. Either way, if you use more than one font, make sure they fall into different categories of fonts (e.g. one serif, one sans, not two sans).

[AThirstyMind]

Well, actually you'd be better served if you started bigger... 1600x2560 (that's 1.6 ratio width to height)... that's the image for Amazon's product page... new image guidelines from last summer. Most of my clients go even larger though. You can always size down, but not up without loosing resolution. For the actual eBook cover on the book... I embed in the epub and mobi files an 800x1280. 72ppi cover in the metadata. Amazon actually suggests 300ppi for the product page cover. iBooks wants the 1600x2560 pixel cover too.

[dgatwood]

Good point. I forgot Amazon required a bigger image for their product pages.