There are several great programs available to help you design a high quality cover image for your ebook. Programs like Photoshop are great, but you don’t need any expensive design programs to make a great ebook cover. There are lots of free design tools available. Here is one of our favorites. Its called CANVA, its easy to use and its totally free.
1. Sign up and log in at www.canva.com
2. Click “Create a Design”
3. Then choose the “Kindle Cover” option under “Blogging & eBooks”. You can also choose “eBook” either of these options will produce a high quality image perfectly sized for your ebook, but the Kindle option has more free layouts to choose from. The 1410px by 2250px image will be just the right dimensions for your Kindle and most other ebook devices.
4. Select one of the free design options (there are also paid options. but the free layouts are great, and you can use the paid layouts for inspiration when you customize your own cover!)
5. Use the editing features to customize the images and text on your cover. If you want to add an image to your cover (maybe as the background) check out Pexels.com Its a great place to find images that are 100% free to use.
6. When you are done, simply click the “Download” button to produce a high quality PNG or JPG image for uploading to Amazon and Apple.
NOTE* You can actually use Canva to create an entire PDF ebook. But keep in mind, this is NOT the same thing as an epub ebook. Epub is an ebook format that can be sold on Apple, Amazon and other ebook stores, and a PDF is not. An ePub (or Mobi) file is also a flowing text format, which means the content will adjust to fit the size of the device. A PDF is non-responsive, and will not change depending on the device size. So PDF files can be very difficult to read on tablets and especially on small devices like an iPhone.