Outsourcing Options For Kindle And Ebook Covers

Whether you’re a chronic do-it-yourselfer in regards to absolutely everything, or are just interested in saving some money in regards to your overall Kindle book financial campaign, creating your own cover art can be both ingenious and infuriating.

Unless you’re moderately knowledgeable in regards to designing your own graphics, logos and covers with the various design software available, you’d do well to bite the bullet and simply hire an outsourcer to ensure yourself the best possible Kindle book cover imaginable.

Fortunately, Kindle book covers are relatively simple, non-complicated work and you can get some really, really exceptional work done for probably much less than you’d have expected. In the interests of sharing the collective wisdom I’ve garnered over the past few years in this business, I’ve provided for you a starter list of sorts of different websites where you can find high-quality Kindle book designers for moderately affordable prices.

• Fiverr

While you may think that a service that maxes out the payment for something as creative and demanding as book cover design at five dollars isn’t worth your time, it’s all about knowing how to game the system. The key to finding potential Kindle book cover designers on Fiverr is to identify and focus on the members with a proven track record of excellence. And yes, they’re out there.

If you go with a Fiverr provider, make sure that you supply them with the image,s or they provide proof that they have full rights to use the images commercially.  This can be an issue with some of the less ethical providers, they use images for your cover they have no rights to, so make sure you have that clear before you go with them.

• Guru.com

Boasting well over 350,000+ freelancers (with about a third or more of those consisting of designers), Guru offers perhaps the most robustly safe option to not only hire your prospective Kindle book cover designer, but also manage and cultivate a potentially long-term, mutually beneficial relationship with them.

• Elance

While Elance may very well be the most expensive of these three starter options I’ve listed for you, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for if you’re willing to do the research and – perhaps most importantly – pay what the top book cover designers on Elance.com deserve to be paid for their services.

Before you even approach a prospective Kindle book cover designer, you should try and focus on and recognize exactly what you’d like your Kindle book cover design to be. Do you want it to be a minimalistic picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words type design that draws the reader in on a multitude of levels despite its simply outward appearance? Or perhaps you’d simply rather it be a window into a particular scene that occurs in the book, or consisting of several images of the themes, topics or subjects covered?

•  Templates

There are a number of templates available you can use as a basis for your own book cover. You can have these modified easily (usually in Photoshop), for a professional look without the higher-cost of a compete design project. Here are a few places:

http://kindlecovertemplates.com/

http://instantbookcovers.com/

There are literally a thousand different directions you can take in actually designing your book cover, and in the end – even though you’re not technically doing it yourself – you can still list your thoughts and wants in regards to the finished product for your prospective Kindle book cover designer to adhere to.

Step-By-Step Outline for Writing and Publishing Your First Kindle Book – Part One

Okay, so you’ve read everything you possibly can to get yourself situated and learn the ropes, and you think you might be ready to actually start the (seemingly) behemoth-sized task of actually writing your very first Kindle book.

Excellent, let’s get started then!

STEP 1: Creating, Outsourcing or Writing Your Kindle Book’s Content

While this particular step gets a mere one-step footnote in the entire process, I think it really goes without saying that this is arguably the most important aspect and/or step of creating your Kindle book, regardless of whether it’s your first undertaking or not.

No matter if you’re planning to publish a fictional novel, a memoir, a self-help manual or a step-by-step guide, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re either creating useful, engaging or entertaining content yourself or — if you’ve decided upon the outsourcing a writer route — making sure the freelancer you hired does exactly this instead.

STEP 2: Editing & Proofreading, Then Rinse, Wash & Repeat… Followed By Rinsing, Washing & Repeating Once More!

Again, this may seem like a common sense step, but it’s one that many book writers or publishers — especially ones that are new to the industry — ultimately decide to skimp out on for one reason or another.

Just remember that you could have the most intriguingly amazing and magical content within your Kindle book ever created, but if the grammar is poor,or there are a bunch of spelling or prose errors throughout, no one’s ever going to want to trudge through to get to the good stuff. So make sure it reads well, sounds well and is spelled correctly. It’s as easy as that (but does take a fair amount of work even if you need to stay on the case of a freelance editor or proofreader).

STEP 3: Designing Your Kindle Book’s Cover

Your Kindle book cover  is going to quite literally make or break a great multitude of potential readers/buyers into deciding whether or not they’re going to roll the dice on your particular book or not.

So don’t slap together something haphazardly in MSPaint and call it a day — that’s going to get you nowhere but a deeper debt hole down the road. If you’re not very creative or don’t know how to do anything more advanced then copy-pasting some things inside of an image editor software, then you’re going to want to outsource to not only a freelance designer, but preferably a freelance designer with a specialty or propensity for creating eye-catching, intriguing or just plain amazing to behold-style Kindle book covers.

Yes, it may cost a bit more than you’d originally wanted to spend, but trust me when I attempt to climb upon the nearest rooftops and shout out to you the importance of this particular step when it comes to the sales (and subsequent overall success) f your first Kindle book.

That’s going to do it for Part One of this two-part introductory Kindle book creation series. Stay tuned for Part Two in the coming days and — oh, of course — good luck!

The Top 4 Don’ts of Self-Publishing Your Kindle Book

We talk a lot on this blog about the things you can do to help increase your profits or cut back on your own personal work load. Generally, we focus most of our time and efforts on learning and building upon the things we can do to help make our Kindle book publishing business better and more lucrative.

But we’re not going to talk about any of these things today. Instead, we’re going to take a look at the top four things that you shouldn’t do when you’re self-publishing your Kindle book(s).

1.) DON’T: Skimp Out On Your Cover Art or Design

When it comes to the world of self-publishing, you could make the argument that – outside of your Kindle book’s actual content itself – the cover art or design is the next most important aspect that will dictate how well it will initially sell. Kindle books are unique in that thanks to their lower, more affordable prices, most readers are much more willing to take a chance on a new author if a particular book strikes their fancy.

While in an actual bookstore setting customers can flip through the actual book to get a feel for what’s inside, the same is not true for the online self-published e-book space. Your Kindle book’s cover art or overall design – in obvious addition to the title and general synopsis or description you provide – is usually your first and last line of offense in ultimately hooking, lining and reeling in a reader for a sale.

Understandably, this dictates that you should either put a lot of time and effort into designing the cover yourself if you’re going at it from that front, or spend the extra money necessary to net a talented book cover designer who can whip you up something that will intrigue and attract your demographic. Out of any area you could conceivably outsource for in regards to self-publishing or self-authoring Kindle books, the book cover design is simply not the one you’re going to want to pinch pennies with.

2.) DON’T: Simply Price Your Book and Forget About It

Many people simply take a look at what the average Kindle book is selling for and roll with something in that range.What’s great about publishing to the Kindle is that you can easily change and adjust your price. If your book is selling well, consider raising the price. If it’s not, have some promotional price points available and run a promotion for a limited time. You can easily control pricing with your book, within the perimeters set by Amazon, of course.

3.) DON’T: Treat yourself as a one-person publishing business.

There are many aspects to writing, publishing and promoting a book, and you don’t need to do everything yourself. Consider outsourcing the tasks you don’t enjoy or don’t want to do. For many, that may be some of the promotional tasks, formatting, or research.  After you’ve gone through the publishing process, make a list of what you enjoy doing, and what you don’t. Consider outsourcing one thing at a time off the don’t list and try a few different providers.

4.) DON’T: Either Limit Yourself or Spend Entirely Too Much Time Self-Promoting Just One Book

While this obviously doesn’t translate to cobbling your Kindle books together as quickly as possible to send them out the marketplace door, you don’t want to spend too much time on any one book unless it warrants such attention. Essentially, you don’t want to place all of your eggs in one basket – at least not when you have so many other empty baskets lying around ready for you to use.

The more Kindle books you’re promoting, the higher the likelihood of potential sales coming back in. The real key is to just find the right balance between being both efficient and effective and you’ll be right where you’ll want to be.