Designing My Own Book Cover

I'm not going to pay for it, and I'm definitely not using AI

My novel, Shame of Kings, is historical fiction featuring the Calusa Indians from Florida, the Aztecs, and the Spanish Conquistadors. I’m thinking about how to create my book cover.

To begin, I’ve started looking at other covers for recent popular historical fiction books. This is not to directly copy ideas, but to see what works for those books. Here are some I found:

I like the combination of the house with the blended colors in the background.

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This is more like what I would like for my novel. I like the layered images and the font works well. For my cover, I want to layer images too, as I need to feature the three groups.

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Here is another one with layered images. It’s interesting how it only shows part of her face. I wonder why?

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I really like the silhouette effect on this one.

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For my cover, I want to include an image from the three groups, the Calusas, Aztecs, and Spaniards.

I took this one at the Marco Island Historical Museum. They are Calusa Indian masks.

These two are Adobe stock images. I searched for Aztecs for the first one and Spanish Conquistadors for the second one:

I am not sure what I will do yet or if I will use these exact images, but I want to use some like them and possibly layer them. For photo editing, I use Acorn. I got it from the Apple Mac App Store. Its price is $24.99. Acorn is a photo editing program similar to Adobe PhotoShop, but much cheaper.

It doesn’t have all the features as PhotoShop, but it does have all the layering, filters, and image manipulation tools I normally use. It also lets you make close selections, which you need to cut images away from their backgrounds. I am is no way an expert with these programs, but I do have some experience with the basic features. Acorn does everything I need.

For my cover, I will experiment with layering several images and adjusting their opacity so it’s possible to see them at the same time.

What are some of the programs you use to edit graphics or digital photographs? I have looked at Adobe Illustrator only a little, and I don’t understand how to use it. However, I think I should try to learn it.

So I will play around with these ideas and post them in future newsletters Please share your ideas and suggestions here.

Note that I am determined to do everything myself for my book. I don’t want to pay an artist, and I am definitely not going to use AI. I frankly would rather make my own possibly less polished cover than use AI.

Thank for reading!