At the beginning of this publishing series, I promised you could make a nice cover with a picture and some words. I got a little fancy with the cover we just went over, and if you’re reading this all the way through and got discouraged, I apologize. I’ll show you how to make a nice cover now, just a picture and some words. That’s it. I promise.
Start out with a new Word document. Go back to the formula for the paper set up. If your book is going to be 5×8 with cream paper, your page set up calculations will be:
Inches: 5 + 5 + spine + .25 (bleed) = what you need.
A 334-page book with cream pages will have a spine of .835 inches. (334 x 0.0025).
5 + 5 + .835 + .25 = 11.085
Height is always easier because you’re not doubling anything. So the height for the page set up would be 8 inches plus .25 for bleed.
8 + .25 = 8.25
The paper layout will look like this:
Word rounded down, and I’m not sure how that affects our calculations. I would guess it’s insignificant or Word wouldn’t do it.
Follow the rest of the directions in the blog post where I typed out the list of steps.
You’ll have your handy template that looks like this:
This template is for a 5×8 trim size with cream colored pages. Number of pages, 334. (A nice, long book. :)) (FYI, You’ll always have an even number of pages because a page has two sides.)
The problem with the picture I like is that it’s square, not rectangle, so when I put it into the template, it stretches. Stretchy is not the same as stabby; sometimes stabby can be a good thing.
If you don’t mind she looks a bit stretched out or you swear you can’t tell, that’s your prerogative. I’m sure down the road it will bother you, so you might as well do it right the first time. I guess I don’t need to tell you, to avoid this you can always find a rectangle picture. There are plenty out there and CanStock will even filter square pictures out in your searches.
Using the Crop feature, I cropped it using the Aspect Ratio, portrait 2:3.
Fix the dimensions of the picture so it fits into the 5×8 box.
It brought them closer, but that’s okay.
So this is what I have so far:
I downloaded a new font. I used the same picture on the back, but flipped it and lightened it. I did forget to mention in the last post that you probably want to put the price above the ISBN box. That way if you do happen to have a book sale of some kind, you can have the price on there, and if you put it on discount, customers can see that it is.
If you think the cover picture is too bold for the white spine and the back cover, you can lighten up the cover edges a bit like this:
You can do what you want with the blank space by the ISBN box. Maybe your author picture, maybe your imprint picture. Whatever. But I did what I promised you from the beginning, I gave you a lovely cover with just one picture, no fancy picture effects you need to learn how to do. Oh, wait, take all the lines off. I swear, there is always something.
And don’t worry about the cursor. That will go away when you save it as a PDF to submit it to CS. Also, remember not to freak out if this is all you have and you want the Kindle cover too. CS will offer it to you, and you can download it.
I think this is it for covers. I’ll post a recap of everything I’ve talked about then I’ll tell you how to format your file for Kindle.
I’m sick today, so I’m going to cover your back cover rather than try to edit. Hopefully, this is a bit easier than looking for typos and fixing head-hopping. One can hope.
Where did we leave off? Oh, here:
So what we have here is a decent cover, plain spine. Ultimately, you want your back cover to blend in with what you’ve already got. Despite what Mr. Smith says, people, at some point, will be holding your book in their hands. Maybe you can get your book into an indie bookstore, or you can sweet talk Barnes and Noble into hosting a book signing. Even if you’re just going to give your book away on GoodReads, it’s important to take a bit of time on your back cover.
Is this the right picture? I don’t know. I’m sick and I’ve changed laptops as well. Anyway, so it might not be the exact picture (downloaded from Pixabay), but it will work. You are never cemented into what you’ve got going on. You can change your mind anytime, so if you come across a picture you like more, by all means, use it. What we’re going to do with it will make it work, even if it isn’t the exact same thing. You’ll probably want everything to mesh, though, so at this point, since I don’t have the other picture I used I would have to redo the cover. Not a bad thing, but ugh. Anyway. Let’s put the ISBN box back where it needs to be so we know how much room we have to work with.
The little box is to make sure you know where your ISBN box belongs. You can take off the outlines for both, and take off the Fill for the little box.
There. So, some people put their author photo and a small bio on the back. Lots of trad-pubbed books do that, so if you want to go through the trouble, you are welcome to. I didn’t for 1700. For curiosity’s sake, let’s try.
That looks alright. You would need to adjust the picture and the boxes to how you like them. You can’t move your ISBN box. It’s where CS wants it to be. Also, remember you can’t get too close to the edge of the cover; you don’t want anything to accidently be chopped off in the bleed. All I did was create text boxes and used Fill With Picture for the author photo and took off the outline for both. I chose No Fill for the wording because the black looks fine on the silver.
All that’s left is the blurb, and if you were interested in some kind of large tag line, put that on there as well. I will because I like the idea of it.
I had to use another text box, and I just took out the Fill and Outline. If you tried to type in the big text box that is used for the back cover outline, the text will actually disappear under the photo and you won’t be able to see it. I also don’t want my cover to be a hodge-podge of font, so I’m going to stick with the fonts I used on the cover and the spine.
That pretty much sums up the back cover. You might think the spine looks boring now, but your book won’t be spread out like this and I don’t think the full white spine will scream at you then as it does now. You could always fill in the spine text box with the grey and white light picture we used on both covers, and if you didn’t like it you could always get rid of it. A book’s cover is a huge experiment and it takes a lot of tries before you get to something you like.
In fact, being the perfectionist I am, I don’t like guessing if I used the same photo on the front and back so I’m going to change it.
I used the same font, pictures, and no, I hadn’t used the same grey and white light picture, so it’s the same now. I used three different text boxes for the title font so I could move the words around. I used a smaller font for the “TO” and I stuck to the same two fonts for all the words on the front cover, spine, and back cover to lend consistency to the entire book.
This is a cute little pic of all the text boxes we used to create the cover. These are why you’ll get the error message in the CS email when you submit your cover. In Word, there’s no way to flatten these. CS will do it for you and that’s not a big deal. In GIMP, if you create your cover in that software, there is a way to do it. Being I’ll only make two, maybe three covers a year (if I’m lucky) I’m not going to bother. You’ll also get the same message for the interior if you happen to have any pictures on the inside like scene spacers, or if you have your author photo in the back as well. Maybe you’ll have pictures of your other books, that will also cause CS to give you the error message. That is one of the few things CS will fix for you, so as long as you know the cause of the error, you don’t need to worry about it. The important thing is you like your proof when it comes back.
There is one more thing I’m going to have to you do; I never had a problem with 1700, but I’ve heard others have. Delete the outside text box lines. I’ve heard they show up. They didn’t on mine but better to be safe than sorry.
There. All the lines for the spine and cover are gone. You have a gorgeous cover, and it was free (besides paying for the pictures, anyway). All it takes is a little time and patience. It’s fun to mess around, but if you get discouraged, look for a tutorial and learn what you want to do with your pictures. I’m hoping you crank out more than one or two a year, but if you can’t, that means you have plenty of time to learn photo manipulation to get what you want.
I gotta go blow my nose, so I’ll chat with you later!
This post was updated 8/17/2025. It kept getting hits but I offered no real advice since the original was written back in 2017 and I had no idea what I was doing.
Writing a blurb is hard. It’s probably one of the hardest parts of the querying/publishing process. It’s probably why this blog post is still getting hits seven years after I wrote it, and why I decided to rewrite it so it actually says something.
One of the first things you’re going to run into is what POV and tense to write your blurb in. Many will say that no matter what POV your book is written in, your blurb (or description) should be written in third person present. That may still be true for traditional publishing, but in the years that first person present POV has taken over the indie scene, especially in romance, more and more authors are writing their blurbs in the POV and tense that matches their book.
When I was writing in third person past, I was writing my blurbs in third person present and there’s a lot more advice and how-to articles on how to write a third-person blurb over a first person blurb. Third person is actually a bit easier since there’s a lot of resources telling you how to do it. There’s some controversy with how much to give away, since a blurb is comprised of characters, motivations, and more importantly, stakes, and if you don’t give your potential reader something, they’ll think your book is about nothing. I’ve always been of the mind that you need spoilers to intrigue your audience because even if you reveal an important plot point, a reader is still going to have to read to see how it came about and how the issue is resolved. It was interesting to see people saying that telling a reader your romance has a happily ever after is a big spoiler, when really, it’s just genre convention. Readers who read romance already know that you’re going to give them a happily ever after (if you don’t, watch out), it’s how the couple navigates the problems you throw at them to keep them reading. So, don’t be afraid to give something away because that’s what will hook your reader into buying your book.
When I was writing blurbs for my third person books, I was following this formula:
Introduce your character: Mitch has given up on love . . . until he meets her.
What happened to change their normal life: Burned in a horrific accident, he never believed he could find a woman who would see past his scars.
What are the tension and obstacles: But she makes him face more than just his fears of a broken heart.
Stakes/hook: Is he brave enough to do what it takes to keep her love?
The whole thing is pretty short:
Mitch has given up on love . . . until he meets her. Burned in a horrific accident, he never believed he could find a woman who would see past his scars. But she makes him face more than just his fears of a broken heart. Is he brave enough to do what it takes to keep her love?
Then I have her POV:
Character: Callie hides her secrets . . . she’s afraid if Mitch discovers them, he won’t want her.
Then I skip a whole bunch of parts and end with: When their relationship turns too hot to handle, she’ll have to decide if it’s time to fight fire with fire, or if it’s time to walk away before she gets burned.
At ninety-one words, I could have added a lot more. Blurbs are typically around 150 to 200 words and you can see my ninety-one words leave a lot of room on the back cover:
I won’t add to mine just because this book is already published, and in writing this blog post and using this book as an example made me see a typo that I had to change on both KDP and IngramSpark–not to mention that I had to pay $25 dollars to fix the cover on Ingram, so I’m just going to leave well enough alone for now. (And also, FML.)
But the basic formula to follow for a third person present blurb is:
Sentence 1–2: Hero/heroine introduction (who they are, what they want).
Sentence 3–4: Disruption to their normal life.
Sentence 5–6: Other character enters (opposing force or love interest).
Sentence 7–8: Tension and obstacles.
Final line: Stakes + tease.
Here’s the blurb for book two of that series, His Frozen Dreams (and yay, there are no typos!):
Jared didn’t want to fall in love . . . Character Introduction Then he picks Leah up from the airport, and he knows he has no choice. Disruption of normal life, or maybe inciting incident When his wife left him to move to New York to work for popular fashion magazine, Jared swore he’d find a woman who loved living in Rocky Point as much as he did. Tension and obstacles Leah is not that woman. He just has to make his heart believe it. Stakes and tease
Leah hates living in New York . . . but she can’t leave the big-city stress for small-town love. Or can she? With responsibilities she can’t ignore, Leah will have to choose between the safe life she’s been living in the city or risking it all for Jared’s love and the wide-open spaces that will heal her heart.
This blurb, too, could probably use some plumping up, such as why Leah hates living in the city, maybe hint at the responsibilities that keep here there. But I have the tension of her having to choose between taking the easy way out and staying or risking it for Jared because he loves her.
It’s simple as far as blurbs go, but working with the formula makes it easy to put something together.
Writing first person present blurbs I found to be much more difficult because not only do you have to have all those pieces of what makes a third person blurb, you also have to infuse the character voice into it as well.
Here’s the formula for a first person blurb. You’ll find it’s not that different from a third person blurb:
Hook / Who I am / What I want – Open in the protagonist’s voice, showing who they are or what they desire.
Disruption / Inciting Incident – What shakes up their normal life or challenges their goal.
Love Interest / Conflict Introduction – Introduce the other character or opposing force through the protagonist’s perspective.
Tension / Stakes – Show personal stakes and obstacles, reflecting their thoughts and feelings.
Tease / Final Hook – End with a line that keeps the reader curious and shows the character’s voice.
Let’s take a look at the blurb I wrote for Captivated by Her the first book I published under my pen name when I switched to first person:
Rick The last thing I need is a reporter at my doorstep, and not just any reporter: the infamous Devyn Scott. Love interest, inciting incident Since the construction accident that killed two of my men and turned me into a wounded beast, I’ve avoided people, but when a blizzard blows in, I can’t force her to leave, no matter how much I want to. Who I am, conflict of interest I have enough blood on my hands. Tension, stakes Trapped for days, she slowly tears down my defenses. Tension, stakes When she starts investigating the accident against my orders, she steps into the line of fire, and she proves what I’ve always known. I’ll never be strong enough to keep her safe. Final hook
Then we have the FMC POV. I’ve seen some blurbs that only do his, since the MMC would be the best selling point, like Mafia, or Motorcycle Club. Then I’ve seen where there is only hers, like maybe Dark Academia or coming of age. Maybe some YA where her story is more important and if there’s a male protagonist he’s only there as a subplot. You would have to do some research and look at what other authors in your genre are doing. You might be writing in a genre that would only have one POV like thriller or psychological/domestic thriller. I like including both, but maybe to hook the reader at first glance, I do his first on the back of the book and the buy-page on Amazon.
Devyn I’ll get fired if billionaire Rickard Mercer won’t give me an interview, but by the time the snow clears, I don’t want it. Who I am I want more. Tension I want to clear Rick’s name, and I start looking into the accident that will force him to live in pain for the rest of his life. Tension, stakes Someone caused that accident, and I’m going to find out who. Stakes Because only then will he know he’s good enough to take what I want to give him. My heart. Stakes, final hook
That blurb has 218 words in it and hits the 150-200 guidelines. It also fits well on the back of a book wrap:
Here’s a printable checklist you can download and keep:
The original blog post touched on how your blurb will look in the back. Over the years I’ve been publishing, I’ve either put the title at the top or used a tagline. I’m pretty proud of Captivated by Her‘s tagline and I use it in ad copy whenever and wherever I promote my book: Trapped with her during a blizzard, I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of not falling in love.
If I ever redid the cover now, I probably wouldn’t center it like I have it here. My style has evolved but not too much. Considering I don’t sell many paperbacks anyway, I don’t get too hyped about about things.
Anyway, so this blog post will be more informative to anyone hoping to learn how to write a blurb. There are lots of resources out there, but the best thing you can do after you’ve written it is get feedback–preferably from someone who hasn’t read your book yet. They can tell you if you’re leaving too much out. I understand not wanting to give anything away, but you have to give your readers something or they won’t want to buy your book. I give away lots and lots and lots in the blurbs for my King’s Crossing serial. Each book builds on top of the other, so I really didn’t have any choice referencing what happened in the previous book. I’m hoping the first book sucks readers in and they buy just to know what happens next regardless of what the blurbs say. If you want to read them, you can on my author website: https://vmrheault.com/kings-crossing-series/
If you don’t have anyone to bounce ideas off of, you can always ask ChatGPT, otherwise known to me as Al. I get opinions on using him will vary and you have to do what’s best for you. He can’t compare your blurb to what others are doing in your genre–only you can do that. And he can’t write your blurb from scratch or your blurb will sound like him and not you or your characters, but he can come up with some hooky lines if copyrighting isn’t your thing and it’s easy to build from there. All the blurbs I used as examples today were written by me because Al didn’t exist back then.
There are a couple of resources that I’d recommend if you’re having trouble finding feedback. The Indie Cover Project on Facebook has members who will give you feedback and you can find that group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/582724778598761
The little box is to make sure you know where your ISBN box belongs. You can take off the outlines for both, and take off the Fill for the little box.
Vania Margene Rheault 