How to Make Promotional Images for Your Book
Creating quality promotional images for your books is a crucial step to selling your books
Taking the time to create promotional images for your books can feel daunting at first.
Mainly because we often ask ourselves what is going to catch a reader's eye. But we need to tell ourselves that we need to pull aspects and details from our book's universe and showcase them in the promotions we create. Because doing so will draw in your audience.
When you begin creating your book promotions, you should consider these things:
What aspects of your book can you promote to readers?
Are you able to match your book's color scheme?
What tools are you working with?
What aspects of your book can you promote to readers?
Now, realistically, you only have so much space in a promotional image to grab your reader. And you don’t want to overwhelm them with information or overcrowd your image.
Some of the best ways to highlight aspects of your book are:
Share a quote from the book next to the image of the book
Images of the characters with a hook line next to them
Ask a question about the plot of your book that makes readers want it answered
Facts about where your book is based or from your research
Even though you may wonder if your promotions are working, the point of it is to get the word out there about your work.
Are you able to match your book’s color scheme?
Believe it or not, continuing your book's color scheme through your book promotions is a great way to help readers immediately associate it with your book.
If your cover has fog creeping onto it, consider adding that to your promotional image to look like it’s creeping off your cover. If your cover has a beachy theme, consider adding an ocean background. Or if your cover has a cartoonish look to it, can you add more of these details to the rest of your image?
The idea is to make this promotional image an extension of your book and allow it to truly highlight it.
What tools are you working with?
It's no secret that to make money with your books, you inevitably need to spend a little money.
But, the key there is a little money. Not the whole budget. This means that some of this budget needs to be allocated to marketing or promotions.
There are some great tools out there to help you create wonderful images and size them to what you need for each platform.
Canva.com: There is a free option and a paid option which is $9 a month. And you can select premade templates sized for each platform. Plus, if you don’t know what elements you are looking for, the platform has tons of premade templates for marketing.
Visme: This is similar to Canva as it provides you with templates for social media and drag-and-drop elements you can place throughout your images. It also provides different fonts and more. Paid subscription at $12.25.
Adobe Express (Used to be Adobe Spark): This is designed to be quick and easy in terms of design. And is aimed at people who want to make social media content fast. Paid is $9.99 per month.
Design Wizard: This is described as “an easy-to-use Canva” by Visme Blog.com. This is designed for users who want to create simple and quick images without going too deep into the details and creation. A pro subscription is $9.99 a month.
I know that it feels tricky trying to create the perfect promotions to draw in readers, but you need to remember that it's a learning curve.
The more you work at it, the better you will get at creating them. Also remember the rule of thirds to design which helps draw the reader's eye, which you can find here at The Rule of Thirds in Design.
Continue to practice your skills and you will pull in your target audience in no time.