Lovin With Lola: How I Made My OWN Book Covers

So here is the deal. For those of you who are looking at royalty free photos. They are to an extent. If you get permission from the artist then it's all good. Most of the sites charge like a few bucks but that's just for personal use. If you are intending on selling something then you have to get permission from the artist and pay more money, which could mean $50 or more (Which is fair) but fair is not always in our budget. Then on top of that, you may have to pay more money if you sell more books than you think. Let's say your book takes off and you sell like 10,000 copies or 25,000 copies, you may have to pay even more money if you want to keep using that photo. Plus, like me, you might not be able to find what you are looking for. SO,

1. I took my camera phone (if you don't have a good camera phone then a digital camera will work just fine) and took some shots that fit the book and of course uploaded them to my computer.

2. I downloaded a photo editor (my choice was "Photoscape". It was free and easy to use. However, if you are advanced then use whatever you want). If you can afford a better one, I would get it so you can have more options. I am sure I will upgrade at some point.

3. I uploaded my photos into the program, edited them to be the right shape, then did the effects I wanted and added the title and all, and that's about it.

3 simple steps. So you can totally do it too! Here are the samples: