PowerPoint works well enough for e-book covers, but not for print book. The reason is PowerPoint produces graphics that will print at 72 to 96 dpi (dots per inch), whereas a print cover should really print at 300 dpi. And it’s not a matter of creating the cover in PowerPoint, loading it into a good graphics editor, and printing it like that. The dpi won’t increase to print quality. At least that’s as I understand it.

So my choices with regard to a cover for my current book I want to get into print, Thomas Carlyle’s Edinburgh Encyclopedia Articles, were:

– Do it myself; or hire it done.

– If I do it myself, use Photoshop Elements, which I have on our laptop; or buy a full-fledged graphics editor; or download a free graphics editor, such as GIMP.

– If I do it myself, with any of those three choices, I’ll also have to learn how to use the program.

Since I need to know how to do covers, and since my wife often travels with the laptop, or is otherwise engaged with it, I decided to download GIMP and use that to produce print covers. I’ve heard nothing but good things about GIMP, that it’s more than adequate for cover productions, and that everyone who’s used it has been please with it. But before, when I downloaded GIMP, I was actually at a site masquerading as GIMP, and got a nasty virus from it. This time I asked out I.T. people for a link to the correct site (since they have GIMP on their work computers, I knew they knew the right one). I downloaded it late last week, and spent a lot of time on Friday and Saturday trying to figure it out. Then last night I knuckled down, using the small amount I learned, and created a cover. Here it is:

I’m not saying it’s great art, or that it will win any self-published cover awards, or that it’s even the one I’ll use. I lost the “pedestal” from the e-book cover, as I don’t see how to do that in GIMP (something to learn at some point). But I think today I’ll create a PDF from it and upload it to CreateSpace and see if it passes muster. If it does, I’ll at least use it as the cover for the proof copy.