How to Create an eBook Cover

I am currently working on an ePub version of the third edition of my book Managing the Training Process. I will describe the process for creating ePubs and other eBooks in another article, but the first thing I needed to do was to create a cover.

I used LibraOffice to do this. LibreOffice is a private, free and open source office suite – the successor to the OpenOffice project.

LibraOffice has its own formats, but it's also compatible with Microsoft Office 365 files (.doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx). It's backed by a non-profit organisation.

If you haven't got a copy of LibraOffice, you can download one from: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/

I created a new drawing by going to:
File > New > Drawing

Configuring the cover

Then I configured the drawing by setting the Page Properties to:

Format: A4
Orientation: Portrait
Background: Colour/LightSkyBlue
Margin: None
Master Page: Default

This produced a page with a light blue background:

Title and subtitle

I could have just added the title and subtitle in a contrasting colour, but as the book is about training, I decided to add and configure a shape so that it would resemble a whiteboard.

I brought up the 'Shapes' menu by clicking on the diamond...

...and selecting the rectangle:

I then 'clicked and dragged' the cursor to create a rectangle of the correct dimensions in the right position:

The default colour of the rectangle is dark blue, so I needed to change the background colour to white. I did this by right-clicking the rectangle, selecting 'Area...' and choosing 'White':

I decided that a border would make the rectangle look more like a white board. To do this, I right-clicked the rectangle, selected 'Line...' and changed the colour to 'Silver' and the width to 0.20 cm.

I added a text box to the 'whiteboard' by selecting...

Insert > Text Box

...and 'clicking and dragging' the cursor inside the 'whiteboard'.

I chose a font that resembled a marker pen and a colour that matched my brand colour:

Author, edition and publisher

The publisher and edition were added using text boxes and a black font. The author used a text box with a white font on a blue rectangle:

The cover can be exported as a jpeg file for eBooks by clicking...

File > Export...

...and selecting JPEG as the 'File type'.

To create a PDF cover, click...

File > Export As > Export as PDF...