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20 Best DIY Book Cover Makers

Anastasia
9 minute read
06.01.2021

As a self-published author, you most probably have an almost endless list of things to take care of. Sorry to break it to you, but the book cover design should be your top priority.

There are three common options for designing your book cover: DIY book cover makers, crowdsourcing platforms, or hiring a professional book cover designer. Today, we’ll be talking about the DIY route.

Luckily, there are plenty of services to choose from. And for those of you who have the time and patience to learn the ins and outs of DIY book cover design, we’ve got good news. Let’s compare 20 DIY book cover creators and figure out which one will suit you best.

We’ve done all the heavy-lifting, so just keep reading to learn more about:

  • 20 best DIY book cover makers;
  • pros and cons of each platform;
  • sneak peeks inside the book cover maker tools;
  • price plans;

Let’s DIY.

20 best DIY book cover makers

Is creating a book cover one of your worst nightmares? Then, you ended up in the right place at the right time. 

Based on our careful web research and author’s recommendations, we’ve put together a list of 20 best DIY book cover makers. The best part? We’ve also listed the pros and cons of each platform and included their price plan so that you’ll know what you are dealing with. 

Take a closer look!

Canva

If you were looking for a DIY book cover creator, chances are you already came across Canva, aka the number one free book cover creator. Everything you’ve read is true: Canva is a great tool that offers tons of customizable book cover templates. Its main features include but are not limited to: collaboration tools, customizable branding, drag & drop interface, etc.

Pros: 

  • user-friendly interface;
  • instinctive UI designs; 
  • no advanced design skills required;
  • many book cover templates and stock photos available;
  • you can customize the book cover as much as you like by uploading your own images and fonts;

Cons:

  • as with many other DIY cover makers, your book cover might not end up being unique;
  • you still need to pay (starting from $1) for some of their stock images;

Price: free 

Screenshot of canva one of the best DIY book cover makers

Visme

Most of the self-published authors swear by Visme. In a nutshell, it’s a great easy-to-customize book cover maker. You don’t need to have any design experience, so you’ll be able to create your book covers without any frustration or confusion. You can also use your branding colors and fonts, or create beautiful preset color palettes. Pretty impressive, huh? You might get lost on their website by reading so many useful insights about book covers, target audience research, guides, tutorials, and so much more.

Pros:

  • excellent ready to use book cover templates;
  • branding feature;
  • comes highly recommended by self-publishers as an alternative to Canva;

Con:

  • it looks like their support team service could’ve been improved;

Price: free

Screenshot of visme one of the best DIY book cover makers

DIY Book Covers

Derek Murphy, the man behind DIY Book Covers, is a well-known industry expert who shares many useful insights with indie authors. On the website, you can also find tons of helpful tutorials and explanation videos. If you have any questions, Derek will provide you with the answers. DIY Book Covers software offers a huge variety of gradients & effects, blending layers, and built-in templates.

Pros:

  • custom size option (including Facebook and Twitter headers);
  • great choice of fonts suitable for different genres;
  • design flexibility;
  • field expert’s support;

Cons: 

  • for a cleaner job with photo editing, you might still need to use Photoshop;
  • there’s no option to add your own font inside the program;

Price: free

Screenshot of DIY book covers one of the best DIY book cover makers

Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is another celebrity in the world of DIY book covers. You can choose from loads of templates and follow their easy step-by-step instructions to create your brand-new book cover design. Also, they run a fantastic blog that will help you understand the design principles better.

Pros:

  • plenty of resources;
  • the icons and stock images library is impressive;
  • free trials for paid subscriptions;
  • great for non-designers;

Cons:

  • the free version is quite limited, and your final product will have the Adobe Spark logo on it;
  • the font library requires improvements;

Price: free; $9,99/ month (recommended)

Screenshot of adobe spark one of the best DIY book cover makers

GIMP

GIMP is one of the oldest, but also one of the most reliable design softwares out there. The best part? It’s absolutely free, with no hidden costs or secret agendas. GIMP can be described as an open-source alternative to Photoshop. It has excellent editing functions and community plugins. So what’s the trick you’d ask? Well, it might take you some time to learn how to master GIMP. The learning curve is quite steep.

Pros: 

  • many similar features to Adobe Photoshop;
  • absolutely free;
  • many design tools and third-party plugins available;

Con:

  • steep learning curve;

Price: free

Screenshot of GIMP one of the best DIY book cover makers

PosterMyWall 

PosterMyWall gives you access to a truly impressive book cover templates library. The tool is connected to Pixabay and Flickr. Just imagine all the countless images available! Their design software is also very easy to use and navigate.

Pros: 

  • user-friendly software
  • they cover a wide number of themes

Cons:

  • the template quality can sometimes be amateur
  • the high-resolution download will set you back at around $5

Price: free

Screenshot of poster my wall one of the best DIY book cover makers

Venngage 

Venngage offers you a huge variety of creative templates for the book cover design of your dreams. They are integrated with Unsplash so that you can enjoy access to the fantastic image library. Also, there’s a possibility to add (or also create) your author logo to improve your author branding.

Pros:

  • many creative templates
  • easy-to-follow interface
  • brand alignment

Cons:

  • the font library could be better
  • no filters for automatic color adjustment

Price: free

Screenshot of Venngagge one of the best DIY book cover makers

Fotor

Let us introduce you to Fotor. It’s also a decent book cover creator that offers many templates that are divided by categories. You’ll enjoy its simplicity, easy-to-use dashboard, and design flexibility. 

Pros: 

  • it can be considered an alternative to Photoshop for beginners
  • step-by-step explanations on how to use the tool
  • good background and lighting options

Cons:

  • for some, Fotor might be a bit too simple; beginners only
  • their text tool lacks some features

Price: free

Screenshot of Fotor one of the best DIY book cover makers

Blurb Bookwright

Blurb BookWright combines not only book cover design functions, but also book formatting and an ISBN code generator. To make your user experience even better, they’ve put together many built-in video tutorials. Blurb BookWright suits your needs particularly well if you are working on food & cookbooks, photography books, or children’s books.

Pros: 

  • easy-to-use, inexpensive option for putting together your whole book 
  • options to add photos and text inside the book
  • great templates to choose from
  • guidelines

Cons: 

  • no web-based option
  • limited editing functions
  • more suitable for photo-oriented non-fiction books

Price: free

Screenshot of Blurb one of the best DIY book cover makers

Template

As the name suggests, Template is all about templates. They have 135+ book cover options for you to choose from. Maybe, it’s exactly what you are looking for. 

Pros:

  • easy to navigate
  • great layouts

Cons

  • the free version is extremely limited
  • you’ll get only the template, the editing part is on you

Price: free

Screenshot of Template one of the best DIY book cover makers

KDP Cover Creator 

Guess what? KDP also offers a Cover Creator tool to design a cover for your eBook or paperback. You can customize your book cover with their fonts and layouts. It’s pretty convenient that KDP automatically takes the book information during the setup and adds your ISBN barcode to the back book cover. 

Pros:

  • it’s completely free
  • great image library (integration with Createspace)
  • plenty of options for non-fiction

Cons:

  • you cannot edit an image or blend two images together
  • there are only around ten format styles available
  • you can use it only if you’re publishing with Amazon
  • limited options for fiction book cover design

Price: free

Screenshot of KDP cover creator one of the best DIY book cover makers

Designhill Book Cover Maker

Designhill is a well-known lead creative marketplace. They also offer a book cover maker tool. You can select a book cover template. Then, use Designhill’s library or upload your image, and customize it as much as you’d like.

Pros:

  • easy-to-use tool
  • great image library with a search option
  • good typography section

Cons:

  • limited design functions

Price: free

Screenshot of Design Hill one of the best DIY book cover makers

Boxshot

Boxshot offers a few excellent book cover templates. You can change a few things, like color, font, and book title. If you’d like to polish or expand your design skills, this might not be the right place, though.

Pros:

  • some pretty and minimalistic designs to choose from

Cons:

  • very limited design options
  • your book cover might not be unique

Price: free

Screenshot of Boxshot one of the best DIY book cover makers

Snappa

Snappa is mainly a tool to create different online graphics ( future book banners for Facebook, and Twitter, anyone?). They also have a very clean and easy-to-use ebook cover creator. One more awesome add-on is that you can use Snappa to adjust your book cover design later on to fit a Facebook or Instagram post. 

Pros:

  • dimensions for all the popular publishing platforms as presets. 
  • professionally designed eBook cover templates (mostly non-fiction oriented)
  • great background and effects functions

Cons:

  • possibility to upload your fonts only in the upgraded version
  • no advanced image editing features 
  • you can’t use the effects to edit the images which you uploaded

Price: free

Screenshot of Snappa one of the best DIY book cover makers

MyeCoverMaker

MyeCoverMaker is also an excellent tool to create professional-looking designs. They have stunning text effects and image blending options that don’t make your cover look DIY. Oh, and there’s a 1.5M searchable database of royalty-free stock images available. Do we need to say more?

Pros:

  • their free option offers 6 covers and full access to all features
  • simple drag and drop design interface 
  • some of their design features are excellent

Cons:

  • website speed
  • not enough design flexibility

Price: free

Screenshot ofMYE Cover Maker one of the best DIY book cover makers

PlaceIt

The best thing about PlaceIt in the book cover design department is that you can choose the template based on your book genre. Professional book cover designers carefully select their templates, and you still have access to almost endless customization. 

Pros:

  • the largest library of mockups;
  • lots of helpful tutorials and marketing tips;

 Cons:

  • they have more options for let’s say logo design, video makers, etc. than for book cover design per se;
  • no free version;

Price: $14.95/ month; $89.69/year

Screenshot of PlaceIt one of the best DIY book cover makers

Edraw 

Many self-publishers kept mentioning Edraw, though it is mainly a diagram and mind mapping tool. Anyway, we’ve decided to see what the fuss is all about.

Pros:

  • great book cover templates
  • wonderful design software
  • easy to self-learn

Cons:

  • Edraw’s primary features cater to business; book cover design is just a small additional feature;
  • not all book genres available
  • no free version

Price: $99/year

Screenshot of Edrawt one of the best DIY book cover makers

BookCoverly 

This list wouldn’t be complete without the Book Coverly. You can create paperback covers, dust jackets, ebooks, and even audiobooks. You might want to start from a blank canvas or use their template. There’s also a built-in ISBN barcode creator, auto spine width generator, and a tool to set flaps for book jackets. Can it get any better?

Pros:

  • book cover templates for any project
  • compatible with all publishing platforms
  • no internet connection needed to use the software

Cons:

  • no free package

Price: starting from $82

Screenshot of Bookcoverly one of the best DIY book cover makers

Adobe InDesign

Our next stop is Adobe InDesign. Book cover design, interior book formatting, graphic design – this tool has it all. Unfortunately, it’s more of a software for professionals, which means it involves a learning curve. They do have a step-by-step book cover design guide that will make the process easier for you. If you manage to figure it all out, you might end up with an extremely professionally-looking book cover design.

Pros:

  • all-inclusive professional design tools
  • video guides and tutorials 

 Cons:

  • you’d need to spend some time to learn how to use the program

Price: $19.99/month

Screenshot of Adobe in design one of the best DIY book cover makers

Adazing

Adazing is another excellent tool to create free ebook covers and mockups. It offers hundreds of templates that are either pre-built or designed by professionals that you can choose from and make the book cover for your next best-seller.

Pros:

  •  book cover design templates suitable for more than 30 different genres
  •  great choice of graphics
  •  web-based, no need to install the software on the computer
  •  possibility to create 3D mockups once you’re done creating the book cover design

Cons: 

  • in order to use the application for free, you have to become a subscriber
  • the website speed might sometimes be slow

Price: free

Screenshot of Adazing one of the best DIY book cover makers

Wrapping up

Whew! Now, you are all set. Feel free to come back to this list of 20 best DIY book cover makers every time you’re struggling with which one to choose. 

Have you ever tried any of these book cover makers? How was your experience?

 

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