Here's the link to get The Stolen Kingdom for FREE on all vendors while it's on sale!! books2read.com/thestolenkingdom p.s. What do you think of the new covers?
Bethany, Sorry, but I just checked again. I see several new links for more vendors, but the Barnes & Nobel link is still broken. All of the other links work fine. @@BethanyAtazadeh
The covers looks amazing, as a graphic designer, I just want to say that it is amazing what you could learn in two weeks! Did you learn from a course? Really, amazing job, Bethany
They're wonderful, Bethany! Incredible job for someone new to Photoshop. The first ones with the text on a slant had me cringing, but the final covers are perfect! Congratulations on your success.
Thank you so much!! Bahaha same here, those are embarassing to look back at - I think it has to be a really specific genre for slanted text to work lol...
Wow, the covers look phenomenal! Love all your covers (first edition and second edition) but these are my FAVE! I do graphic design as a hobby and I'm so impressed with what you've done in two weeks. Congrats, Bethany! Also, thank you for having your productivity livestream two Saturdays ago. Prior to that, I hadn't written in months. My YA portal fantasy WIP was stuck in first draft mode with only two chapters completed. After writing 3K+ in your livestream, I went on to write almost 2K more a few days later and I'm currently on the final chapter. Thanks to you, I'll be finished with this first draft soon. I'm such a perfectionist that first drafts are hard for me (editing is my FAVE part of writing but I can't edit a blank page, can I?) I also get hyperfixated on creative projects that I will forgo sleeping, eating even using the bathroom.
Yayyy so happy to hear the livestream was helpful for getting unstuck, that's the best feeling when something finally clicks - you've got this! (I need to also get unstuck and start editing my book again asap, so I can relate haha!) So happy you like the covers too, thank you so much!!
Thank you! I think social media is a highlight reel and not really showing real life, because I rarely have motivation lol, I choose to work whether I feel like it or not most days (and some days I choose not to haha!)
Your excitement is so contagious! I'm so happy for you. Also, I think I know the video you were talking about with hyperfixation. You're definitely not alone!
Bethany!!! These covers are GORGEOUS! As a cover designer, I think the designs are cohesive, polished, and to market. I also love the fact that you decided to stick with the author name at the bottom as it does, in fact, allow the cover text to breathe. As a reader, I think the concepts are clear. I know exactly what fairytales each book is based on, and even in thumbnail mode they pull me in. I think I do prefer these best of all actually. Amazing Job. PS. - I was screaming at the screen that KDP is still behind the times and are stuck using RGB for print but I'm happy you figured it out😆.
The covers turned out great! I’d be interested in a video explaining what you updated for the inside of the books too! I know you mentioned updating the front/back matter as well as changing the font size so I’m curious as to what the changes were & your reasoning for them.
I just studied a graphic design course, and your covers are so well designed. I also loved thought processes described in the video. Thank you so much for sharing your journey!
Print needs to be in CMYK, and the ebook needs to be in RGB. But it's okay to create the ebook cover in CMYK, and then convert it to RGB when you export the final version. This will make it easier to copy the ebook cover over to the paperback. The colours will appear darker in CMYK because all the colours created are variations of the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black) and it's best for print. You shouldn't use RGB for print because some of the colour options aren't available for print. If you choose the Matte option it can knock of 30% off the colour, whereas gloss can make the picture seem brighter.
All do that was what I was taught also BUT when I did CMYK paperbacks through KDP the color was absolutely horrible, and then when I printed the paperbacks in RGB-perfect. So idk, but they seem to have switched? 🤷🏻♀️
Wow 🤩 your new covers are beautiful and you poured so much care and attention into them. I love your enthusiasm. I think that’s inspiration when you get bitten by the creative bug and want to keep going. It brings you joy so why not?! The end result is stunning and well worth it. You’re very talented. Thanks for sharing your journey with us x
Wow, I'm so impressed by how gorgeous the covers are! And you learned how to do it all in a few weeks, that's incredible, honestly! I already really liked the earlier versions that you insisted were not right and then seeing the improvement... What an adventure! Congrats!!!
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who got sucked into making book covers 😅 my boyfriend's sister sent me some really nice book jackets for a series I'm reading. Turns out they were for the UK version of the book and too small for the ones I had. So I set out to use the ones she sent and modify them to fit the ones I have (because I loved them so much!). That spiraled into me making my own hard cover of one of the books, and attempting page gilding and fore-edge painting lol!
Ooh, I love these covers even more! I can see the love you put into them, and how symbolic each of them are. I prefer that over people on the covers, especially for fantasy. :)
Great job! Isn't it fun?! Just wait until you start working with other programs, too. I used Illustrator and InDesign to create graphics for my daughter's Drumline program right before Covid hit. It was awesome! The tutorials that Adobe has are really good, as well.
This whole video is like as if I've done it lol you're my twin. Your excitement, how you think everything lol your book, the notes everything. It was like looking at a video of myself with a different face 🤣 and I thought no one would understand me.
The secret curse is my favorite out of all of them followed by the cursed hunter. I actually read the first 2 of the queens rise, then realized the The Stolen Kingdom existed so I read books 1 and half of 2, stopped to read The Secret Curse before finishing the rest of the stolen kingdom series. My only wish is to know more about what happens with Nesrin/Malakai/Nesrins people and how did Kodas life end up?
I go through fixation phases too! I'm glad I'm not alone😂 your covers are beautiful ❤ and the Inkerscon presentation on cover design is really good, I learned a lot from it
Not sure if you’ve done a video on how you stayed the course & encouraged yourself when it could have been tempting to give up. But if not, would you please share your tips & advice for new authors, like myself, & maybe not so new authors , pieces of encouragement to not give up when other priorities compete for our attention? Thank you!!! Love ur content! ❤️❤️❤️
That's an awesome video idea - I'm not totally sure what I'd include but off the top of my head, I think it helped to have a good set of people around me encouraging and helping me. Accountability from the right people can be extremely valuable . It took a long time for me to find the author friends I have but they were worth the wait, so definitely try to meet other people in a similar place to you, it'll help!
These are amazing! I was going to suggest doing the tail splashing out of the water like you ended up doing. It looks great! I give suggestions but my book covers are terrible. I think your video will help a lot. Thanks for putting it out there.
The Cursed Hunter is my personal favourite too! These are absolutely gorgeous! I had so much fun being a part of the cover reveal team. I'm an official fan now!
Thank you for your hyper fixation. (You are not alone in that area.) This is something I want to learn going forward, but being at the beginning of my self-publishing journey, there are so many things to learn. These covers are so beautiful. I agree, these scream retellings so much better. They look like a professional with more than two weeks of knowledge put these together. Great job. And please get some sleep. I think all of your hard work is about to pay off.
Very cool. I'm trying to make my first cover now. It's pretty daunting. I'm a creative person, but I've never considered myself to be artistic. I just can't afford the hundreds of dollars for a cover, so I'm going to try to spruce up some stock photos into something that represents my book. We'll see if it works lol. Something tells me I'll be spending the money on a cover anyway. Your covers look great. I agree with you, I'm not a fan of the slanted text either. It is cool that you have that much control though!
Well just throwing this out there, if you can afford photoshop for a month or two, then you could probably also afford to buy a pre-made cover. Lots of cover designers have these for sale and they range from $50-$100 typically, as long as all you change is the title and author name. Something to look into. ;) And thank you, glad you like the covers!
Bethany, how do you pick the photos? Do you just google stuff you like that goes with your story? And you said you had to purchase the stock photo. Can you do a video or explain how that process works?
I don't feel qualified to do a video because I was just guessing my way through haha, but you can use websites like depositphoto (I paid for a month of stock photos) and just search til you find possibilities that might work!
I love the new covers! Great job and I totally understand your exitment. :D But one question, because I'm confused. You already changed the covers of this series (a few times) and the last was just a while ago. Will these new covers be a special edition or will you replace the last edition by these?
Thank you so much! I have changed them once before, you're correct, back in 2020. If you watched any of my other videos about cover design, you might already know that my first cover designer went bankrupt and disappeared halfway through the series. So I panicked and began a second set of covers, but then was able to finish the first set as well. That was three years ago, and when a series is doing well, a fresh set of covers that fits new trends is a smart business move, so these will be the new covers going forward for at least another three years, and then we'll see!
They're STUNNINGGG!!!! I can't stop looking at them!! 😍😍😍 I think The Stolen Kingdom's full wrap is my favorite, but I also love the colors of The Jinni Key! It's so impressive how quickly you were able to learn and go from your first attempt (which yeah, I kinda chuckled when I saw how much you loved it knowing how they turned out 😂) to the final, beautiful ones!
Yay thank you so much Katie, so happy you like them and especially that you like The Jinni Key, since that was such a tough one to figure out! Haha oh my gosh same, I laughed at that while editing the video, so funny!
Your book cover design journey is epic, resulting in a very beautiful set. You did such an impressive job, and they definitely stand out from the crowd. I am as we speak laying out the book cover for Mellyora Ashley's sixth novel, and got some great pointers from your experience. Thank you! By the way I use GIMP which is a very, very, powerful program for making book covers. GIMP is an illustrator, photo, paint, draw, image manipulation software which is open sourced, so it is basically free. God bless you.
I have used Photoshop for over 20 years… It is not an easy program to learn, and you did not actually give any of the steps to show where you got the images the typography or anything else helpful to someone trying to design a cover. There are no measurements to say what size the book is or how to connect the cover binding and back cover together. All I get from this video is that you are so happy with yourself and you want other people to buy your books. Very disappointing.
Almost at the end but I ran into another question! 😊 You said that through photoshops channel that you found something that made you learn how to make backgrounds. Does not Mandi's course cover that? It's a very important part of the cover process so that got me a bit worried 🤔
I actually only took the first two of Mandi's three courses - when filming this video, she hadn't even started recording the third course yet. (#1 is photoshop basics, #2 is typography, and #3 - the one I didn't actually take - was the "how to design a cover one. So I honestly don't know if she includes it, that'd be worth asking her, but that's why I had to learn elsewhere haha!)
@@BethanyAtazadehAh, okey! Thanks for clearing that up. I got the impression that you were able to do these covers thanks to having taken her course. (I did not even realise that she was making more than one. I thought it was one package like her formatting course) Bummer! I have already been through a lot of photoshop basics videos and free courses but did not feel ready to play around with making a cover. I had hoped her course would be different but I guess I'll look around like you did and then take a plunge and play around. Could you link the one with the background info you found here on youtube? That would be a huge help in the right direction cause I want to learn how to make covers like these. I too tend to hyper focus so I feel it would be easier to make my own than to ask for endless revisions from a future cover designer. 😅
Hi, Bethany, so many beautiful covers 😍 Great job on them! So interesting to learn about the process of making a cover as I am in need of one for my own book 😆 maybe I'll play around with a design or two in Canva or something 😂
@@BethanyAtazadeh sure! Yeah, probably I could figure it out but we'll have to wait and see what I end up doing 😆 it's my debut novel, I would like the cover to not look amateurish. Probably will see if I can find someone affordable to help me out in this category 😊👍
Very nicely done. My first novel is being edited. So I just need to do the cover art, which I intended to do myself from the start. The area I just learned was to do the book cover layout. By using Book Cave I got my margins and bleed areas for the cover, spine and back. Once those were laid out it was smooth sailing. Awesome work. FYI for those without money I suggest GIMP for your graphic work.
Ok. I came to youtube to find some tips on book designs, but you... I don't even know how to say this in english, but you play dirty!!! I not just LOVED SO MUCH your covers, now i wanna do an amazing job like this for my own book! And this... This is NOT fair XD They're perfect!
This was such a fun vlog! Thank you for sharing, I love watching your vlogs. I would be really interested in a vlog of you editing the Secret Curse, but no pressure! It takes a lot to do videos 😊 This one was awesome to see the creation of gorgeous covers and I love how you show the changes in Canva.
Thank you, so glad you liked it! And that’s a fun idea-I took the month off from RU-vid bc I was feeling overwhelmed but if that changes I could definitely vlog some of editing, we shall see haha!
This is so awesome!! I want to design my own covers so badly but I knew I probably could never do it. Now I want to keep that dream alive. 🥺 My favorite cover is book one! I can’t wait to get the new cover
Bethany, the covers are amazing!! And they look even more beautiful printed! Now you really are instoppable! Wow. Are the books (or only book 3) longer now? I remember that it's impossibile for kdp to make you add new pages, so how did you do it? If you want to share of course! Congrats!
Yay thank you so much! Nope they're the same stories, but with a different font size - it's amazing how much bigger the books are with a standard font size! (I don't remember why I went smaller with the first edition, but figured I'd change it up haha!)
The covers look great! I'm a graphic designer and painter who gets things printed fairly often. I'm always working in RGB unless I'm asked to provide that for printing/by a client. (So I have the reverse problem where CMYK blows out all my colors and makes them fluorescent when I go from RGB > CMYK.) That would make sense that your test cover was dull if your digital colors were being translated from a brighter mode into a more "dull" color/file format mode thing-- due to Amazon not recognizing CMYK. I'm not sure what the techy thing is, but another reason why dark computer files look vivid and great on the computer is often because our screens are backlit. The final batch of covers look so great! I haven't read the Enchanted Crown yet and I'm so tempted to get the paperback-- all my other books are ebooks.
The new covers are so incredibly beautiful! You can be so proud of the work you put into them and into learning a new skill! Also, thank you so much for sharing this whole journey with us, this was so informative and genuinely helpful.
Absolutely gorgeous, Bethany!!! I'm trying to get the rights back to my trad pubbed books which will need new covers. I also want to rebrand my current indie books and was cringing at how much all of that would cost. You've really inspired me!!!
These look great! The Stolen Kingdom is my favourite followed by The Enchanted Crown. My daughter and I had a laugh, because The Cursed Hunter is our least favourite, but they truly all look beautiful.
Omg they look so good! Now I want to play around and see if I can create my own covers! Also how good would purple sprayed edges look on the first book!! 😍 Amazing job Bethany
Got to your content searching for information about self publishing and got much more than what I was looking for. Very well done and structured and I will be buying some of your books for sure
I love these covers so much :) Your brain works the same way as mine so I know I'll have these problems too when I go to design my covers in Jan-March '24
The Stolen Kingdom Series is just soooooo good!!!! I just finished the Enchanted Crown last night!!! These covers are amazing they look so fantastical and even give such a good glimpse on what each book is about!!!
Wow!!!! I love all of them and I think you have done an excellent job on your covers! You have given me faith that I can do my own cover as well, since I currently work in photoshop and indesign. I'm super excited now to finish my book!
Great question! I might do another video more in depth on this, but honestly researching the covers in your specific genre and studying them to learn why they work is going to be crucial, and also my good friend Mandi Lynn is about to publish a cover design course that I got to beta test which will be really helpful once that's live too, stay tuned for more on that once it goes live!
Amazing vlog and so inspiring that you were able to create such beautiful and vibrant covers yourself. I never realized how much cover trends change until I saw the video where you had yours analyzed. And of course I was like, "Well I need new covers too!" 😆
Thank you so much! And it’s so tough to change covers for so many reasons, I’m actually glad that I waited a year until I was ready bc it feels like perfect timing!
So while I'm watching this video, I see my name pop up when you mention the P&T group! (Lisa Robertson, Nohea is part of my middle name and my pen name. 😊) I love these covers and I'm hoping to get my hands on them soon! They are gorgeous!!!
When you get more comfortable using photoshop you should do a walk through! If you want to of course! I’m so interested in seeing the cover design process!
Oooh that's a fun video idea! I'm still not an expert at all but maybe I'll share some things I picked up soon, and my friend Mandi Lynn's cover design course that I beta tested is also coming out next month I think! :D
Hi Bethany! I'm usually a quiet watcher, wanted to comment here first to say that I think the covers are GORGEOUS! However, I'm pretty suspicious that the base image you used for The Cursed Hunter is originally AI... which is a problem for a couple of reasons: 1) AI models are trained on stolen work from artists, and it feels even worse if you had to pay for it! 2) AI art isn't copyrightable, so technically you can't copyright your cover! I can't be 100% sure without looking at it close up but I just wanted to tell you, hope this helps and it can still be changed if need be! Have a great week ~
Thank you for checking! Fortunately these are from deposit photo which sells images that are safe from copyright issues so I’m not concerned, but appreciate you checking!
@@BethanyAtazadehHi again! I'd still be careful, because people have been known to upload AI generated stuff to stock sites, and unfortunately, no matter how "copyright safe" those are supposed to be, courts have recently ruled (last week even) that this type of art isn't copyrightable. So don't hesitate to triple check with somepne well versed in spotting AI (maybe Mandi?) because the law is quickly evolving in regards to all this, and it'd be sad to have to completely change that one cover again, especially since your work on them all was so wonderful! So sorry to bother with this haha, I've been keeping an eye on AI for a while and I just wanted to warn you in case you didn't know ^^
@@shigure_natsu I definitely did some research on it... but I'll admit I'm still confused about the overall problem? I have no idea how to actually confirm if this original image was AI, and that 100% wasn't my goal when choosing it (I would've skipped over it if they had said it was), but whether it is or not, I'm not really sure how that affects the book now... If it's not copyrightable, that just means someone else could use my cover too right? So that's not great, but it's not worth changing my cover over... I guess I'll have to learn more about AI since it's becoming bigger in the book industry in general, but right now I don't quite understand the issue?
@@BethanyAtazadeh Yeah, since it's not copyrightable someone might copy it, exactly! If that doesn't bother you then that's fine, since that's the biggest concern with this type of art ^^ The legal stuff around AI and its use for book covers is still being hashed out in different lawsuits rn, so I'm hoping whatever conclusion it comes to won't mean you need to change it! The other problem is more of an ethical one, since AI generated art is basically stolen art from an artist who hasn't been fairly compensated for their work, but there isn't much you can do about it yourself, since you aren't the one who stole the art to begin with and weren't aware it was (or at least probably is) AI. Just try and avoid it in the future as much as possible, and don't hesitate to have someone with a well trained eye look the art over, even if it's published on stock sites, until the legislation for it is actually in place! There have been great resources and initiatives online created by indie authors and artists to help support each other in the face of AI scraping, so when in doubt don't hesitate to look them up!