It was a real breakthrough discovering that a layout in QuarkXpress could be uploaded to Kindle, provided it was converted first. I found that I could turn the Quark document into a PDF and then use an online converter to turn the PDF into a JPG. I then had a format which was uploadable to Kindle (whereupon it is again converted). This is fantastic for me because it will mean I will always now be able to produce passable book covers "in house" - in my own house, to be precise. I say passable because an excellent cover would incorporate elements of graphic design and freehand drawing which I am not capable of. (The artwork you see in the top right hand corner of a smuggler signalling to his accomplices in a ship was looted by me from the internet and smuggled onto my desktop. It is an old, out of copyright drawing however, so I should be ok!)
Very few people if any saw this cover, it graced my Amazon listing for barely 24 hours, immediately to be replaced by the one above. I would have ditched it sooner if it weren't for a quirk of Kindle Direct Publishing whereby it does not allow you back in to edit your book for 24 hours after you press "save".
You'll spot the problems with it straightaway - it appears chopped in two, and to make matters worse, the handful of dollar bills protrude beyond its right and bottom edges. This was an unreal and unsatisfactory situation for a book cover. Kindle ebook covers need to look like their printed counterparts, so this was not good. Also, the dimensions are wrong, it is much too squat. The other weakness with it is that I chose to use a full-length shot of Whistling Sands beach encased in a golden layout, meant to represent sand. All very nice, but it failed to convey any sense of atmosphere, mystery and excitement that a group of children are on the trail of smugglers. But in getting it wrong with this cover, I was on the way to the far better job you see above.
That's why, when I designed my current cover (at the top of the page) I went back to using this image but seeking to do so in a more stylish way. This cover, as you'll guess, is simply a photograph overlaid with two text boxes. Even the font used for the title and author name is the same. I produced it in Photoshop which I am very poor at using for anything other than basic image editing. I was frustrated because I knew I could do a better job in QuarkXpress but had not at the time worked out how to make it work for Kindle.
