You don't HAVE to mess about with images in the body of your book, either as random illustrations, or as title page or chapter-start treatment.
On the other hand, someone—though not necessarily you—WILL have to come up with some sort of cover image for the book.
If only a very simple design, like the Salinger-mandated cover for later paperback editions of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. (It's just yellow text on a maroon background—title and author's name, only—and it's the same front and back.)
Or you could go the other way, spreading out images on every page of your book, turning your novel into a kind of manga.
But aside from the time you put into this stuff—which may take away from your writing (I'm just assuming you're a writer here)—there is one other drawback to peppering your book with excess graphics.
The delivery fee.
You need to be aware that Amazon charges the author for the delivery of the book to the reader.
Typically, this fee is small—in the range of five or ten cents per download—and is only charged to the author who requests the highest royalty rate (70%). Go for the 35% royalty, and Amazon picks up the tab for delivery.
But you have to pay attention.
Worse case scenario: You slap together a big ol' book of photography or art work—a kind of e-coffee-table-book—maxing out the size to KDP's upper limit of fifty megabytes. If you choose the 70% royalty option, then sign up for Kindle Select and give the thing away for the full five days, you could end up with (let's say) a hundred thousand download requests from cheapskate art-lovers...and a bill from Amazon for three-quarters of a million dollars. Whoops!
Fifteen cents a megabyte is the current delivery charge.
Probably won't be a problem for you.
Okay, let's get started. The program I use for creating chapter headings, title pages, and cover images is GIMP. That stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program, and is the FREE alternative to PhotoShop.
(I'm using version 2.6. The latest is 2.8, but it calls for SP3 for Windows XP, and I didn't want to bother to upgrade. If you're using GIMP 2.8, there may be a few changes obvious in the screen shots below. Just ride with it, okay?)
Let's make the simplest title page: just words, plus the space around and between 'em.
Start GIMP, click File, New, and set the width to 600 pixels and height to 800. Select Advanced Options and set the resolution to 300 by 300 pixels per inch. Click OK.
Now you have a canvas.
The orientation is portrait, the size the standard (original) Kindle page. This is also the size and shape of your embedded cover. (Your display cover is the same illustration, sized much bigger. We'll get to this stuff in a later post.)
Let's add the title. Click on the text tool icon in the Tool Box (left side, top). It's the big A. Use your cursor to click/drag open a text window in the upper half of the canvas (or wherever). Type your title into the GIMP Text Editor window. Don't worry about the font size or style; you'll be fiddling with that next.
Go to the Size box in the Text Tool window (left side, bottom) and goose the UP arrow to get a better look at your title. Now click in the Font box and experiment with new fonts.
Farther down are the Justify controls. There you can experiment with flush right or flush left or centered text. (To center up on the canvas, make sure you spread your text box across the whole thing.)
You can also mess with the color of the text.
You can then open a new text box for the word "by" (if you're using this form). And another box for your name. (And the name of your publisher, if you're making up one for your book.)
You'll notice the Layers window (on the right) adds each new element to the list. Select the element (title, by, name, background) to fiddle with it—change size, font, color, etc.
Move the text elements about, experiment with positions, mix it up or make it uniform, and so forth.
We're in the twisty, anything-goes world of "art" now.
Save interim versions and keep going until you're satisfied.
It's best to save as a GIMP project file (xcf), which allows you to go back and mess about some more with individual layers. (Even after you've closed the file, you can open it again and go back to work on it.)
When you get serious, also save as a jpeg (or jpg) file for use in your book. GIMP will prompt you to Export the file (prepare it for conversion) before you'll be able to save it as jpeg. Do that.
Here's an important detail: As long as the original file is open—even if you've already saved it as a jpg—you can still work the layers. But if you close it, then open it later, the layers will be squashed up flat into one inseparable layer. If you've thought of some cool adjustment you want to make, you'll have to go back to the xcf version and do it there. Or—if you forgot to save an xcf version—you'll have to start over from scratch.
Perhaps you're thinking: If I just want a simple title page (title and author, let's say), why bother with creating an image of it. Can't I just use header fonts in my html file?
Not if you want to spread stuff about on the page. Remember, using non-breaking spaces to separate elements won't work in all versions of Kindle (both vertically and horizontally). Also, you're at the mercy of the reader, who has the option of choosing a bigger font than you'd like—messing up your design. An IMAGE of your perfect title page works for all versions.
Title page background: Kindle does not support transparent images. If you have black letters on a white background—and the Kindle is also set to a white background—the whole page might seem to meld with the screen, your words floating in space. But that's an illusion. If the reader selects a different background color, a big, possibly ugly rectangle of white will pop up, containing your text.
To avoid that shock—and give your title page a sense of identity when displayed on any background—you can tint the canvas some neutral color: gray or beige or pale yellow, etc.
Unless, of course, you have in mind a bold statement of blazing color—available in various versions of Kindle, but not in Original.
Change the color of the background with the Bucket Fill tool.
Select a Foreground or Background color and click on the canvas.
You can also select the Pattern fill option, picking patterns from the Layers window (right side, bottom).
A nice red title on a wood-grain background, perhaps. (Really more of a cover design, now that I think of it.)
Select a layer of text, and you can bucket fill (with color or pattern) individual letters. That's cool, right? But limiting: Pattern fill letters only make sense if they're large enough for the pattern to be noticed—which means your title better be rather short.
Anyway, have fun with this stuff.
If you create something that looks too weird, click Edit and Undo to get rid of it. Then try something else.
Remember to check your results in grayscale, for use in standard Kindles. (Some color text and background combos absolutely drop dead in black and white.) Click Image, mouse-hover on Mode, and click Grayscale.
Satisfied, click Edit and use Undo to get back to color. You're going to save the color version and put it in your book. You just want to make sure it looks okay in grayscale, too. (Okay, if you want you can save a grayscale version before Undoing it.)
I grabbed a paperback off the pile and attempted to create a version of it.
I couldn't exactly duplicate the font, which was condensed and more squared-off, but you get the idea. The easiest part was the trick that sells the page: the blurred out MEMORY. Just color the text gray, then click Filters, Blur, Gaussian Blur. Experiment for just the right amount of blurring.
Now go nuts with the other filters and see what you get.
By the way, my version of the FALSE MEMORY title page copies the original's lack of background color. I would advise at least a light tinting of gray (or some other pale color) to avoid the thing bleeding into a white background in a Kindle or DX. Also, if you need to make a light tint even fainter, but can't seem to select the right color, try dropping the Opacity level at the top of the Layers window.
Here's another tip: You don't have to rely on font size to get things the way you want. You can also use the Scale tool. Select the layer for the title (let's say), and click Scale from the Toolbox. Ignore the window that pops up with the fill-in boxes for the new width and height. Notice the text now has sizing handles, which you can drag in various directions to adjust the words selected. Just be advised if you decide to change the actual words (or correct the spelling), the stretch goes away and you'll have to reapply it.
So far, we've worked with font faces and sizes, text position, colors, and patterns (for the background or inside individual letters).
Next stop: images on your title page.
You probably don't want to go overboard here. This is, after all, a title page, not a book cover.
But you might select a detail from your cover and reproduce it here. Or, you could concentrate on a fancy logo for the fake publisher you pretend is putting out your book. (Or maybe you're actually becoming an e-book publisher for your work and the works of others....)
Probably time to grab a lot of books off your shelf and see what's been done before. (You may have noticed I didn't bother to duplicate the Bantam logo on the FALSE MEMORY title page. Just laziness, really.)
What kind of image? Photo? Drawing? Abstract design?
You can experiment with the tools in GIMP and create something. Or go looking for public domain images on the Internet. (Public domain because you don't want to be sued.) You could also buy an image.)
Select something, open it in GIMP, and get to work on it.
Crop the image with the scalpel-shaped tool. Experiment with various methods of modifying the image: Paint brush, Eraser, Smudge, etc. Distort the shape or flip it right to left. Clone parts of it or simplify it.
Use the Path tool (or others) to cut an object out of an inappropriate background. Select New and create a canvas for the object. Copy and paste that object onto its own page. Fiddle about, then paste the result onto the title page.
Use the Move tool to nudge it into place.
GIMP is a versatile program with lots of features. It would take quite a while to see, let alone master, all of its tools.
Save often. Also, it's a good idea to change the name (or a add a number to the name) to keep different versions intact.
When you get what you want, save a jpeg copy in the same folder as your html file of the book.
Open the manuscript in Notepad++ (or wherever) and find the title page ID tag we added earlier (id="title_pg" or whatever you called it). Add this line below it:
<p class="center"><img src="title_pg.jpg" width="550" height="750" alt="title page" />
(I remind you it's possible to copy this tag and paste it right into your document.)
Save the html file, open it in your browser, and check out your new title page.
If it looks okay there, open the book in Kindle Previewer and check it across various platforms. Go back and mess about with the width and height specs if you want.
Next time: cover design.
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