How to Design a One Piece Book Cover for Lulu in Photoshop

Recently I published my second poetry book, The Residual Solace, using Lulu.com and was very pleased with the quality of the final product. I would have to say it was a better experience than with my previous publisher. Having full control of the book’s interior and exterior layouts were a bit of a chore to meet Lulu’s printing specifications because of multiple revisions, but it was worth it in the end.

When I began the publishing process through Lulu.com, all I had was a completed manuscript and no cover to boot. My options were for Lulu to create one, for me to upload some photos and attempt a cover, or create my very own one piece cover. I decided on the later considering my web design background.

It took awhile to understand the parameters of bleeding edge and joint edge, but I managed after three test prints. Although it was money out of my pocket, I made it up in sales. If you plan on making a one piece cover, here’s a tutorial that makes sure you won’t make the same mistakes I did.

Today I want to share with those who are wanting to design a one piece cover for their Lulu.com published book by using Photoshop. The process is fairly easy (now since I know what I’m doing) and won’t take up too much time. Its what you put into the design that will take the longest - ideas are infinite.

Requirements

If you haven’t already looked into Lulu’s requirements for one piece book covers, I suggest checking out the FAQ entry, cover dimensions, and case wrap - a guide for the layout. There are three main requirements:

For this tutorial I will be designing a cover for a 100 page U.S. Trade (6×9) style book, a very popular size for the everyday book.

• Must be submitted as a PDF
• Must be at 300 DPI
• If you have an ISBN, it must be included in the design

Dimensions

According to Lulu’s one piece cover dimensions, a 6×9 book should measure 12.25 inches (+ spine) x 9.25 inches. To come up with the spine measurement, you have to use Lulu’s spine width calculator which is linked on the same page as the dimensions. For a 100 page book, the spine will come out to be .23 inches.

The final template measurement is 12.48 inches wide by 9.25 inches tall. Now its time to fire up Photoshop.

Setting Up the Template

Open Photoshop and create a new canvas of the dimensions of 12.48in by 9.25in at 300 pixels/inch. If you work in pixel measurements like I do, this will be a fairly large canvas.

Next up is placing some guidelines on the canvas for boundaries like the spine, joint edges and bleed edges. First the spine, place one guideline at 1838 pixels and another at 1904 - the gap between the two is the width of the spine.

Outside of the spine will be the joint edges - the part where the book creases after bending the cover back. Place a guideline at 1754 pixels for the back and 1988 pixels for the front part of the cover.

Now for the bleeding edges. Starting from the left, place a vertical guideline at 261 pixels and at 3481. For the horizontal guidelines, put one at 261 pixels and 2514 pixels.

Lastly add two additional guidelines that will aid the spine when formatting, placing them horizontally at 175 pixels and 2600 pixels. Your guidelines should look like the image below.

You may find that the guidelines do not match up with those shown in the book case wrap diagram by Lulu. That’s okay because having already experimented with various printed covers, these dimensions work perfectly. I found that there was too much white space in the first cover and thus changed the dimensions accordingly.

This would also be a good time to divide your cover into three sections via folders in the layers pane: Front, Spine, Back.

Spinal Work

The last two guidelines that were added in the previous step will come in handy. These lines represent the top and bottom of the spine of the book with some whitespace after the book has been printed. Lulu suggests using the bleeding edge lines, but in my opinion the printed results did not look that good.

Depending on the font you choose will determine the size of the font to fit within the spine’s working space. Here I used Times New Roman at 45 pixels, all capitalized and flipped 90 degrees clockwise, for my spine in two layers. When flipping hold down the shift key to make the flip perfect.

Coverage

When I designed my book, I chose one of my photographic art pieces that I shot some time ago on my D70s, 6 megapixel camera. An image of that size fills one half of the cover with no problem and there is room to play.

If you plan on using one large image, allow there to be at least a 5 pixel space between the image and the closest spine guideline. By doing so this prevents bleeding of the image onto the spine due to offset printing.

Add whatever graphics and fonts you like. Be aware that transparent images and elaborate designs may not come out as designed during the printing process. This is because the submitted PDF must be rasterized.

If you plan on distributing your book, you should reserve some space for an ISBN. Depending on the publishing process, Lulu can create one or you will have to create one yourself. To set up space for an ISBN, check out Lulu’s guidelines.

Make sure you have done all your editing before the cover becomes rasterized for PDF. I found that rasterizing each layer works just as good and you can complete small edits, like moving fonts and graphics around. Keep a copy of the cover as a PSD just in case you need to revert back to the original design for major edits.

For Lazy People

If you haven’t started yet on your one piece cover, here’s a PSD with all of the guidelines mentioned above for a 6×9 cover. Give me some props in the comments if you found this tutorial useful.