Hi friends! Today, our author spotlight is on Sherrinda Ketchersid! Everyone, say hello to Sherrinda! Without further ado, let's get to know Sherrinda and her book His to Keep.
Author Bio:
Sherrinda Ketchersid is a lover of stories with happily-ever-after endings. Whether set in the past or present, romance is what she writes and where her dreams reside. She resides in Dallas, Texas with her preacher husband and scruffy dog, Phineas.
Here's Sherrinda!
Making Book Covers with BookBrush
Thanks so much for having me on your blog to share about creating book covers. I will state that I am no expert by any means, but I did create the cover for my short story, The Lady’s Dilemma. It is the prequel to my book, Lord of Her Heart.
So how can you create a cover for your own short story, novella, or book? Since I knew I was going to be self-publishing my medieval books, I paid the $99 for BookBrush.com, but you can make ebook covers in Canva as well. I think BookBrush has more to offer in the way of doing a print cover and making 3D books for advertising, but Canva is free and it has amazing capabilities.
In BookBrush, open up the Custom Creator tab, then choose what type of cover you want to create.
Then on the left sidebar, choose BACKGROUNDS. You can search for whatever type of photo you want as your background. I put in “Scotland” and found a lovely background to use. These photos are all from Pixabay, which is a site that offers free use of their photos. As always, you should check with the photographer to make sure your photo is free for use. Click on the photo you want to use, and the photo will appear in your template. You can move around the photo to get the best part of the photo for your template. There is a button to the right that allows you to see the whole photo with a grid for the template. After you get it set, you can blur the photo some to soften it up.
I purchased a stock photo of a medieval couple from Period Images to use on my cover. It would have cost $12, but I wanted a transparent background so I could overlay it on top of a background, so I ended up paying $20 for the photo. BookBrush has a “stamp” tool with many things like “available on Amazon” or “five stars” or logos for various book vendors, etc. You can upload your own photos with transparent backgrounds and create your own stamp. That is what I did with my medieval couple. After I uploaded it, I added it to my cover. You can adjust the size to make it smaller or bigger. I enlarged mine to fill up the cover.
Next comes the title and author name. This is the hardest part for me. Not that it is a difficult thing to do, but typography is a skillset that I don’t have. The easiest way I’ve found is to make a text box for every word in the title and move them around to see how you like the way it looks. Sometimes stacking them works. Sometimes you might want to tuck the “A” or “The” along an ascender of the next word. It all depends on what you like. Same goes with the font. You want to use a font that has the “flavor” of the genre you are writing. You wouldn’t use a modern font for a medieval. You would use a flowing type of font. Play around with different ones until you find one you like.
Once you have your cover like you like it, save it as a template so that if you decide to make changes, you can do so at a later date. Then download the cover to your computer and use it to your heart’s delight.
One of the things I love about BookBrush is the ability to create 3D images of your book in print, ereader, or phone. All you have to do is add your book cover that you created to “My Books” under your account, and then when you go to the Custom Creator to create an Instagram ad or Facebook ad, all you have to do is go to the Book Template on the left side bar and choose how you would like to feature your book in your ad. I chose to use an iphone for this particular ad.
This is how I created the original cover for The Lady’s Dilemma and how I create graphics to advertise on social media. It is one of those fun things I like to play with when I am procrastinating getting words onto the page.
Disclaimer: I will be honest and say that my dad took what I had done on this cover and made some changes in Photoshop, but it wasn’t necessary to do so. The cover would have worked just fine without his help, but since he is an award-winning cover designer of non-fiction, he knew how to do a few things to make my cover better. So if you subscribe to my newsletter and receive The Lady’s Dilemma, don’t be surprised by a slightly different cover with a castle.
His to Keep Blurb
He’s fighting for his inheritance—she’s marrying her sworn enemy.
When Ian McGowan attempts to claim Whitfield Castle as his rightful inheritance, he finds himself barred by a tempestuous lass who is entailed to be the bride of the castle’s new owner.
Claire Beaumont, the orphaned ward of Whitfield, has good reason to hate Scots, and she is not about to let a Scot enter her beloved home. But when the handsome knight steals into the castle and proves his claim on the land, she must face her ultimate nightmare—marriage to her sworn enemy—in order to save those she cares about most.
Restoring the failing Whitfield Castle while wooing his defiant intended proves more challenging than Ian anticipated. His struggles reach a crisis when his nemesis arrives at the castle, and he must overcome his past demons to prove his worth. He must fight for what is his to keep—and it could well cost him his heart.
Purchase Link and to Connect with Sherrinda:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08M4BS32V/
Website: www.sherrinda.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SherrindaKetchersidAuthor/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/sherrinda
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sherrinda
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/sherrinda/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19022507.Sherrinda_Ketchersid
Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/sherrinda-ketchersid
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Sherrinda-Ketchersid/e/B07Q5Y8QHF/
Newsletter Signup: https://www.subscribepage.com/z2m6x3
Friends, I sure hope you enjoyed getting to know Sherrinda Ketchersid and His to Keep.
Thank you so much for joining us, Sherrinda!
If you're an author and you'd like to be showcased here, just let me know. Must be inspirational or clean, can be fiction or nonfiction.
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