Migraine Inducing Covers

I've spent the best part of the last four/five days working on a book cover. Ebook cover was quick but I wanted to get a proof from Createspace to help with editing. I find it so much easier to edit if I use a different format each time and I figured waiting for a proof would give me a little distance from the story. It's just a novella so the proof would cost less than five dollars. Not complicated, apparently, unless you're me. Every single time I thought I had it figured out, something else would go wrong so finally I used the Cover Designer (template Palm which allows you to upload your own front and back cover complete with Title, author name and blurb in your own font) and settled for having a woeful spine.

I know it was just a personal proof but I figured I might as well learn something about the Createspace cover process. Besides, I didn't want the thing to beat me. Which it kind of did but let's not go there. The problems I ran into included completely misunderstanding the cover template, ballsing up layers, using a program that doesn't convert into PDF, using a program which did convert but the file wasn't accepted by Createspace and finally, using a program which converted the file perfectly . . . into the wrong size. My headache finally stopped last night at 2am after a well deserved glass of wine.

I've learned a fair bit, including not to go near Createspace's community or help sections because it will only confuse me more. When my head's in a better place, I'm going to post about the things that can go wrong in the hopes it might save someone else a week's migraine. If I decide not to send this novella to the recycle bin, this is (along the lines of because I'm not on the pc that I worked on) what the ebook cover might look like - image courtesy of © Inga Marchuk | Dreamstime.com