↠ WRITING TIPS

↠ wattpad cover

While it's very important to not judge a book by its cover, it's evident that you eat with your eyes first. Just like you find a good looking meal to be more appealing, you're more likely to read a book if you think the cover is interesting or pretty!

Take my stories for example. My old stories have covers that I don't like at all, while my newer ones obviously prove I put more work into them and try to have them look high quality.

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«What are the essentials to a good wattpad cover?»

– The right size! Make sure to keep an eye out for upright pictures instead of wide sideways ones. The size for wattpad covers is 256px on 400px. You can adjust the size later when editing your cover, but it's a lot easier when your picture of choice is already similar in shape.

–The cover should fit your story. Are you writing a horror story? Then look out for something creepy. Is there maybe a certain character or actor you're writing about? Search for a picture of them that you could use! Love story? How about a cute couple or hearts? The cover already gives away the vibe of the story and allows the reader to know what they're picking up on.

– I generally look for pictures on either Tumblr or Pinterest. Pinterest is easier: Look for certain keywords and add the word "aesthetic" to it. If you only look for a keyword itself, you'll most likely find tons of tutorials or fact things, which is not what you're looking for. Protip: look out for the pinboards instead of the separate pictures themselves. They tend to have the prettier pictures or a certain reoccurring theme you might look out for.

Here is my pinterest, filled with moodboards of several characters, ships, mythology stuff, video games, movies and more. (120+ pinboards and roughly 4k+ pins in total, also currently taking requests)

↠ http://pinterest.com/sasainsomnia

– My advice is: Look out for pictures with a background that is not too distracting and with rather subtle colors or a steady color theme. Too much makes your cover look clustered and messy. Also, remember: Pastels and pale is the hype right now! So even if you're writing a horror story, it's possible to tone down the contrast and color (dark pale is a aesthetic, just so you know!)

– If you want to, you can render your picture. Cut out the background, like I did with the cover for this very book. For that, I looked up a picture of a reading girl and edited it with Gimp (you can use any photo editor, photoshop, gimp, doesn't really matter). I added a transparent layer, cut away the background so only the girl with the book was left and saved the picture as a .png file. I then looked up a fitting background online, adjusted the size of that on picmonkey.com (again, any photo editor works just fine) to 256px on 400px and added the transparent reading girl as a "sticker" to the background, adjusting size and placement of it. Play around, but keep it subtle.

– Font is very important! You should include the title of your story and your name or wattpad's nickname. Picmonkey has a few nice fonts as well, but you can also look up some online and again save them as a transparent .png picture to your computer, to later add it as a sticker to your whole picture. Make sure the font is big enough so that it's easy to read without squinting, without it taking up too much space. It's the easiest for stories with short titles.