2: Effective Ad Images

Your image is the the most important part of creative. You will generally get the most mileage out of testing different images, rather than the text. Copy is crucial, but I’d troubleshoot images first if you’re having issues with your ads.

Key principles

  • Contrast
  • Stand out while clearly communicating the genre (don’t be lame)
  • Make sure the image is congruent in emotional and visual feel/tone to your book page. Easiest (but not only) way to achieve this is by using the book cover or book cover background.

Image Ideas

  • Book cover (on book cover background, stock photo, or other background)
  • Cover background w/o text or cover backgrounds from other books in the series
  • Collages
  • Stock Photos
  • Extra Custom Shoot Photos
  • Custom Photoshop manipulation from designers; just like you can get a custom cover, you can get custom ad images. Useful for genres where there’s not a ton of available stock, but can get expensive (although generally cheaper than a cover).
  • Animated images (videos)
  • Actual videos (trailers, stock footage etc.)

I tend to use images rather than videos; videos are usually expensive and time consuming to produce. Testing is paramount to success with ads; images are both cheaper and faster to test, which makes them much better performers most of the time.

Stock Photo Sites

Additional Useful Links & Tools

  • DIY Book Covers 3D Cover Creator: a free 3D cover generation tool
  • Covervault: has a wide range of free 3D cover templates you can use with Photoshop CC (most of them won’t work with Photoshop Elements)
  • Photoshop CC: the de facto image software for designers. Powerful, but has a learning curve even for relatively basic tasks.
  • Canva: free online software that allows you to create professional quality graphics. Not as robust as Photoshop, but easier to use and the standard version is free.
  • Book Brush: has many built-in templates and settings so you can create ads without learning any design software. I prefer Canva/Photoshop (and find them both quicker, after the initial learning process), but if you don’t want to use either of those, you can jump right in with Book Brush and produce solid ad images.
  • Adobe Color Tool: tool for finding colors that go well together
SWIPE FILE (PDF)