Cover
Why?
On PG's website, the cover, if you supply one, is used to make your book's page look more attractive, and also in lists such as "Some of Our Latest Books". In addition, when your book is converted to epub, the cover will be included with it. This means that when the reader browses through the library of epubs they have downloaded, they will be able to spot your book at a glance. There is more information on epub covers in this forum thread, but this page will cover the basics.
DP policy
It is DP policy that, when we create a new cover for a coverless book, we confine ourselves to images that are found within the book itself rather than images found in other versions of that book or other possibly public-domain images. PG also requires that where a new cover is created, a Transcriber's Note should include the following sentence:
- "New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain."
Note that the wording of this statement has changed. Also, historically, text of this nature was sometimes added directly to the cover image, but it is now preferred to include it in the TN.
Title-pages from the book may be used as a cover and, since they are a part of the original book, may be used without the above statement in the TN.
If a book has a cover image but it is blank and contains no images or text, it is preferable to treat the book as coverless and arrange to create a cover for it following the guidelines expressed above.
Translations of the cover art statement - note that they may need updating (15 April 2023)
For French books the wording would be -- "La page de couverture, créée expressément pour cette version électronique, a été placée dans le domaine public."
For German books the wording would be -- "Das Umschlagbild wurde vom Bearbeiter gestaltet und in die Public Domain eingebracht." The above sentence, however, is useful only in the context of US copyright law and could therefore remain in English should the PPer wish. If the book is "gemeinfrei", the text would be: "Das Umschlagbild wurde vom Bearbeiter geschaffen. Ein Urheberrecht wird nicht geltend gemacht. Das Bild darf von jedermann unbeschränkt genutzt werden."
For Spanish books, the wording is "El transcriptor ha creado la imagen de la cubierta y la sitúa en el dominio público."
Information for all types of cover
- You must include a cover image in your images folder called
cover.jpg(or, much more rarely,cover.png, if the image is appropriate as a "png") with your project. - It is desirable and recommended for cover images to be at least 1600x2560 pixels (or 2560x1600 if landscape). The approximate aspect ratio should be 1 : 1.6. Generally, dimensions should be no greater than 5000x5000 pixels. There is no specific file size limit, but please use judgment so the size is not larger than it needs to be. If your original cover image is less than 1600x2560 pixels, please submit the best resolution available without scaling them up, since upscaling does not improve image quality.
- If you also display the cover in your HTML version, specify image dimensions there using em or percentage units rather than pixels.
- Tell ebookmaker where to find the cover by adding the following line into your HTML header, just below <title>...</title>
<link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover" />
My project came with a cover
If your project is not too old, the Content Provider / Project Manager will hopefully have included an image of the cover with the other illustrations. If the cover is too plain, boring or unsuitable in some other way, you can skip to the next section.
Note that the cover.jpg file may be used as a thumbnail in some epub readers and in collections of books such as the Apple Books library. It is therefore important that the book title in that cover file is easily legible, and that the characters contrast sufficiently with the cover background, even when viewed at a smaller scale. Sometimes a book title is just embossed on the cover, or not printed in a contrasting color, which would make it hard to read. If that is the case, there are two options available: you may be able to use a filter or adjust the contrast to make the title more legible. Alternatively, a legible cover should be created as described in the next section. If you wish to also preserve and display the original cover, add it as a regular illustration at the start of the book, with its own name, e.g. original_cover.jpg.
If the cover needs improving, e.g. a sticker "removing", you could ask in the Illustrators thread.
If the cover is suitable for use, then resize it as described above, and save it as a JPEG file into your images folder
By default, cover.jpg is not displayed in the HTML version, but is only used for the epub version. If it is attractive, and you want to display cover.jpg at the start of your main HTML version, you can include the code for it as you would any other illustration. Bear in mind that in e-reader versions, the image that you have flagged as the cover will be moved by ebookmaker from the place you defined it in the HTML to the cover position at the very start of the book, even before the PG header. If you gave the image a caption, that caption would then be orphaned, so you will want to hide such a caption in the epub version.
In the CSS, use the special ebookmaker class x-ebookmaker-drop on the caption element:
<figure class="figcenter"> <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="" /> <figcaption class="x-ebookmaker-drop">Front Cover</figcaption> </figure>
There is no suitable cover - what shall I do?
You can use an image of the title page as a cover, or you can make a cover based on an illustration from the text, or you can make a cover from scratch.
If the PM supplied a hi-res version of the title page, process it as you would any other image, bearing in mind the pixel dimension and file size restrictions mentioned above, and save it as images/cover.jpg
If you decide to make a cover from scratch or including an illustration, there are detailed instructions in the PP guide to cover pages of how to do that using PhotoShop Elements and XnView. Alternatively, someone in the Illustrators thread or We've Got You Covered thread will probably be able to help out if this is all new to you.
If you created or modified the cover
Only if you created or modified the cover, PG requires that you add a Transcriber’s Note to that effect, using the following wording:
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.