Canva for Self-published Authors: 5 Features You Need to Know

Ready to take your book promotion visuals from amateur to pro-quality? In this post, I share with you tips and strategy for creating engaging graphics even if you are not a designer. These tips can take your book promotion visuals to the next level – all using easy-to-use Canva features.

Learn how to design professional-looking book promotion visuals and social media posts with Canva, to give life to your self-published books!

1. Remove Image Background

Want to remove a background from your chosen image to use for your book cover, social media post, or promotion? You don’t have to be a graphic designer or learn PhotoShop. Use Canva Pro with ease straight from any design (you can get it for free for the first 30 days).

Follow these simple steps:

• Open up your workspace in Canva.
• Add the image you want to work with (use one of Canva’s images or choose an image from your computer, or folders).
• Click the “Effects” Tab on the top menu, above your image and choose “Background Remover” from the options.

• Sit back and watch how Canva is doing its job! Just in a few seconds, you will see your final image appearing on the screen with the background removed (white background). Canva first removes the background automatically, then you can touch up your image manually to improve the result if necessary, at all.

• Download your image. In order to have an image with a transparent background, you will need to download it as a PNG file. (tick the box)
• You can also save it straight to one of your Canva folders to use later. If you are going to have many pictures like this, create a separate folder titled Transparent/Stickers or similar.
• Use your image in your designs. Now you can use your image in any design you like – be it your book cover or social media post. In the following example, I’ve added a base yellow color for the background. Feel free to experiment with fonts and Canva “Effects” to make your design look more artistic.

2. Create a Book Cover

Before you start creating your book cover or even think about its general concept, you need to understand who your target audience is. Actually, you need to know that even before you start writing your book.

Answer the following questions:

• Is it a fiction or non-fiction book?
• What is the genre of your book: historical romance, thriller, and suspense, self-help, cookbook, kids book, etc.?
• Who will be your readers: gender, age, their beliefs, and interests?
• What are their professions and lifestyle?

When you have answers to these questions, you will have an idea of what your book cover should look like – colors, fonts, theme, etc. Read these book cover design tips to create a book cover that gets noticed.

Follow these simple steps:

• Open Canva on your desktop or launch the app to get started. Use this link to start directly in their book cover maker tool.
• Select the template that suits your book genre and mood the most.

• Customize your book cover design by changing colors, fonts and adding additional elements (icons, texts, and blocks) using Canva’s drag-and-drop design tools. Don’t use their templates without doing significant adjustments! Amazon is full of book covers that are created with Canva and look similar to each other.

• Take advantage of Canva’s many effects, font, and color combinations, shapes, backgrounds and other elements. In case you need pictures for your book cover, check out my list of 49 Free Stock Images Sites with Thousands of Good Quality Photos.
• Once you are satisfied with the result, download and save your book cover design as a JPG file and publish it on Amazon, any other online bookstore, or your web page. Use the file also to create a 3D book mockup to give your book a tangible look and start promoting it.

3. Create a Book Promo Banner With 3D Book Mockup

What if you need to create a Facebook ad but cannot afford to hire a designer?  Not a problem at all! Let’s go through it step-by-step!

Follow these simple steps:

• Choose the Facebook ad template or if you know the exact dimensions you want, select “custom” and insert your own dimensions.
• Click “Uploads” in the navigation bar and upload your book cover file.
• Now, to create your book mockup, click on “photos” from the left-hand side menu, and search for ‘book mockup’ in the search bar. Since I’m using Canva Pro, I have access to 400,000 free photos, illustrations, and templates to use in my designs.  (You can get a 30-day free trial of Canva Pro by clicking on this link).
• Choose an image like this. Or, if you don’t have Canva Pro find a similar image on Google. Preferably a PNG file with a transparent background.

• Drag it into your template and position it where you like.
• Drag your book cover file into your template, too, and place it on the book cover like this to create a sense of a tangible book.

• As the final step customize your background, add titles, call to action, and other marketing elements.

• When you are satisfied with the result, download your Facebook ad and start promoting your book! That’s it.

Don’t get too frustrated with your first efforts – but also don’t settle for something mediocre! Your ad has to be high-grade to build your brand and get results.

If you have a Canva Pro account, a cool thing that you can do is quickly resize this design so that it’s in the dimensions of another type of graphic and become suitable for other social media, as well. Just click on ‘resize’ from the menu up top, select the new graphic type, such as ‘Instagram post’, and then click on ‘copy & resize’.

That way with some small editing your book promo visual is ready to be used on Pinterest as well and you don’t need to go through the whole process one more time! Click on this link to get a 30-day free trial of Canva Pro.

4. Create a Book Promo Video

Go one step further and improve your Facebook ad with animations. Use Canva’ s animator tool to add animation effects to your book promo, like, bounce, slide, fade, 3D, and other effects. Even if you don’t really have that much design skills, you can create really beautiful animated graphics in a couple of clicks.

Follow these simple steps:

• Once your book promo design is complete you want to click anywhere off the design to let this “animate” button appear.
• Click on the button and it will open up all of these animation styles.
• So, all you have to do to animate it is to click on any element of your design and choose the animation effect.
• Go through and pick whichever element that you like – be it a text or a shape and add the animation effect if necessary. It is as easy as that. Just be careful not to use too many effects simultaneously. Otherwise, your video will look like a mess. It’s safer to use just one or two effects.
• How about a little music? From the audio library on Canva, add tracks that complement the final design. Alternatively, upload your own music and then incorporate it into the video.
• Once you are finished, download your video and post it on social media and other sites.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un4YnM9VPCw[/embedyt]

5. Plan Your Social Media Content with Canva Content Planner

Now that we have done a short review of Canva’s awesome features, let’s talk about one of Canva’s newest additions – the content planner!

Did you know that you can use Canva also for scheduling your posts to be posted on your Facebook Page, a Facebook group that you are an admin of, LinkedIn page, Twitter, and Pinterest?

You can do it either by clicking on the design that you want to schedule or through their content calendar. Simply click the date you want, and then choose if you will use one of your saved designs or create a new one for that date.

Canva is a great tool for self-published authors that provides all the functionality you need to create a book cover, promotional images, and even animated social media posts.

Click on this link to get a 30-day free trial of Canva Pro and access all its functionality already today!

Not sure if Canva is the right tool for you? Check out what Placeit features you can use for creating visuals for your book promotion.

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