When it comes to book ads, designing creative that’s enticing is more than half the battle. Your ad image plays a huge role in whether readers are driven to click on your ad and, hopefully, go on to purchase your book. Because of this, you’ll want to ensure you’re designing ads that readers want to click.
The idea of creating your own ad images may be daunting, especially if you don’t have a background in graphic design. That being said, there are many book ad design tools out there to help you get the job done. There’s something out there for everyone, no matter your artistic capabilities.
If you’re having trouble deciding on what tools to use to construct the perfect ad image, look no further. We’ve compiled a list of book ad design tools you can use to create your next ad.
1. Canva
Canva is a service that can help anyone — even design beginners — easily create beautiful ad images. They offer a plethora of templates, fonts, and images you can combine via their drag-and-drop interface.
- Low effort customization: Canva’s intuitive platform offers tons of customizable elements you can easily drag onto your image and arrange however you like. Easily choose from among many fonts, background images, and single-color or gradient backgrounds, all in any colors you want.
- Aesthetically pleasing pre-made designs: There are a number of pre-made templates available on Canva that you can use to design your ad, or simply use for inspiration.
- Large graphic and stock photo catalog: You can easily search for images right through the platform. Canva has a wide selection of free photos, as well as some premium images that cost as little as $0.99.
- Free (unless you want more features): You can use Canva for free, or upgrade to a pro membership for more features, such as transparent images, the ability to organize past designs into different folders, or their one-click resizing tool. They offer a free 30-day trial of their Pro Membership, so you can try it out to see if this tier is something that’d be useful to you.
Canva is best for advertisers who want a lot of customization options and flexibility when creating their ads.
Here are some helpful resources on designing ads with Canva:
2. Book Brush
Book Brush is a tool dedicated to making ad images specifically for books, so creating an ad image is straightforward — you don’t have to sort through other types of image options that different design tools may offer.
- 3D book cover creation: If you’re hoping to include a 3D version of your book’s cover in your ad design, Book Brush can help. All you need to do is navigate to the “Book Template” section and upload a flat, 2D cover image. Then, you’ll be given the option to make this cover 3D for your ad image.
- Instant Mockups: Upload your book cover and quickly insert it into professional, beautiful photo backdrops, such as on the screen of a tablet that’s placed on a coffee table. You can try a limited number of Instant Mockups with the free plan, or upgrade to a Plus Plan for more options.
- Fill-in-the-blank ad creation: Book Brush offers Community Templates, which are essentially premade book ad designs with various backgrounds that only require you to plug in your book’s cover and any text you’d like to add. They also have a few filter options, such as genre and ad platform, so you can easily choose a design that best suits your needs. These templates are available through their Plus Plan.
- Pricing: With Book Brush’s free plan, you have three free image downloads per month and limited access to templates, images, and the Instant Mockup tool. If you’d like to download unlimited ad images and access all of the templates and Instant Mockup images Book Brush has to offer, you can upgrade to their Plus Plan, which costs a yearly fee of $96.
For advertisers who would be more comfortable on a platform with limited design options specific to book ads, Book Brush is for you.
To learn more about Book Brush, check out these links:
- How To Create Eye-Catching BookBub Ads Images with Book Brush
- Book Brush Features
- Tools for Authors: How to Make Ads With Book Brush
- How to Create Fun Graphics With Your Book Cover
- How to Design Book Images for Marketing & Social Media Like a Pro
3. BookBub’s ad creation tool
BookBub Ads is an auction-based advertising platform that allows partners to market book content to our readers through our newsletter and on BookBub.com. Authors can design creative for their BookBub Ads campaigns right in the ads set up form by clicking “Build New Creative.” This creative builder simply requires authors to select one of four templates and plug in a few details about their book: the cover, 60 characters of text, and the words they’d like to appear in the call-to-action button.
- It takes seconds: Creating your ad image is as easy as clicking a template, uploading your book cover, and typing in your text.
- Minimal editing required: Our simple designs means you don’t have to make too many choices about different design elements.
- Convenient: The creative builder is built into the BookBub Ads set-up form, so you don’t need to navigate to multiple websites to create your ad image for a BookBub Ads campaign.
- Pricing: There isn’t a cost associated with using the creative builder to design your ad image.
If you’re overwhelmed by the idea of choosing every individual component of your ad image, the BookBub Ads creative builder could be a good fit for you. You’ll be able to create simple ad images that include all of the crucial elements without worrying too much about customization.
You can read this tutorial to learn how to set up an ad using our creative builder, and check out more examples for design inspiration!
4. RelayThat
RelayThat is a web application that allows you to design one image that’s automatically adapted into different layouts for use on different platforms in just one click. When designing your image, you can choose from various premade themes (called “workspaces”) to get started on your design. These workspaces can be swapped out to achieve a variety of ad images.
- Pre-made layouts: RelayThat offers pre-designed workspaces so you don’t have to design each individual ad image. You can use the premade designs they offer to save the time and energy you’d normally put in creating a new ad.
- Ease of resizing: Want to promote a discount via a BookBub Ad, your Facebook cover photo, and an Instagram post? Instead of creating new images from scratch for each ad type or social media platform, RelayThat allows you to create one design and easily convert it into different dimensions. This can also help you maintain your author brand across multiple platforms.
- Pricing: RelayThat costs a one-time membership fee of $49 for five workspaces, with higher tiers for agencies and enterprise businesses.
Authors who advertise across different platforms may want to consider RelayThat for its ease of use when it comes to resizing and formatting images for different websites.
To learn more about RelayThat and how you can use it, take a look at these resources:
- How to Rapidly Create Branded Graphics to Promote Your Content
- How to Create One Month of Social Media Posts in Under Three Hours
- Rapid Graphic Design Tool For Non-Designers
5. Photoshop
Photoshop is an image editing software by Adobe. It’s considered a standard tool for many graphic designers and it certainly has all the functions needed to create an ad image.
- Advanced editing capabilities: Not all image platforms allow you to add special effects to an image. With Photoshop, you can make incredibly specific edits and transformations that can’t be done with programs that have premade designs.
- Creative control: You have the power to completely customize your ad image to be exactly what you’re looking for.
- Large network of users: Because Photoshop has been around so long and is considered an industry standard, it’s easy to find tutorials and guides on how to execute specific designs.
- Pricing: Photoshop has an annual subscription fee of $239.88.
Photoshop is best for those who want to dive into the world of graphic design and create their own completely customized images.
If you’re new to Photoshop and want to know how to create custom images yourself, check out these tutorials:
- How to Design Stunning Social Media Graphics With Photoshop
- How to Make a Logo in Photoshop: Best Video Tutorials to Help You
- How To Make a Banner Advertisement in Adobe Photoshop
6. A freelance designer
If you’d prefer to have someone else take care of the visual side of your ad, hiring a freelance designer may be a good choice for you.
- Professional results: Someone who has experience in graphic design will have a strong idea of what images and colors work well together. They’ll be able to create a polished design from scratch for you.
- Personal attention: Working directly with an artist means you’ll be able to convey what matters most to you in the design and ask about any questions or concerns you have.
- Results that are true to your vision: It can be difficult to achieve the specific look you’re going for, especially if you’re not artistically inclined. Someone with a design background can help you bring your vision to life in a way you may not be able to execute yourself.
- Pricing: The rates for graphic designers vary widely, and can depend on which service you’re using to find a designer (see some recommendations below!). Many book cover designers can also create ad image templates for additional fees.
For advertisers who are willing to invest in professional images or aren’t comfortable designing images themselves, a graphic designer is the way to go.
If you’re interested in hiring a freelance designer, check out some of these sites to get connected to a designer:
Ready to design your own ads? Check out these book advertising examples for inspiration or create a BookBub Ads campaign to try our creative builder!
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