I have hemmed and hawed over book covers, specifically pre-made. It sounds so easy. Just a few dollars and wham bam I’ve got a cover! Or if you use Createspace’s cover creator it’s free. However, many people say that the cover creator pumps out boring covers that are easily attributed to the creator bot. What says you? I used their creator for my poetry book, as it doesn’t require anything super fancy:

The cover creator is customizable in certain regards, such as changing any of the text and some of the placement but not entirely changeable, so what you see will be what you get basically. You have to be happy with their offerings to go with the cover creator.

Back to pre-mades. There are tons of sites devoted to pre-made and custom-made covers. Even Amazon will devote their design team to making you a unique cover, for a hefty fee of course. If you go with a pre-made, all you get to do is add your name and title and barcode. The image is as is, no changing. What if you want more shadows? Nope. What if you want less blue? Nope. Perhaps some of the artists will work with you on their pre-mades but then there definitely will be a customizing fee added on.

There is also literature out there that warns about the cons of pre-made covers. Are they used more than once? Sometimes. I’ve seen elements used more than once in multiple pre-mades as well. Here’s an article that breaks down the everything that can go wrong will scenarios when considering a pre-made cover for your next novel:

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1307192-beware-of-pre-made-covers

So what to do? Well, if you can and your budget is drop dead nothing, do it yourself! Here is a website with a list of other websites where you can find images to use in your cover creation.

Making a book cover –http://www.blueglass.co.uk/blog/30-free-image-websites-creative-commons-royalty-free/

You can also commission someone with photoshopping skills to help you out. Or find one of those random artists online to make you a custom cover, but beware the internet my friends!