[Tex/LaTex] How to design a book cover

book-designcovers

Can anyone share his or her experience on designing a book cover? I just finished writing my "Awk One-Liners Explained" e-book and now I am designing the cover. I tried \maketitle and the result was pretty ugly (see screenshot below). I'd appreciate any tips on designing book covers.

bad looking book cover

Best Answer

Here is a poor man's solution! Cover and title pages should ideally be designed by a graphics artist, as most of us are really challenged in this area! (If you have not watched this brilliant TED Talk by Book Cover Designer Chip Kidd, I advise you to watch it as you can gain a lot of insight into book cover design).

enter image description here

The code follows:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{graphicx}
%\usepackage{fancyvrb}
\begin{document}
\clearpage
%% temporary titles
% command to provide stretchy vertical space in proportion
\newcommand\nbvspace[1][3]{\vspace*{\stretch{#1}}}
% allow some slack to avoid under/overfull boxes
\newcommand\nbstretchyspace{\spaceskip0.5em plus 0.25em minus 0.25em}
% To improve spacing on titlepages
\newcommand{\nbtitlestretch}{\spaceskip0.6em}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{center}
\bfseries
\nbvspace[1]
\Huge
{\nbtitlestretch\huge
AWK ONE LINERS EXPLAINED}

\nbvspace[1]
\normalsize

TO WHICH IS ADDED MANY USEFUL ONE\\
LINERS AND CODE SO THAT\\
YOU CAN AWK LIKE A HAWK
\nbvspace[1]
\small BY\\
\Large PETERIS KRUMINS\\[0.5em]
\footnotesize AUTHOR OF ``A WORKING ALGEBRA,'' ``WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY,\\
ITS HISTORY, THEORY AND PRACTICE,'' ETC., ETC.

\nbvspace[2]

\includegraphics[width=1.5in]{./graphics/pic37}
\nbvspace[3]
\normalsize

DOHA\\
\large
PUBLISHED IN THE WILD
\nbvspace[1]
\end{center}
\end{document}
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