This App Saves Indie Authors HOURS!
Canva Pro is a tool I talk about in number of posts. I love this app. I couldn’t do what I do without it. But I also know it’s one of those tools I can get lost in, letting my creative juices. As an Indie Author, it saves me hours of time in creating all the pesky images we self-publishers need to manage for ourselves. If I ever had to choose an app to give up, Canva Pro would be one of the last on the list.
Here’s what I use Canva for, as an Indie Author:
- Book Cover Images
- Marketing posts for Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
- Sell Sheets
- Book Quotes
- Promo Graphics
- Blog Post Images
- Business Card graphics
- Testimonials
I created my book cover images for both Camino Wandering and Beneath the Surface in Canva Pro. Not to mention the covers for my short stories.
For Camino Wandering, I used an image I took while on my personal Camino and then added the fonts and background page to match it.
For the Beneath the Surface cover, I used an image I found in Canva then played around with the look and feel. I didn’t intend to go with a pool of blood for the cover. I had a cover in mind but could not find the right image for it. (Who knew trying to find the right red suitcase sitting by a colonial front door would be so difficult to find!) Still, I’m quite happy with how it came out in the end.
Why I love Canva… let me count the ways.
Why do I believe all Indie Authors will love Canva? Because the apps makes graphic creation easy.
I can create social media graphics for marketing, sell sheets for my novels (which I then send to booksellers) and images for my book covers. And all of those can be created in ONE day if I needed to.
To do most of these things, Canva provides templates. For example, say I need a graphic to post on Instagram for av book promotion. I can use a template Canva provides, replacing the images in the template that I need to use, updated the text and if I don’t like the fonts, I can change them with a pull-down menu.
But here is my favourite feature: Canva allows you to ‘resize’ your image to whatever specifications you need.
When I have my image created, I can ‘resize’ that graphic to create a duplicate post for other social media formats. For example, I can take an image I’ve created for Instagram and ‘resize’ it for Facebook, and another for Pinterest, creating both new images to each application’s format sizing. I can tweak the graphic, if I need to, but otherwise they are ready to download and post.
The same goes for book cover images. I can use graphics found in Canva, or upload ones I own. I can use a template the app provides or create an image from scratch (it’s easier and faster with templates). Once I have the image the way I want, I then resize the image to the whatever size the distribution template requires.
If you want to try it, you can for free.
The free version is a great place to start, to play around, but if you tend to create marketing images a lot, then I recommend you go with Canva Pro. The Pro version offers more advanced tools that allow better control I need to perfect my designs and it includes a lot of higher end images (one of which is the blood image on Beneath the Surface). Canva Pro offers a free 30-day Pro trial, so check it out.
Here are three other posts where I talk about Canva:
- 7 Steps to Self-Publish a Book
- 7 Apps All Indie Authors Need to Write a Novel
- 10 Tips for Creating a Book Cover
PLEASE NOTE: Affiliate links were used in this post. I do not promote anything I have not used or experienced myself or had recommended highly to me. All opinions are my own. Please follow our advice at your own risk. By clicking these links allows this website to continue running. For that, I thank you.