Dressing up for the Holidays: Free Images to Help You Make Ebook Covers

There isn’t any one magic charm that forces readers to buy your book, but certainly a great cover will at least tempt them to linger and consider. If you’ve already put your ebook out into cyberspace with a less-than perfect cover, it’s not too late to make it better. I just ran across a site maintained by a professional stock photographer. http://1photos.com/ Has an abundance of beautiful images, all kinds, even people, which are rare in stock photography without payment. but here’s the statement brom the site owner:

“Hello, My name is Kiselev Andrey. I am professional stock photographer. And now I want to present 1photos.com – the big collection of free stock photographs. All of my photos are free for corporate and personal use. Every image is free! 1photos.com features exclusive images found nowhere else on the web with new pictures being added every week. Without even registering, you can browse archive and download all the images you need. Photos are not offered in different sizes, but the standard resolution is generally high resulting in large pictures.”

So dig in, and even if you don’t make your own covers, perhaps you can give your designer a heads-up about this wonderful site. Here are three covers I have remade using images from this site. They make me happy, like newly wrapped presents for Christmas. And I hope they will be more tempting for readers to unwrap.

Benny and the Bank Robber 2: Doctor Dad takes place roughly in the mid-eighteen hundreds, and involves three teenagers and some of their growing pains. I am so happy to have found a handsome young man in fancy dress for the Christmas ball at his school and two lovely young ladies to portray the twin sisters who make his life more than a little uncomfortable. Be sure to take a look at the Benny and the Bank Robber series, three books so far, if you have a younger reader looking for a historical adventure to grow up with. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/102416

At the beginning of the book Prince Tristan of Parangor attends his father’s funeral, trying to avoid the cold and drizzle with a dark wool cloak, so this image of a handsome, cloaked man was a happy find for me. Mayra, Tristan’s student and later his love interest, comes to life as this young beauty enslaved by a cruel mistress and trained against her will to please men. The royal seal of Parangor, a ring depicting a badger in a wheat field, goes with Tristan on all his journeys and puts its stamp on his identity, his marriage, and his right to return to his kingdom.  The Baron’s Ring is a Historical Fantasy dealing with bullying, child slavery and a Black Widow murderess who uses occult powers to try to destroy Tristan of Parangor’s kingdom and his life.  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/90923

For my first ever NaNoWriMo, venture, the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November, I decided to work on the sequel to A Dodge, a Twist, and a Tobacconist, and I made the goal by the 19th of the month. The story is not yet finished, but I was looking for Victorian-era images and was so happy to find these. Doctor Oliver Twist comes to life as the narrator of this tale, and even Pinocchio and his mama surprised me by living among the images on this wonderful site.

I hope you will consider putting some of our books, in new wrappings or old, on your giving list. They are all linked along the right side. Enjoy taking a look at what we have to offer.