I don't know a thing about book cover design!

When it comes to writing books, it seems that the first thing a new author thinks about is the cover of the book (I was exactly the same)... it doesn't really help that Wattpad places so much emphasis on the point that books which have covers are more likely to be read. What I'd like you to think about right now is this:- What is a book cover with no book?

That's right, a book cover without a book is just a pretty picture. By design, Wattpad will fix a blurred out image of your profile picture to the cover of your book until you specify an image to use as your cover in it's place. For the most part, this doesn't bother me... although there have been times when it's annoyed the crap out of me. Now, I have figured out a work around that I use for just this situation. What I do is take a photograph of my own and run it through the Wattpad Covers app or GIMP where I resize it to 256 pixels wide by 400 pixels tall (which is the size used by Wattpad.

From there, I add in the title of my book, followed by my author name and I save that to my computer before uploading it to Wattpad to remove the generic image that Wattpad uses.

If I'm brutally honest, the design of my cover at this point in the book is about as interesting to me as what you had for breakfast this morning. The reason for this is that, beyond this kernel of an idea, I have no idea how this book is going to turn out - or even if the book is going to turn out. One thing that you'll note about the image below is that only 2 of the books that you can see actually have covers at this point in time - and only 1 of those books has what I'd consider to be a proper cover. This is because I'm focussing more on the writing stage of these books as opposed to how pretty the cover looks - I can always create a cover at a later stage.

Sometimes, it is possible to be approached by members who make covers for you, you can request someone to make a cover for you within the Wattpad community or you could even make a cover yourself using the Wattpad Covers app, if it bothers you that much. I just feel that, at this point in the day, your energy is much better spent on getting the basics of your story in place.

It has been suggested that books without covers are less likely to be read by Wattpad members, however, I've not been able to find any evidence from my own experiences to either prove or disprove this "fact". I've found it to be an upward struggle no matter how I cut the cheese. Unless you happen to land lucky and fall right into the lap of a publisher or a promoter (which is a slim chance), it's going to be an uphill struggle to get those first reads regardless of what your cover looks like.

What is Wattpad?

I put together this button for my blog today (Note that this isn't a working button - the working button can be found to the right of my blog). Before I coded it up for use, I asked for constructive criticism on it since I plan on creating a bunch of them and using them for several jobs around the blog.

Anyway, one question that I get a lot is:- What is Wattpad? Since I plan on taking this blog in a slightly different direction, I think it's time that I answer this question right here on my blog.

Wattpad is a rather cool place where authors and readers gather to do what they do best - and that is write and read books. It comes as both a website and an app, so you can read while you are on the move as well as when you are in front of your computer. The app even allows you to write updates on the go, too... though you'll need an internet connection in order to publish your updates.

Many of my friends write and publish their work online for a living. Wattpad isn't like that though, because you don't get paid for the work you publish... but it can be a great resource for getting new books out there for a number of reasons. You don't have to wait to get feedback on your books in the same way as you would if you were to publish your book in the traditional way, you can get people talking about your book even before you decide to publish it as a traditional or Ebook, or even use it as a place to post teasers of books that you have already released traditionally.

As far as Wattpad goes, there are a lot of aspiring authors out there who write some truly remarkable work - and there are a few well known authors out there too (I'm not going to sit there naming them - you'll have to look for yourselves). My point is that it doesn't matter if you are a world renowned author or if you are lucky to get a poem published in the local newspaper - if you have a story to tell, then Wattpad is the place to tell it.

On a personal level, I've been writing off and on over there for 10 months now - and I love it. I know that I've had my ups and downs in my writing career over the past couple of years, but they have been related more to things outside of Wattpad rather than issues with Wattpad itself. My main issues have to be my own self confidence - but I intend to conquer that one way or the other.

What I like about Wattpad is that you don't have to write to read others' stories any more than you have to read to write your own stories - you get to be as involved or uninvolved as you want. I also like that you have the freedom to update as much or as little as you like. I currently have 6 books that I'm working on published (and many more in progress that you can't yet see). I have the freedom to write and publish a complete book, or I can take the more popular route of uploading a chapter at a time until I complete the book.

I also have the ability to edit the story in most any way that I choose without any issues - and no editor to tell me what I can or cannot have in my book, since I am my own boss.

If you'd like to join Wattpad, you can do so here:- https://www.wattpad.com - please tell them that BeckFletcher referred you in the box provided on the form.