As a newbie author I would love to shell out money to have my own marketing team. It would be a nice dream. Millions of people becoming hooked and buying my book. My novel being made into a movie or TV show. Not only can't I afford a marketing team, but it isn't realistic to have one just for me.
I decided to show you how I created my own teaser images for free instead. This won't be step by step. You can search google to find instructions on some of the things I talk about.
The first thing you need to decide is what do you want the teaser to say.
I recommend either a quote or a line from your book or a few lines from your book. You can also tell us what your book is about. I'm going to build my own right here for you to see. Mine will be a line from my book:
I turned on the lights to my dorm room. My whole world shattered. Karen Bakke’s bed was stripped clean. I threw open her closet doors and checked her dresser, but everything she owned was gone. (Superior Species Book 2: Finding Karen)
Now that I've decided my line, I need to be able to edit an image.
I recommend getting GIMP 2. It's a free photo editing software. It reminds me a lot of Adobe Photoshop. You can also search online for other free photo editing software or you can use paint. My computers has Windows so I'm not sure what will work for Apple.
Finding an image.
There are plenty of website with images out there for you to use and pay for. I've found a few websites which give use for free under complete Creative Commons CC0 license. You can do almost whatever you want with them. You can read about it more here. If you know anymore, drop me an email, and I'll add to this tutorial.
https://www.pexels.com/ - each picture will say if it is part of the CC0
https://pixabay.com/ - each picture will say if it is part of the CC0 (This one you have to join.)
https://www.ukwebhostreview.com/free-stock-photo-sites - a website that has several places to go for free pictures and rates them. Check it out!
You don't necessarily need an image. You can use your book cover and paste it into a background. Play with the background behind the cover.
I searched for three images which might fit. Simple as that. Do the same for your teaser. Don't use naked images.
I think everyone can guess two of the words I used. World and Bed. I found a picture of Earth which I liked. I didn't use bed because that is more for romance.
Making your teaser.
You need to decide what size to use. Mine are 800 pixels by 800 pixels. You can also do a rectangle image. I wouldn't recommend anything with strange shapes.
Depending on what image you decide will depend on how the text is written. Mine has a lot of black in it so I can either lighten the image or add an accent. I did the later. To lighten it "opacity", you click on the image and change the percentage. I recommend you do this after you have your words written. You need to be able to read the words.
Play around with the photo editor until you figure out what you like. Create layers so you use them later for other teasers. You want to make sure your can read everything and it doesn't hurt your eyes.
This is mine:
The one thing bad about GIMP is you can't save the images as a jpg. I recommend copying an image with the name you want. Export the final image and save over it.
Have fun with it, and don't over think anything. If your books aren't selling make more teasers. I usually do four teasers and a few before the book comes out.
After the book is out I throw in the amazon logo for sales.
-K.A.