The only way to ensure that you have a one hundred percent original, and copyright infringement free cover for your book is to either make it yourself with all your own images, or purchase a bespoke artwork, specifically created for you. Not everyone is inclined to create their own, and bespoke book covers are very expensive, so many Indies use images bought, or downloaded for free online. Before we actually use these covers, there are a couple of things that we need to know.

All photos and images found online are automatically protected by copyright. If you download any picture without permission or payment, thinking that if you just fiddle with it a bit and change it with a bit of judicious rendering it will be alright, that isn’t true, and you are infringing on the copyright of its owner, and could find yourself in quite a bit of expensive…