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One can purchase a package that will produce images of covers, rotated to an angle, with your images and text in place.

Before purchasing such a package, I contemplated rolling-my-own to produce a limited set of images, one for each of the four categories in my store.

I reasoned that the package would be fine when I wanted an individual image for each product, but expensive if I merely need four generic images.

I took a legal size sheet of paper to make a dust jacket around one of my redundant copies of H. G. Wells’s “Outline Of History”. The legal sheet is a tad too wide but we’ll fix that later.

On the front of the jacket I marked a rectangle 1cm in from each edge. This rectangle will hold my image.

On the spine of the jacket I marked a space for the spine title.

Here you can see the title and image locations.

I laid out the legal sheet flat. The spine title and cover image locations are visible.

I work best with concrete images. I have written a title and drawn an image so that I can maintain the correct orientation of the paper.

In Microsoft Word I created a table four columns wide and two rows deep.

My spine title and cover image will occupy columns 2 and 4 respectively, in the second row.

The table cells have yet to be sized.

On the legal paper I measured distances in centimeters from the left and top edges of the paper.

Note that my measurements are from the physical edge. Thus, with a 1 cm left margin, the “16 cm from the edge” becomes “15 cm from the left margin”.

I transferred these measurements to my table in Microsoft Word.

I printed the resultant table on the back of my legal sheet (don’t waste good paper!)

I wrapped the printout around my book, to check the measurements.

The excess paper is clear and visible at the top edge of the dust jacket.

I used a spreadsheet to determine by how much I should Stretch/Squeeze my chosen image in Microsoft paintbrush.

Turns out 50% reduction each way will do the trick.

Ah! isn’t he cute!

I chose a portrait-orientation from my stock of digital images, trimmed it, and reduced it by 50% each way.

I inserted (linked) the image into the image cell in my table.

I used Microsoft WordArt to generate a spine title, sized and rotated it to fit in the spine title cell.

Printed it out – looking good!

I wrapped the dust jacket around the book.

I have folded that excess paper width inside the covers, but in my eagerness, have made a rotten job of trimming the excess above the spine.

Here’s how it looks stacked atop some more of my redundant copies of H. G. Wells’s “Outline Of History”.

At this point it was time for tea.

My theory is that I can take a digital photograph of this jacket-wrapped book against a plain white background, and use THAT image as the icon for the category “eBooks” in my store.

I would follow this procedure three more times for the other categories “Software” (using a box and a programming image), “Services” (using a posed photograph of some of my colleagues), and “Training” (using an image of my office desk).

I know, I know, “Don’t give up your day job .....”

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