Getting Your Book Covers to Look Right on Your Facebook Business Page

This post is primarily for those do-it-yourself authors out there, who, are stymied when trying to display your book covers on Facebook. I was, too. Facebook Help offered no guidance that I could find, nor did my efforts to “google”  the problem prove useful. Maybe after visits to a score of forums or so, I’d have come up with something on Google, but I fear the search would have proved daunting. I have figured out a way though and thought I’d share it with those of you who haven’t yet.  For those of you who have figured out a way to fix the problem, this post probably won’t interest you much. However, if you know a still better/simpler way, or if you’ve conquered the problem using a different graphic design software other than Paint Shop Pro, which I use, and you’d like to share your know-how, feel free to post in the comments section below. 

Now, for Charlsie’s method: 

The graphic box for uploading pictures to Facebook is a 180 pixel square. That means only the top portion of a book cover displays when the graphic is uploaded. To solve the problem, a book cover needs to display at 180X180. Since most covers are rectangular, mere resizing results in a distorted graphic. 

As stated above, the graphic design software I use is PaintShop Pro 8, but in theory, this method should work for any graphic design program. 

First, I created a graphic box 180X180. Then I colored that box with a background that blends nicely with my cover. Next I resized my front cover graphic to 180 pixels high, locked aspect ratio, which keeps the width in the same ratio as the height. My books are 6X9, so my finished graphic was 180X119 (or 120 to round it off nicely with no obvious distortion). I then selected the new little graphic, copied it, then selected my colored box, and pasted the image. The entire cover appears inside the box, framed on either side by a color complimentary to the cover. I saved the image, then uploaded it to my Facebook business page. 

Hope this helps some of you, 

Charlsie