Smartphone Apps for Writers: Covers by Wattpad

One of the neat things about posting your work at Wattpad is that you get to add your own cover art – which, if you’re like me, is a complete afterthought. But Wattpad has come to the rescue with an app that allows you to create a cover for your story while you’re on the go. (Wattpad also has an app that allows you to write a story on your phone or tablet. I can delve into that in a later post, if there’s any interest.)

I have an iPhone, so I found Wattpad Covers in the Apple App Store. There is also a version for Android. I had trouble getting into the app on my iPad, so I’m going to show you what it looks like on the iPhone – and I’ll tell you right now that it does a perfectly adequate job of whomping up a quick cover for your story.

The first thing you see when you open the app is the screen above. Each of the big photos is a category, and there are lots more than these three – just scroll down until you find one you like. I’m just trying it out, so I picked the Samples category. Again, scrolling down shows you all the available photos in that category.

You’ll note the icons at the bottom of this first screen. The one on the left will pull up the photos stored on your phone; the middle one allows you to use your phone camera to take a photo to use right away; and the one on the right allows you to search using keywords. I used the word “moon” and got tons of photos to choose from.

Anyway, back to my test. In the Samples, this shot of a Gothic churchyard appealed to me, so I tapped it – and this editing screen popped up.

Again, your tools are at the bottom of the screen. You can crop the photo, use a filter, and add text. The other two buttons are Undo and Redo. Clicking the Text button brings up a virtual keyboard. Just delete the sample title and type in your own. Clicking the Text button again brings up a second box at the bottom for your name. The “By:” shows up by default, together with your Wattpad user name, but you can edit it just as you did with the sample title text.

The icon that looks like an eye dropper lets you pick the color for your title and author name. I just poked at it ‘til I got a color I could live with; someone with a more sophisticated thumb than mine may be less random about it. The “Aa” with a circle around it is for picking your font size and style. I didn’t grab a screen shot of it, sorry. But there are three lists to scroll through. The one on the left allows you to left-justify, center, or right-justify your text; the one on the right picks your font size; and the one in the middle is the list of fonts. When you’re done messing with it, click Done.

The filters do various things to the photo (but not to the title or author name, as far as I could tell). You can scroll through the list of filters at the bottom of the screen and see whether one of them makes the photo fit your story better. When you’ve got it the way you want it, click Apply. If you hate them all, click Cancel.

Once you’re done playing with it, click Save, and your cover will be stored in the app. You can now click Assign on the bottom, bring up a list of your stories on Wattpad, and link the cover image to your story. If you’d rather, you can use the “upload” icon (on the left at the bottom of the screen) and email it to yourself, save it to your photos on your phone, and so on. And if you decide you don’t want to keep it at all, you can delete it by tapping the trashcan icon on the bottom right.

One caveat with this app: I would not recommend using Covers for anything other than a story on Wattpad unless you’re using a photo you took yourself. My guess is that Wattpad has a deal with the photographers of their stock photos, and that deal is not going to extend to you grabbing one of their fabulous shots and, say, uploading it to KDP.

In any case, it’s a fun thing to play around with. Enjoy your Covers!

Author: Lynne Cantwell

Lynne Cantwell grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan. She worked as a broadcast journalist for many years; she has written for CNN, the late lamented Mutual/NBC Radio News, and a bunch of radio and TV news outlets you have probably never heard of, including a defunct wire service called Zapnews. But she began as a fantasy writer (in the second grade), and is back at it today. She currently lives near Washington, DC. Learn more about Lynne at her blog and at her Amazon author page. View all posts by Lynne Cantwell