Discovering 3D Book Mockups
After uploading Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit to my portfolio I realized that my website looked really rough. The previews of my book covers cropped oddly with the dimensions provided by the thumbnails and it made things look very sloppy and ambiguous. This is the year I decided that I wanted to focus on illustrating books. With that being my goal, I knew that I’d need to find a better way to display my work now and for the future.
I started with the idea of doing my own photoshoot and started planning places to photograph the books I have in print at the moment. Quickly, I ran into a few problems. It was taking a lot of time during my day to set up these staged photos, especially with destructive little helpers. I also found that I was lacking creativity, proper lighting, and a desire to really put in the effort for a GOOD product shoot. I’ve done product shoots in the past and know I can get the results I want but ultimately I’d rather spend my time making art rather than photographing it.
Then it hit me. All self-publishers couldn’t possibly also be wickedly talented product photographers on the side. There was no way that these perfectly lit and composed photos were being taken by EVERY person who wrote a book. Maybe half of them, but not all. So I did some digging and found a gold mine of resources in the form of 3D book mockups. I’ve listed my favorites below:
For very basic mockups, https://diybookcovers.com/3Dmockups/ is a great resource. You can save their files as a .png and insert your own custom background to better promote your work. I haven’t experimented with it but there are a lot of digital and traditional layouts that you can utilize here.
My favorite resource was https://covervault.com/. With Photoshop it makes editing book covers easy. I liked having the ability to customize my end result and further edit the layers provided with the files.
For another online option with a little more moodiness to it, I enjoyed using https://bookinmotion.com/book-mockups/. They have a lot of dramatically lit and composed layouts that will add a little spice to your books. Perfect to enhance those witchy vibes.
This last link is another easy online option with beautiful, professional backgrounds. They offer great previews both on digital (phones, tablets, computers) and traditional (books, magazines, etc) options. https://placeit.net/c/mockups/?f_devices=Book
I hope this helps some of you! This definitely was an exciting find for me and will be something I utilize in the future. I look forward to testing out some open book previews in the future with an art book I’m currently working on!
