In this article, we answer the most common questions from aspiring authors, while sharing the pros and cons of using Canva for authors.

We’ll also include the benefits Canva has for authors when it comes to:

• Promoting your books.
• Maintaining your author brand.
• And to help build your author platform.

But first our Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links that are at no cost to you & only on the products we use and recommend.

Okay, *rolls up sleeves* let’s do this…

What is Canva?

Created by a kite surfing Australian, Canva is a graphic design tool. Their company mission is: “… to empower the world to design…” and they do this so you don’t need to hire a graphic designer every time you want to post something on social media.

 

Can I use Canva for author promotions?

Yes. Once you have a book cover design you can use Canva for your book promotions in many ways. You can create posts for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, BookBub, Goodreads, and pretty much any other social media platform you use.

But there’s more…

 

Canva can also be used to create author’s merchandise:

To really help promote your author brand at your next book launch, using Canva you can create your own merchandise (author swag) such as:

• posters
• flyers
• banners
• even signs for the yard!
• tees
• sweatshirts
• hoodies
• presentation slides for author library talks
• print calendars
• tote (book) bags
• business cards
• labels and stickers
• notebooks and journals
• postcards and gift certificates
• coffee mugs

PROS: This sort of merchandise is great for book signing tours, conferences, or for mailing out to readers as exclusive author’s swag.

CONS: This merchandise is best for author promotions, and not a print on demand (POD) store supplier. If you want to create an online store for author merchandise, we recommend you compare prices etc with places like Redbubble, Teespring, or Shopify.

 

Can I use any image on Canva for my author marketing?

Canva contains a massive in-house visual library, giving you access to almost anything to suit you and your author brand in the way of still images, graphics, video, and audio! Your imagination has no limits with this tool.

But…

There is a licence issue you need to be aware of as an author.

 

 

 

Canva’s licensing details that authors need to know.

You can’t use any image off Google without having a licence of some kind as most images are protected under copyright laws, it’s like someone pirating your book and making it their own. It’s the same for images.

Canva provides copyright-free images, they also offer you a choice to either pay for each image or become a subscriber and become automatically covered under their licence.

BUT… Within their guidelines, they suggest you just don’t use the entire image, as is. If you do, you’ll want to acknowledge who the photographer is whenever you use that image. Or you can tweak that image to make it your own simply by adding your website address to the bottom of the image. You can also stretch it, flip it, or edit the colours for each photo you use, all with the aim to make it unique.

CONS: millions of people use the same free images, so do adjust the content to make it your own.

PROS: If you have a professional subscription, you’ll have licence coverage access to everything.

Can I use Canva for author branding?

Yes. One of the biggest rules for your author brand is keeping it consistent across all other platforms, from your website, newsletter, to social media.

With Canva, you can maintain this consistency easily enough with their re-sizing tool and brand kits.

You can use Canva to create your author brand for:

• Logos
• Colour schemes
• Style sheets
• The all-important letterhead for those pitches.
• Design ideas for your author’s newsletter.
• A gift certificate or make your own bookplates to post to readers.
• create templates for your social media posts to stay within your brand coz templates save you time. (I’m a big fan of templates)
• Canva even offers you a brand section to stop wasting time hunting for your font and colours.
• They also include a clever filter to match your brand colours to the images you’re searching for.

PROS: Canva makes it easier for you to keep all your images within your author brand’s guidelines.

CONS: The choices offered can be overwhelming if you don’t have a basic plan for your author brand.

 

Can I trademark my author logo created in Canva?

Some authors choose to create a logo as part of their author platform. You can create an author logo in Canva for anything. However, if you want to trademark your author logo, it’s recommended you use another source.

You can’t use Canva’s templates to create an author logo and trademark it. One of the reasons is Canva won’t sell the images at all to enable you to trademark your author’s logo.

You can create an author’s logo from scratch, just check you’re using copyright free fonts and images.

Or you can pay a professional graphic designer or template to create one for you, trademark it, then upload it into Canva to use across your author platform’s content. It’s what many authors do.

CONS: Sorry. If you are serious about creating a unique logo to trademark seek the help of a professional designer.

PROS: it’s relatively simple to create a basic logo with their templates.

  

Can I use Canva for my book cover?

If you plan to sell less than 2000 copies of your book in either E-book or print, then it’s considered fine. This is purely to do with the licensing for fonts and images used within Canva.

I don’t use Canva to create my fiction book covers, as I sell over 2000 copies. I bet you didn’t see that one coming!

For my fictional book covers, I use outside sources for images purely to keep me covered under their publishing licences. I also buy my own fonts. Or I specifically scout for copyright-free images or fonts for this purpose. I then put these ingredients together to make the book covers in Adobe. It’s probably the same tools your professional book cover designer uses.

I then upload my book cover images into Canva to make the various sized promotions for social media and any gifts I’d like to use for reader competitions, etc.

CONS & PROS: this depends upon how many books you plan to sell in the future.

PST: You can learn how to create your own book cover designs in SKILLSHARE, including the design classes on Canva.

Can Canva be used for writers and poets trying to build their platforms?

Abso-tootin’-lutely. Canva is more to do with keeping your brand consistent across your author platform. You can use Canva to create branded images for your website:

• hero images (you can then repurpose to your social media feeds with the aim of being consistent)
• the (non-trademarked) logo in your footer and headers
• the shape of your author avatar in your about page
• your press releases
• your author newsletter design
• then most, if not all, of your social media content.

 

Is Canva for authors, easy to use?

Canva offers a free design school, or you can take this easy course on basics to professional in a few hours at SKILLSHARE. There are also plenty of YouTube tutorials to help you.

As it’s a very intuitive programme, you can skip school and dive straight into their template library and feel your way around.

How can Canva help authors with their social media content?

In Canva, you can access it from your phone or PC to create an image, or a joke you just heard, or to design a book promotion while you’re waiting for tyres to get changed on your car.

You can then resize this image to share to any social media platform you use, all done within Canva itself.

That’s right, you can now post directly to your Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok account, or you can schedule an entire month’s worth of author content within Canva. Their easy-to-use planner offers ideas to post about, like International Taco Day.

Within their APPs features, you can generate mock-ups of your books, too. I found it rather limiting and clunky to use and prefer Envato’s Place-it for this purpose.

PROS: easy to access the app from the phone to create a post. Easy to resize images to suit all social media platforms at the push of a button. East to share or schedule to social media.

CONS: it’s easier to use and access all of their features and libraries from a PC.

 

What is the difference between paid or free Canva subscriptions for authors?

 There are both Pros and Cons to this…

Free is limiting but it still gives you the basics for all your social media needs. You will need to pay for images and manually resize them to suit your social media platforms as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc all have their own sizes. In this case, size does matter, purely for the way those platforms are designed. 

Paying for a Canva subscription allows access to every image, app, filter etc, including the professional publishing licence, and your fees go towards paying the supplying artists.

Ask any professional blogger what tool they use for their social media images.

Ask other author — or their assistant what they use.

Or just try it out for yourself, especially when creating your author brand for your author platform.

I can’t recommend Canva enough as I use it all the time for blogging and promoting my books.

So, the final pros and cons to using Canva for authors

CONS:

Being aware of the imagery and font licensing laws when creating book covers.

There is no exclusivity with their images, it’s how you use them that matters.

You are unable to trademark any logo.

PROS:

It saves you time.

Ease of access to the tool.

For example, I can take a photo on my phone and upload it to Canva to add to my author-branded templates. From there I can post it to my social media posts or schedule it for later.

Few graphic design tools can do this.

And Canva is constantly evolving to keep up with social media trends, making your author marketing easier, so you can get back to doing what you love—writing your next bestseller.

Try Canva pro for free to make up your own mind HERE>>