The author photo, and where it belongs
Nothing on a book is amateur in so small a space as a bad author photo. It is one element, a couple of inches across, and it can undo a cover that took weeks.
Where it actually appears
The back cover of nonfiction and memoir. This is the place readers expect one, and the reason is trust. A how-to book, a business book, a memoir — the reader is deciding whether to take your word for something, and a face helps them decide. See What goes on the back cover.
Rarely on the back of a novel. Fiction back covers are mostly blurb, and a photo takes room the blurb wants. Established authors do it. Debut novelists usually should not.
Essentially never on the front of a novel. If you are tempted, the answer is no.
The about page inside the book. This is the standard home for it in fiction — a short bio in the back matter, photo optional, and the place a reader who just finished the book goes looking.
Your website, your store profiles and any press kit. Amazon Author Central, Goodreads, your newsletter, a bookshop event listing, a podcast booking. See The author website, reduced to what it needs.
What separates one that works
A plain background. A wall, a blurred outdoor background, a bookshelf that is not fighting you. A busy background is the single most common failure, because a photo an inch and a half wide has no room for two subjects.
A face large enough to read at print size. This is the second most common failure and it is worse than people expect. A back cover of a 6 × 9 paperback is six inches wide and already carrying a blurb, an imprint mark and a barcode block that is 2 × 1.2 inches on its own. Whatever is left for your photo is small, so crop tight — head and shoulders, not a full-length shot on a beach.
Lighting that does not shadow the eyes. Overhead sun and ceiling downlights put the eyes in shadow, and a reader cannot connect with a face whose eyes they cannot see. Soft light from the front, slightly above, is what you want; an overcast day outdoors or a window indoors does it for free.
A neutral or warm expression. Not a rigid smile held for the third minute of a session. A half-smile beats a grin, and something relaxed beats both.
Clothing without loud patterns. Fine stripes and small checks can shimmer when printed, and a strong pattern pulls attention away from your face. Plain colors, nothing that dates fast.
A crop that matches the book. A business book and a horror novel do not want the same photograph. Consider what the reader will have just seen on the front, and do not hand them a different person.
In the Cover Maker. Place the photo on the back cover and it is checked against the size it will really print at, flagging anything under 200 DPI, while the live safe-area guide keeps it clear of the trim and away from the reserved barcode block. Start a book → · about the Cover Maker
The technical requirements
Enough pixels for the printed size. Print targets 300 DPI, so a photo printed two inches wide needs about 600 pixels across, and three inches needs about 900. Those are small numbers by camera standards and large ones by social-media standards — a photo downloaded from a social platform has been shrunk and recompressed on the way and is frequently not enough. Get the original file from whoever shot it. See Resolution: why a good-looking image prints badly.
Supplied in color, checked in grayscale. Book interiors print in black ink, so an about-the-author page reproduces your photo in gray whatever you supply. Convert a copy to grayscale and look at it: photographs that depend on color contrast — a red top against green leaves — can collapse into one flat tone. If it does, you need a different frame, not a filter. The back cover is printed in color, so the same file serves both, but check it both ways once.
A square crop for profiles. Store and social profiles crop to a square or a circle, usually centered, and a photo composed with your face off to one side loses half of it. Make a square version deliberately rather than letting a website do it badly.
The practical part
Pay a photographer if you can. A local portrait session is one of the cheapest things in a book budget and the difference is visible instantly. If you cannot, a friend with a decent phone, a window and twenty minutes of patience beats anything taken at arm's length.
No selfies, no cropped wedding photos. An arm's-length angle is unmistakable, and so is the piece of someone else's shoulder at the edge of the frame. Readers notice both, and both say the book was assembled rather than made.
Use the same photo everywhere. Book, website, store profile, newsletter, event listing. Recognizability is the entire point — a reader who saw you on a podcast should find the same face on the shelf. Changing it per platform quietly throws that away.
Keep the credit line. Ask the photographer how they want to be credited and keep it with your files. A photo credit belongs on the copyright page, and if you licensed the image rather than owning it, the terms live there too. See What belongs on a copyright page.
Update it when it stops looking like you. A photo a decade out of date is a small dishonesty a reader discovers at your first event. Five years is a reasonable outside limit, sooner if your appearance has changed.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: What goes on the back cover · More: Resolution: why a good-looking image prints badly · Mistakes that mark a book as self-published · The author website, reduced to what it needs