Quote Graphics for Authors: How and Why You Should Create Them

People love quote graphics. They share them on most of the main graphic based social media sites, like Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. They are powerful, yet simple, ways to share emotions, thoughts, moods, and tips.

They are also incredibly easy to create.

At their simplest, all you need is a quote, and a background. You can make it as plain, or as fancy, as you want, but the goal is to create an end product that speaks to someone.

Why does this matter to writers?

One simple word: marketing.

You need to market and promote your work. But you don’t want to be too in-your-face about it. Creating quote graphics using quotes from your book is a subtle way to get your words and name out there. It’s a shareable promotional item that is easy to distribute, and when created thoughtfully, will tell potential readers a lot about your book.

Here are some simple steps to create quote graphics:

Choose Your Quotes

You want your quotes to be memorable and have a purpose. This can be used to show humour, or to show emotion, or to showcase something in your book.

Keep your quotes short. The best ones can be memorized easily, and are only a sentence or two long. You want to make a quick impression that feels the reader wanting more.

If your book is brand new, you’ll have to choose yourself which quotes you want to use. If it’s been out for a while, you can get an idea what quotes are resonating with readers by checking what Goodreads users have saved. To see that, go to the book page on Goodreads (doesn’t matter which edition, as long as they’re all linked), and scroll down. In the right column are the “extras” for the books, and if anyone has saved quotes, there will be a section for them. You can click there to go to a quote page which shows all the quotes saved, as well as how many Likes they’ve received.

Decide on Overall Feel

Before you choose the actual look of your graphic, plan what you want to do overall. What emotions and feelings do the quotes trigger on their own? Are you going to make all your graphics match for each book? Do you want to match the look to each quote?

Design Your Quote Graphics

Simple instructions, but not so easy to do. You need to choose your background, any frames or borders, and the fonts.

I tend to create general writing quotes for my social media accounts, so I choose my graphic and colours based on how the quote speaks to me, and how I’m feeling at the time. Using a light background will give a vastly different end product than a dark background, even if it’s the same quote and fonts.

When choosing colours, make sure there is lots of contrast between your quote and the background. If you can’t read the quote, the graphic is not useful. I judge the readability with this trick: after creating the graphic, I lean way back away from my screen and make sure it’s still legible and has the overall feel I’m going for.

For fonts, stick to only a few. I like to make the quote one font, and the name/title a second one. I include my website address in very small at the bottom, using the same font across all the graphics I make.

If you are using a quote from your book, make sure the graphic has the book title and your author name on it. You don’t want people guessing where the quote is from. You could also include a small version of the cover as well.

How to Create Quote Graphics

I tend to use Canva to create my quote graphics. They make it easy to create graphics and have a good selection of borders, frames, fonts and shapes you can incorporate.

I source most background photos from Pixabay as they are free, and have plain language licensing rules. Be sure to choose graphics that are licensed for commercial use (since you’re using them to promote a product for sale).

A quick note on size: I like to create one graphic for use across all social media platforms. For this reason, I make all my quote graphics square, at 800×800 pixels. This makes them universally usable across all the sites. You can make separate graphics and sizes for each platform, but people tend to be lazy, and won’t always stop to think whether the graphic they share is the right size and shape for that particular platform. Make it as easy for them as possible.

What to Do With Them

Once you have the quote graphics ready, what do you do with them? Simple: release them to the wild.

Post them on your Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest.
Create a page on your website to showcase them.
Include them in your newsletter.
Get them out where people can see and share them.

Want to pin this article? Here are some handy Pinterest-optimized graphics to choose from: