Digital Pubbing

Exploring the ins and outs of the publishing industry

Design

Thinking About Book Covers

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Having a good book cover is an important aspect of indie publishing. The cover is the first thing your reader will see, and if the cover speaks to them, they'll be more likely to try out your book. Author M. J. Patrick has a great post that shows a cover, and asks you what you think of the book, based only on the cover (such as who's the audience for this book, and what's … [Read more...] about Thinking About Book Covers

Guest Post: What Color Can Do for Your Website as an Indie Author

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By Josh Wardini Color is an important but often underrated facet of web design and marketing. Be it a massive international corporation, or a small independent venture, businesses can profit from using color choices in strategic ways. What’s more, the wrong color choice can damage your chance at success, affecting anything from brand image to CTA button efficiency, they can … [Read more...] about Guest Post: What Color Can Do for Your Website as an Indie Author

Guest Post: How to Make Professional Looking Covers for Your Ebooks with DesignCap

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By Rita Fong Self publishing is now getting easier than ever. Here the question arises: how do you make your ebook stand out from massive others? As an old Chinese saying goes, Clothes make the man. An eye-catching ebook cover will help you to hook people to read. But here is another question you need to consider: How do you make your ebook covers? Hire a designer, do it … [Read more...] about Guest Post: How to Make Professional Looking Covers for Your Ebooks with DesignCap

Indie Authors: High Quality Book Covers

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When it comes to selling books, having an eye-catching cover is high on the list of getting more readers and buyers. But there's a lot to consider. Should you make the cover yourself? Hire a designer? Use stock photos? To help with this process, BadRedHeadMedia recommends planning everything in advance, including researching your options and coming up with a budget. Also … [Read more...] about Indie Authors: High Quality Book Covers

Design Tips and Tricks

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Design is an important of any aspect. For indie authors, this could mean books or websites, or any other digital or physical products they sell. With that in mind, here are some design tips and tricks, in case you feel like learning a new skill! Read about the latest features in Adobe InDesign, which can help with book design Learn about design systems with Atomic … [Read more...] about Design Tips and Tricks

Photos, Stickers, Animation, and More: A Collection of Visuals for Authors

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When it comes to marketing, visuals are all important--both online and off. Photos Photos are great for blogs as well as for books. Make sure you have the rights to use those photos. That's where stock images come in handy. "4 Incredible Free Sources for Photos to Use in Your Book or Blog" on The Book Designer Stock Up (About Stock Up) Pexels "Wikimedia Commons … [Read more...] about Photos, Stickers, Animation, and More: A Collection of Visuals for Authors

Ebook Formatting Options for Indie Authors

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For indie authors, one great way to save money when it comes to publishing your books is to learn how to make your own ebooks. Personally, when it comes to creating ebooks, I recommend using Sigil, and I teach an online course on Udemy on how to use Sigil and other free tools to create your own beautiful ebooks. But there are a myriad of other options. Below are some … [Read more...] about Ebook Formatting Options for Indie Authors

Thinking About Design

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Good design can mean the difference between someone purchasing your product/book and passing on it. There's a lot of emphasis on UX/UI design now, and the concepts can be applied to anything you sell. Design and Words "9 simple but powerful UX writing tips for designers" on Medium: Make clear lists, scannable content, and links "Design words with data" on Medium: Use … [Read more...] about Thinking About Design

Guest Post: 5 Money-Saving DIY Design Tricks for Self-Publishers

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You decided to put your thoughts to paper and have a manuscript that you deem worthy of publication. However, you do not want to pay a company to use expensive and proprietary software to make your book stand out among the rest of the books on a book store shelf or on Amazon. Here are 5 do-it-yourself design tricks that will save you money. Templates Use existing layouts and … [Read more...] about Guest Post: 5 Money-Saving DIY Design Tricks for Self-Publishers

Guest Post: Unleash the Power of Adobe Photoshop

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Adobe Photoshop is a powerful, flexible tool that allows you to create great art and graphics. Read on for how to learn more about taking advantage of all of Adobe Photoshop's features. By Brenda Barron Photoshop gives you the tools to accomplish some amazing image editing techniques without having specialist knowledge, so think what you could achieve with a few handy … [Read more...] about Guest Post: Unleash the Power of Adobe Photoshop

FotoJet, an Online Collage Maker, Graphic Designer, and Photo Editor

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Visuals are an important aspect of building platforms. Think about it. What is more likely to catch your eye on Twitter or Facebook? A few words and maybe a link, or a strong image that conveys a message? There's a reason for the idiom, "a picture is worth a thousand words." With that in mind, I recently had the chance to try out a new graphics platform, called FotoJet. … [Read more...] about FotoJet, an Online Collage Maker, Graphic Designer, and Photo Editor

A Look at Interactive Ebooks

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Interactive, multimedia ebooks are starting to gain some traction. In addition to embedding audio and video, some ebook creators are experimenting with game elements, using GPS, and adding activities. A year ago, Digital Book World discussed why enhanced ebooks were not taking off yet. According to Peter Costanzo, "The main problem is that the market as it currently exists … [Read more...] about A Look at Interactive Ebooks

Indie Authors: Digital Comics

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Novels, children picture books, and even cookbooks are often discussed in the digital publishing realm, but another type of book is gaining more prominence: comic books. Comics are generally fixed format, because they are so image heavy and where the text is place matters (or else it doesn't make sense). So, to make an EPUB comic book, you will have to manually code and … [Read more...] about Indie Authors: Digital Comics

Indie Authors: Using 99 Designs to Crowdsource a Cover

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Last year, I published the first book in my series for beginners on how to make ebooks (currently working on the second, which will focus on fixed format, or children's books). It was my second book, and I had learned a few lessons from when I published my first book. This time around, I did everything right. Or so I thought. I had beta readers, a strong book description, a … [Read more...] about Indie Authors: Using 99 Designs to Crowdsource a Cover

iBooks Author Templates

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Ebooks come in a few different formats. I write a lot about EPUB and MOBI/KF8 on this site, which are the formats used by pretty much everyone (Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google, Sony, etc.). But there is another format: iBooks (iba). Apple sells EPUB, but the company also developed their own proprietary format in early 2012. If you have a Mac, you can download the iBooks … [Read more...] about iBooks Author Templates