http://onbookdesign.com A Do-It-Yourself guide to designing book covers and interior page layout for POD and self-published books. Wed, 14 Jun 2006 16:01:24 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 1. Stock.xchng: Contains over 200,000 royalty free photos, plus tutorials to learn how to spiff them up. 2. Flickr: Some people offer their photos for public use. Be sure to check their usage terms first. 3. Buzznet: Like Flickr, some of the photos stored on this site may have ... http://onbookdesign.com/2006/06/14/top-10-places-to-find-free-images-for-your-books/ I'm still in the testing phase of the 1ClickCovers ecover software and have to say that I'm very impressed with the results so far. The web-based and PDF tutorials make it very easy for a novice to learn how to create professional ebook covers with this script. It took me ... http://onbookdesign.com/2006/06/10/1clickcovers/ My aim with this design was consistency, artistic pep, and readability for the ebook version of this anthology. The red rectangle you see at the bottom of the screenshot is the image of the writer's blog. I made the image stand out by applying a drop shadow. Then I converted ... http://onbookdesign.com/2006/05/10/my-first-attempt-at-book-design-the-body/ This is an anthology I edited and compiled at the beginning of this year. The concept for the cover came while I was helping my son work on a collage project. I thought it would be a great way to promote these writer's blogs. The tricky part was figuring out where ... http://onbookdesign.com/2006/05/10/my-first-attempt-at-book-design-the-cover/ Open Type fonts are the best because they are cross-compatible with PCs and Macs. The internal coding (called unicode) allows a typeface file to have over 65,000 characters, a big improvement over the older typefaces that are limited to 256. The second best are PostScript or Type 1 fonts. These are ... http://onbookdesign.com/2006/05/03/the-best-fonts-for-your-book/ First, free fonts are often poorly made. If you decide to use free fonts for your text, your printer will not be able to print your book because of the technical errors contained in these fonts. Second, most of the fonts that come from shareware sites are pirated copies of commercial ... http://onbookdesign.com/2006/05/03/fonts-free-is-not-good/ I just found this huge resource site on design that lists blogs, illustrators, designers, typography, etc. The only thing they didn't have (and what I would have liked) was a resource for printers. Check it out at DesignEducation.ca. http://onbookdesign.com/2006/04/09/thousands-of-design-resources/ I apologize for the lateness of my posting. I've been embroiled in the final edit of an anthology. In the near future, I'll post its cover and explain the concept behind its design. For now, I'll leave you with some tutorials that I found. Reader Centered Design Selection of Fonts Three-Part Series Design in ... http://onbookdesign.com/2006/04/01/book-design-tutorials/ Designing a professional Ebook cover is just as important as designing a traditional book. Internet Marketers have this down pat, but I've seen other writers in other genres fall miserably short. It's not their fault because most of the cheap ebook compiling software is that . . . cheap. When I ... http://onbookdesign.com/2006/03/26/ebook-cover-software/ The cover art is rather pretty and peaceful looking, isn't it? At first glance, I thought this was a literary novel, or perhaps a romance set in the grassy dunes of a beach somewhere. Check out the Amazon Book Description this book. You'll find that the publisher really screwed up ... http://onbookdesign.com/2006/03/25/book-cover-art-getting-the-right-message-to-your-reader/