How To Make Your Own Free Book Cover In MS Word. OLD POST ALERT This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. How to make your own free book cover in MS Word. Word Options Menu how to find the Microsoft Office options menu and setting user preferences in Word 2007. At the end of 2013 I put out a package of DIY book cover templates in Microsoft Word and revolutionized publishing with a howto guide to designing amazing book. Other Checklists for intermediate and advanced skills are available at danarmishaw. Microsoft Word 2010 Basic Skills Checklist This checklist has been compiled. Cheap Fake Driving Licence Uk more. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing Joanna Penn. Caring about fantastic book cover design is one of those non negotiables for all authors. Derek Murphy of Creativindie Coversis a brilliant designer and has designed a number of my own book covers. But although I personally believe in paying professionals, Im also aware that some people want to have a go themselves, or need to because of budget restraints. This post is for the avid DIY ers If youd rather hire a professional, click here for a list of book cover designers. Most indie publishing experts will warn you against making your own book cover, with good reason the cover design is too crucial an element to self publishing success to take lightly. Making your book a bestseller is hard enough without an ugly cover sabotaging your efforts. However there are many reasons why you may be tempted to give it a shot anyway You want to play with cover ideas so you know what you want before hiring a designer. You want more control over your cover design. Youre launching a small project, a short ebook or guide, and you dont want to invest too much. Youre writing a series and dont want to pay full price for each cover design. So Id like to share with you something Ive been working on for a few months the secrets of designing a bestselling book cover in Microsoft Word, and then Ill give you some easy to use Word templates so you can get started quickly. Cover Pages For Microsoft Word 2010' title='Cover Pages For Microsoft Word 2010' />This will be a crash course in the minimal skills you need to create a winning cover in MS Word. Youll learn how to use Word to blend images, add layers and transparency, use font effects and space letters kerning, strip background, and the general principles of cover design. These instructions are for MS Word 2. Word, the process will be similar. This is a long post, so you should bookmark it. You can also download a PDF version of these instructions and the source files of the cover were building so you can follow along click here to get those. Cover Pages For Microsoft Word 2010' title='Cover Pages For Microsoft Word 2010' />Ready Lets begin. Finding and choosing the right pictures. The quality of your book cover will mostly depend on what pictures or art you use, and how well they fit together, so in this section Im going to teach you what kind of art works the best, where you can find royalty free images, and where you can get cheap Photoshop work done if you need it. The RULES for picking photos 1 Simple is better. Needs to cause immediate emotional reaction. Not too busy or too many colors. Dont use a GREAT picture use the overlooked one. Blend and match colors. You can use a color wheel to find complimentary colors oppositesacross from each other. Blockbuster movie posters usually use orange and teal a lot of my book covers do also. Green and purple can work also. Unfortunately, Christmas ruined red and green, but red still goes well with black or white. Where are all the breaks hiding If youre using Office 2007 or 2010, you can insert a Page Break from the Insert tab. All the other breaks are listed in the Page. A great cover page draws readers, and if you know Word, then you are in luck, because Word gives ready to use cover pages. But did you know that Word lets you create. Microsoft Word is deceptively simple. R4 Ds Save Converter. You are fine as long as you fire up a document and just type. But Microsoft Word wouldnt be the Swiss knife it is without its. Too many colors can be distracting, so try to go for one or two main colors if the whole background is blue, you could use yellow text to stand outWhat kind of images should you choose First find a dramatic background or scene it can be a building, landscape think place. Where does your novel happenMicrosoft Word 2010 is one of the powerful wordprocessing application to date. The most important aspect of your document is that it should be well format. Download Routing Tcp/Ip Volume I 2Nd Edition Pdf. Whats the setting See if you can find something that refers to this. That will be your background. Then find something for the foreground faces or bodies can work well here. Models from stock photography sites are good, but the better the model, the more chance someone else will use them for their covers. You can avoid showing their face by just showing some of their body or posture. You could also post something on Craigslist and see if you can hire someone local to pose for an hour or two. Im sure you have a friend with a camera describe what type of model youre looking for and have them send samples. I would pay 5. 01. Take the pictures against a white, or black background depending on whether your covers background will be mostly light or dark. If that sounds like too much work, find a model on a stock photography site, but keep in mind the better the photo, the more likely other people are already using it on their book covers. Thats why you dont want to find a beautiful, breathtaking photo thats just perfect. You can but there may be another book with a cover that looks almost exactly the same. Instead, try to find something a little plainer, mix the model and background together yourself, or choose to focus on a unique angle I often cut off the top half of a models face and show just the mouth and chin. You could also put some unique objects, symbols or elements in the foreground. Something that also works well is to place the models large on top, and add a scenelandscape on the bottom half of the cover. Make a list of your characters physical descriptions, and any other relevant places, scenes, rooms, objects or symbols, and start searching. Where to find stock photographyStock photography means images you can buy the rights to and use in your book cover. More expensive sites will ask you for more details like how many copies you plan to print, but there are a lot of cheap options. I use these sites, where photos usually cost less than 1. Extended License if you are using it for your book cover. Each site has different rules and fees. For now, just download samples of everything you like so you can play around with them. Once youre sure what you want, you can go back and buy them. What size do I need I make book covers at 6X9, which is 1. Thats already a good size for print, and for Kindle and other ebook sites. If you want a taller, narrower book cover, use 5x. Amazon which most publishers ignore, because the covers are too tall and look strange on most devices. On most stock photography sites, a medium or large size will work, just check the pixel ratio. Keep in mind, if you choose two horizontal photos, they dont need to be as long as the full cover. Here are the sites I use most often There are others though even some free options, like Stock Exchange photos. They reel you in, showing you nice photos from i. Stock, which usually cost between 2. Other options. The disadvantage to stock photography, as Ive mentioned, is youll see it on other covers, so here are some ways to find something unique. Find a professional photo from a photographers website. Photographers often charge at least 1. Something Ive negotiated in the past, is paying around 2. This is pretty fair to you both if you do sell so well, the photographer deserves to get paid his normal wage. Find something on Etsy. Etsy is a site for craftspeople and artists, but they often have some very pleasing photography of their wares. Theres also some unique paintings and art. Most artists wont mind if you use their photos, especially if you buy the relevant product theyre selling. Just make sure to ask. Find something on Flickr. A lot of Flickr users post photos in the Creative Commons area, which means you can use their photo as long as you put attribution on the back cover, and on the title page. No harm searching this area. The photos may not look great at first, but you can adjust them in Word. Look on Deviant. Art for photography. Deviant. Art is a community for artists and graphic designers.