Book covers sell books. People don't read, they scan when selecting books. Catch their eye and increase your income with a better cover. You can publish your paperback for free! Create book covers for paperbacks as well as EBooks. This comprehensive, step-by-step, how to guide shows how to make that snappy cover for FREE.

Sometimes you just want to put together a basic book cover for a lead magnet or a short story related to your main series. Or maybe, like me, you have the patience of a gnat and don’t want to wait six months to have a cover designed by someone else when the book is ready to go NOW. Or maybe money is tight and you’re trying to see if that book you wrote has any potential without bankrupting yourself. Or you’re ready to put that book out in print, but in your genre you know it’s not going to sell all that many print copies. Or in large print. Whatever the reason, you’re looking to design your own cover but you don’t want to go through the trial and error of figuring out a design software on your own. Well, good news, especially if you already read Affinity Publisher for Ad Creatives. This book is here to walk you through how to use Affinity Publisher to create three basic ebook covers: one with a central image, one with a side image, and one with an image that fills the entire cover. And then we’ll walk through how to take that ebook cover and turn it into a paperback for Amazon KDP and IngramSpark as well as a hard cover for IngramSpark. When you finish this book will you be able to create a book cover like the masters who charge hundreds or even thousands of dollars for their work? No. But you will be able to put together a nice, servicable cover that leverages stock photos. And sometimes that’s all you need. So let’s go. Take your self-publishing to the next level today. Please note that the print version of this book is in black and white but the ebook version has color images available if your ereader is in color. You can learn the skills you need from either version, but there are certain images in the book that are better viewed in color.

Realism for the Masses is an exploration of how the concept of realism entered mass culture, and from there, how it tried to remake “America.” The literary and artistic creations of American realism are generally associated with the late nineteenth century. But this book argues that the aesthetic actually saturated American culture in the 1930s and 1940s and that the Left social movements of the period were in no small part responsible. The book examines the prose of Carlos Bulosan and H. T. Tsiang; the photo essays of Margaret Bourke-White in Life magazine; the bestsellers of Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Mitchell; the boxing narratives of Clifford Odets, Richard Wright, Nelson Algren; and the Hollywood boxing film, radio soap operas, and the domestic dramas of Lillian Hellman and Shirley Graham, and more. These writers and artists infused realist aesthetics into American mass culture to an unprecedented degree and also built on a tradition of realism in order to inject influential definitions of “the people” into American popular entertainment. Central to this book is the relationship between these mass cultural realisms and emergent notions of pluralism. Significantly, Vials identifies three nascent pluralisms of the 1930s and 1940s: the New Deal pluralism of “We're the People” in The Grapes of Wrath; the racially inclusive pluralism of Vice President Henry Wallace's “The People's Century”; and the proto-Cold War pluralism of Henry Luce's “The American Century.”

We all know we're not supposed to judge books by their covers, but the truth is that we do just that nearly every time we walk into a bookstore or pull a book off a tightly packed shelf. It's really not something we should be ashamed about, for it reinforces something we sincerely believe: design matters. At its best, book cover design is an art that transcends the publisher's commercial imperativesto reflect both an author's ideas and contemporary cultural values in a vital, intelligent, and beautiful way. In this groundbreaking and lavishly illustrated history, authors Ned Drew and Paul Sternberger establish American book cover design as a tradition of sophisticated, visual excellence that has put shape to our literary landscape. By Its Cover traces the story of the American book cover from its inception as a means of utilitarian protection for the book to its current status as an elaborately produced form of communication art. It is, at once, the intertwined story of American graphic design and American literature, and features the work of such legendary figures as Rockwell Kent, E. McKnight Kauffer, Paul Rand, Alvin Lustig, Rudy deHarak, and Roy Kuhlman along with more recent and contemporary innovators including Push Pin Studios, Chermayeff & Geismar, Karen Goldberg, Chip Kidd, and John Gall.

The digital revolution has brought with it a wider range of options for creating and producing print on paper products than ever seen before. With the growing demand for skills and knowledge with which to exploit the potential of digital technology, comes the need for a comprehensive book that not only makes it possible for production staff, editors, and designers to understand how the technology affects the industry they work in, but also provides them with the skills and competencies they need to work in it smartly and effectively. This book is designed to satisfy this need. Book Production falls into two parts: The first part deals with the increasingly important role of production as project managers, a role which has not been adequately written about in any of the recent literature on publishing. The second part deals with the processes and raw materials used in developing and manufacturing print on paper products. Case studies are used to illustrate why and how some processes or raw materials may or may not be appropriate for a particular job. With expert opinions and case studies, and a consideration of the practices and issues involved, this offers a comprehensive overview of book production for anyone working, or training to work in or in conjunction with the books industry.

This new book gives you everything you need to know to get into print. Whether you are seeking an agent or publisher, or have decided to self-publish, it gives you the background information, step-by-step guides and a unique selection of case studies from published authors and insider tips from industry experts. With an exhaustive list of useful addresses and websites, it is an essential manual for any aspiring author. Features contributions from key literary agencies (including Curtis Brown and Pollinger) and top publishing companies (including John Murray and Headline). NOT GOT MUCH TIME? One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started. AUTHOR INSIGHTS Lots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience. TEST YOURSELF Tests in the book and online to keep track of your progress. EXTEND YOUR KNOWLEDGE Extra online articles at www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding of getting your book published. FIVE THINGS TO REMEMBER Quick refreshers to help you remember the key facts. TRY THIS Innovative exercises illustrate what you've learnt and how to use it.

Fully updated to cover all of the new features in Photoshop CS5, this book is also backwards-compatible and can be used with any version of Photoshop. The accompanying DVD for Mac and PC contains over two and a half hours of video tutorials for additional training, and on the book's popular website www.howtocheatinphotoshop.com, you'll find even more resources such as an "Ask the Author" forum, sample images from other How to Cheat fans, and weekly challenges so that you can test your own skills and see where your creativity can take you.

First Published in 2002, Visual Words provides a unique and interdisciplinary evaluation of the relationship between images and words in this period.Victorian England witnessed a remarkable growth in literacy culminating in the new literary nationalism that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century. Each chapter explores a different aspect of this relationship: the role of Dickens as the heroic author, the book as an iconic object, the growing graphic presence of the text, the role of the graphic trace, the ’Sister Arts/ pen and pencil’ tradition, and the competition between image and word as systems of communication. Examining the impact of such diverse areas as advertising, graphic illustration, narrative painting, frontispiece portraits, bibliomania, and the merchandising of literary culture, Visual Words shows that the influence of the ’Sister Arts’ tradition was more widespread and complex than has previously been considered. Whether discussing portraits of authors, the uses of iconography in Ford Madox Brown’s painting Work, or examining why the British Library was equipped with false bookcases for doors, Gerard Curtis looks at artistic and literary culture from an art historical and ’object’ perspective to gain a better understanding of why some Victorians called their culture ’hieroglyphic’.