Many of you, like me, will be stuck at home at the moment.
I'll admit it's not a huge drama, I'm happy with my own company. But that's my
choice, not because I've been told I have to. It's a great time to be getting
on with the latest work in progress but I'm finding it hard to concentrate on
the new novel. To try to get past that, I've signed up for Campnanowrimo, which
is like a mini version of Nanowrimo. You can check it out here.
In the meantime, I've been mucking about with Photoshop.
I've had the Creative Cloud version in the past when I actually earned some
money from writing but these days I can't justify AU$180 per year for something
that's an occasional toy. I bought Photoshop Elements years ago and I'll stay
with that (although I have upgraded to the latest version). It can do almost
everything that PS CC can do – just not the really fancy stuff like manipulating
smart objects. That's a shame because I came across some great ways of creating
3D covers.
Here are some examples, all created using Covervault templates. You'll find videos on
how to use the templates in a section called "tutorials". I can
recommend this resource – but you do need PS CC.
However, there are
lots of other things you can do to support your writing projects. For instance,
you can create posters using just about any simple graphics software that lets you add text to pictures - and you can have fun browsing the stock photo stores for suitable pictures.
This one is simply a bought stock photo with a teaser. Great for things like Twitter if you add a buy link.
This one is a combination of a background with a snippet of text – a quick way of inviting readers to look at your book
rather than having to click over to a website to read the snippet. Again, don't forget to add that buy link.
And then there are online tools that let you create fun posters. Photofunia is one I've used several times. Just upload your cover and the software does the rest. You don't need any skills and it's free.
Here are a few of my results.
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| For this one I uploaded a poster I'd made. |
Even if you can't get your head around writing, you can have some fun with these projects.
I love the poster with the cats. So cute!
ReplyDeleteI use Photofunia a lot, too. Some of the images don't work well with covers but there are plenty of templates to choose from.
ReplyDeleteBookBrush (formerly CoversSellBooks) is my go-to site for creating ads and promo. They're adding new features so fast I can hardly keep up, but I've created many projects on BookBrush including FB and Twitter titles, sales ads, coming soon announcements and other fun stuff. They offer tutorials for just about everything. I opted for the paid service, but I believe there's still a free membership available to try it out, it's just that the number of things you can create is limited on the free plan.