Category: Books

In a previous post about publishing through CreateSpace, I mentioned how easy it is to design a cover using their Cover Creator tool. The only problem that I have found is when you have a full-sized cover already designed, perhaps for an Ebook, and that has the book name and author name already blended in. You can hide many elements using their tool, but I could not find a template that would let me hide the title. The next option was their cover template which gives you a pre-formatted template based on the number of pages in your document. The problem with using that is, because I am not a graphic designer, I do not have the proper tools to edit a PDF. That took this tool out of the…

Many of us avoid the Publish On Demand option because of two main reasons – cost and effort involved. I can now speak to both of those, from my own experience. First, I had believed that there were setup costs and others to distribute your book through CreateSpace. It turns out that I was wrong about that. I reformatted an Ebook using their Word template and submitted it to their “Interior Reviewer.” The review process produced a single issue – the graphics that I had formatted for Ebook distribution were lower than the quality required. So far, no cost other than my time. My next worry was the cover design. They require a front and rear cover connected to the spine. I am adventurous enough to investigate the size needed…

My name is Stephen Link and I am the author of "Unleash the Power of Outlook" published by Holy Macro Books. As the title indicates, this is a user guide for Microsoft Outlook . This article details the events surrounding the offer to author my own book and the adventures of bringing the project to completion. How did an offer to write a book materialize? I was heavily involved in a help site called Experts Exchange and one of the areas where plenty of time was spent helping others was in the Outlook section. The author of another book (same publisher) titled "Dreamboat ON WORD," editor of my book, was also involved in the Outlook area. In 2003 I was contacted about writing a book. After investigating and verifying the…