What if you want to design eBook cover yourself?

If you know how to work with graphics software like Photoshop you can do some simple designs but to create killer covers you will need to purchase the automator actions. There is alot of free Photoshop tutorial online but unfortunately it’s very difficult to find one that teach you how to make professional looking leather book covers or paperback book covers for example. Forget looking for free eBook cover software or templates as well: Most of the free templates book cover design are out of date and I don’t think people want to buy your eBook if it looks old.

A set of good Photoshop actions can cost you an arm and a leg. CoverActionPro for example sells them at $197 and $297 plus $19 shipping cost in USA. Unless you seriously want to make money with Photoshop (hey, Photoshop jobs can earn you good money!) I don’t think you’ll want to buy it.

If you are on a tight budget but still want to design your eBook covers yourself you can download a free graphic software from paint.net. Note that just like Photoshop, without the actions you can’t make attractive 3D eCovers but that’s fine because this software is needed to create a 2D image only. To convert it to 3D cover we will get a free eBook cover generator to do the job for us. Cool?

Here is a paperback book cover example I made using the free eBook cover maker:

eCover

Here is another example. Now I’m using the modern software box template:

software box template

To make your own design please go to http://www.myecovermaker.com/ecover-design. Don’t worry if you don’t have the background for your design because this site provides some good images for free. Do let me know if you have questions.

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I found some useful links after doing Google search and here they are:

Capture Fox

Capture Fox is a Firefox add-on and a handy tool to create tutorials about a software, a web site or anything that can be displayed on your computer. It records your screen frame by frame. You can also record your voice. Please note that this Firefox extension is for Windows XP and Vista only.

CamStudio

CamStudio is an open source alternative to Camstasia.
It does not bring all the features of the paid software, but it should get the job done, so give it a try. CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs).

Jing

Jing is a free recording software from TechSmith, the Camtasia Studio software developer. Besides the free version of Jing and Camtasia Studio TechSmith also offers Jing Pro and Snagit but if you are looking for a freeware you can go with Jing only, however you can have the trial version of Camtasia Studio and Snagit if you want to.

I have tried the CamStudio and am happy with the result. I plan to record the narration separately with Audacity and then combine the audio and video using VirtualDub. CamStudio allows you to record the audio real time but some guys said the audio is better if you record it separately.
If you have tried one of the free recording software above I would be happy to hear your comments.

- Rudi

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