ClipArt Video

www.markcrilley.com –Mark Crilley adds computer toning to one of the pages in his upcoming HarperCollins manga series, Miki Falls. Watch step by step as Mark makes a raw scan of art become more polished and three-dimensional by adding shading, highlights, and even a bit of reflected light.

Do you have an item, program or report however struggling obtaining income? Wish to improve your sales or signups then the thing you need to do is continue reading this article to learn how to make a book cover.

It’s a proven reality again and again that individuals judge books by their covers, that is why creators make certain their books use a cover that can be quickly observed from a long distance and get picked up faster than a book cover with no design.

How to make a book cover – listed below are my personal easy actions to creating a fantastic looking book cover.

Initial you have to choose if you want to create a book cover your self or perhaps if you wish to spend somebody to design it for you freeing up your time and energy. You’ll be able to spend anywhere from $20 – $2,000 for a book cover to be designed for you.

If you are going to create a book cover yourself then follow the rest of this information.

Step 1:

You’ll need some software program, the gurus utilize Photoshop which is very costly but worthwhile if you’re creating lots of book covers.

Free of charge software is GIMP that is a Photoshop alternative, I haven’t used it as I use Photoshop however its free of charge so will list it here for you.

Step 2:

You’ll need eCover Action Scripts, should you research Search engines with regard to ecover action scripts you will find numerous outstanding ones, you need to find one that will match the book cover design your searching for. I make use of ecover pro and cover action pro. Both are fantastic products.

Step 3:

Photos – Right now you need to locate royalty free photographs that you’ll be looking to add to your book cover design, again you are able to research Search engines, but allow me to share my top 2. Istockphoto.com and bigstockphoto.com – you will need to understand their terms on utilizing them to ensure you’ve the right rights since many images vary.

Step 4:

Utilizing Fonts – so you have got your pictures, you need to seek out many quality fonts that you could use on your book cover. I love these fonts – Impact, Century, Arial, Tahoma, it’s also possible to search Search engines for free fonts and you may find a large number of superb looking fonts to go on your book cover.

Step 5:

Colours – choosing the correct colors for your book cover style, here are some concepts, green for capital, red for debt, blue for internet marketing. Yet again Search engines is actually your greatest buddy look for colour combos and you may find lots you should utilize.

So these are it 5 speedy steps which you can get prepared to create a book cover on your own, once you have the above five you’ll then need to add the factors together.

Just what I would recommend carrying out is taking a look at additional graphic artists book cover designs to find suggestions and see just how these people create the text, photos as well as colors together to produce magnificent book covers. Simply keep practising and you’ll improve and better at creating a book cover or ebook covers.

Want more useful tips and tricks on how to make a book cover, or want ideas on how to design a book cover visit us at http://www.howtomakeabookcover.com/ – Also get an in depth review of ebook cover generator and other reviews.

Many people, both young and old, are looking at photography as a potential money making endeavor. Unfortunately many meet failure at the start. In part the failure is due to poor photo quality which fails to impress the potential photo buyers.

What many amateur photographers are unaware of is the tool that professionals use to make their photos always turn out perfectly. Most professional photographers use photo editing software programs such as Adobe Elements to make their ordinary photos extraordinary. Here is an overview of some of the tools that are available in this program which will help take your photos to the next level and potentially make them saleable.

Photo editing begins once you have finished taking the picture. When you open your photo inside Elements you always want to create a new layer from the options menu. This is important as you will be making any editing on the new layer and not on your original photo and in the end will make your job much simpler. If your photo is too dark or too bright you will next want to enhance this by using brightness and contrast. You can also accent the color scheme by using various brushes. You can choose from the paint, spray and air brush. You will want to play around with this until you achieve your desired effect.

Once you have selected the brush you want to also choose the stroke size as well as brush size. After choosing the brush tool from the menu press your right bracket key on your keyboard to increase its size and the left bracket key to decrease its size. If you want to not have to go through this process each time you use Elements you can select the sample size option to maintain the consistent size of the brush. The next step is to figure out how dark you want to your brush strokes to be.

This can be done by choosing the opacity tool which gives you the freedom of increasing and decreasing the darkness to improve the clarity of the picture. The opacity tool has a sliding option wherein you can increase or decrease the color intensity of your paint brush from 0% to 100%. Adobe gives you the provision of using varied color schemes till you find the best one. This can be done by experimenting with your colors in different layers and keep deleting them in case you are not satisfied.

Adobe Photoshop Elements Book – You Can Master Elements In 2 Hours! See For Yourself – Take a Free Lesson… www.LearnElementsNow.com

Just too good an idea to pass up.

Health keeps coming up as some outrageously searched-for keyword. Helps that ‘Boomers are getting older (and Europe/Japan have worse problems than ours) and so they are all interested in extending their health and lives.

Search Google Trends for “health, life, nutrition, diet, fitness”. See what I mean? The things that would save their health and improve their lives (good food and exercise) are lower ranked than the goals themselves – which makes sense once you think about it. (But if you want to check for a sheep mentality, look up “life insurance” or “health insurance” – which are completely solutions for the after-the-fact-problem of losing your health or losing your life.) Health and Life are re-active scenes – the people who are proactive are more the minority.

But – searching various keyword programs for “life health” gives low response. Few people search for this combination.

So you wouldn’t use that combination as anything on your pages or link text. (I can think of some catchy book titles with these two, however…)

However, your mini-web could use various versions of these above in the page titles in order to capture those niche Google-search positions…

And I have a ton of PLR articles which are useless for article marketing, but prime for ebooks.

Of course, this is all old-hat stuff.

Enter Web 2.0

The test is if videos can replace articles. Now, I don’t have a great deal of video sites like YouTube. Frankly, like my tests in article marketing, it doesn’t much pay to submit to very many to get the key effects you want, which is people finding and buying your book.

Now, the recent research (and it worked for me, too) is that videos and social bookmarking, as well as blogging, get to the top of Google faster.

With TTS, and these short PLR articles, I could conceivably produce a video a day, based on the content of that ebook. You’d then become some sort of expert on health-related stuff. Sort of. Just like article marketing – on steroids.

Sequence is to create the ebook first – post to Lulu. (My clickbank is bugged, this would be preferable, since you could sell the book via affiliates and increase your sales.)

Take the text articles, add audio headers and footers – create the TTS audio (save in own directory).

Build your master mini-web, using your main keyword phrase you selected. This promotes the book. FTP that up and getting running.

Take time here and set up your opt-in page for that subject. Plug in some articles to your autoresponder sequence.

For each MP3 audio, make a video using clipart and stock photos. (Camtasia…)

Post the videos on YouTube and the MP3’s on Internet Archives.

As you post each video, create a new mini-web which links to the first one (and gives it all the pagerank). Each media file links to your Lulu product, but has individual keyword niches (where most of your geek time will be spent, other than making the videos.) Each mini-web also invites people to opt-in for more information on the subject.

Social bookmark each video and MP3 and mini-web index page as you post them.

Blog each video and link to the MP3 and mini-web. Social bookmark that blog-entry.

What you are doing is creating a buzz for each of these inter-related keyword niches. You rise to the top in each of these niches – which in turn give their pagerank over to your main mini-web, which promotes the book (as do all the sub-webs on your mini-net).

And all that should add up to a nice set of Google Page Rank which plops viewers to your main mini-net page and sells books. Plus it should give you a number of subscribers to your list, where you can interest them in other related products.

Just to add frosting to the cake, sign up with some affiliate programs which pay you per lead for insurance policies. Put these links prominently on your site and rake in some extra income.

It’s simply a test of video’s and article marketing

This is a test just to see if you can get faster response than the months it takes to get some volume out of article marketing. Certainly you wind up at the top of Google faster – but does it translate to sales? Sure, there are lots of factors present. And TTS is a cheesy way (perhaps) of making soundtracks for videos.

But it would be an interesting concept-test. Definately worth a test drive…

Book Review: “YOU: The Smart Patient: An Insider’s Handbook for Getting the Best Treatment,” by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz

I picked up the book “YOU: The Smart Patient: An Insider’s Handbook for Getting the Best Treatment,” by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz up a few years ago, not knowing that soon “Dr. Oz” and his cheery advice, even when discussing the most personal of issues, would become the next “hot topic” on Oprah. Seeing his likable personality has only made the book more enjoyable.

And that’s why my review of this book is so complimentary. How can a book on medical jargon, resources, surgery preparation and worse case medical scenarios be enjoyable?

To begin with, the book is jam-packed full of information that we all need, but don’t want to curl up with and read. So this information is given to the reader in small doses with imaginative layouts. Amusing clipart and cartoons, tip boxes, a resource portion and the offbeat humor throughout all the content actually entertains the reader.

It’s obvious that the book was well thought out and intentionally written for the average person to be able to use as a real tool in caring for his health. A reader may feel that it’s the feeling of their favorite consumer magazine, rather than a typical doctor’s dry medical journal.

The value of the book isn’t about the entertaining pages, however, but the content which is truly superb. The authors of “YOU: The Smart Patient” tell you to become your own “medical detective” in ways such as looking more closely at your family tree and keeping track of your medical information in a journal at the back of the book.

The book is written in conjunction with The Joint Commission, which accredits and certifies more than 15,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States, so there the reader doesn’t have to worry about author bias in their advice.

“YOU: The Smart Patient” is also packed with great checklists for you or whoever who may accompany you on medical visits or hospital stays. It provides clear-cut reminders, like how to confirm with your surgeon which body part is being treated, what medications you have an allergy to, and how to verify that your prescription drugs are the accurate, since so many medications sound alike.

It goes on to advise one on how to find the right doctor, hospital, and insurance company, how to work with specialists, be your nurse’s favorite patient, choose alternative medicine and pain management. It even explains a doctor’s typical schedule and why they may seem so tired at times.

“YOU: The Smart Patient” is a five-star book and the best $15 you will ever spend in managing our health, especially if you have a chronic illness!

Action Templates Vol. 2 is our biggest sport and mascot volume featuring editable templates. These customizable templates are available in CorelDraw and EPS formats. With the CorelDraw templates, you can use the Action Template Editor software (included FREE with this volume) to quickly change…