I was just taking my daily “stroll” through the Warrior Forum and stumbled upon this….Online Ebook Cover Software

This is an extremely valuable tool for those of you out there that need to get an ecover, or ecovers, for your products, but just don’t have the money to pay someone to do them for you.

This resource is completely free of any cost whatsoever, and you can generate a variety of ecovers in just a few minutes….all by yourself with this online tool. You don’t need a graphics editor program, photoshop actionscripts, or images of your own for that matter. Although you can use them if you want to “spice” up your ecover creations. None of the above is necessary to use this tool.

I even tried it out myself and came up with these in just under 2 minutes each:

And I made those just by using the elements provided from the site itself!

This is an awesome free tool that many of you can probably get loads of use from. So if you missed the direct link to the site in the beginning of this post, I’m putting it below for you again

Check Out The Free Online Ecover Creator Tool Here

Popularity: 1% [?]

Oh yes. It’s official. I am ecstatic to share this with you today. Big Stock Photo is giving away hundreds of royalty free, free images you can download right now.

I’ve looked ‘em over and they’re not too shabby. I’m sure you want the link, right? Who wouldn’t??! Okay, so Here Is The Link To Click To Go To The Big Stock Photo Free Image Library so you can snatch up your share. I set up the link so that it will open in an entirely new window for you so you never have to leave EZebt’s site. So convenient

No, there’s no obligation to download and use the images. At least that I know of anyway. And designers are always on the hunt for good, free, royalty free stock photos they can make use of either for themselves or for individual clients needs.

You have to understand that Big Stock Photo is one of the only royalty free stock photo sites that allows you to use their images inside website template designs. Of course, you can only use them one time inside one template, but you can always use their multi-purchase license thing and then you can create website, or ebook templates , that include Master Resell Rights.

And when you’re ready to ‘graduate’ and actually purchase some images, Big Stock Photo has some really affordable pricing on their inventory. Smaller image sizes start at like $1 each. Not too bad. And they have tons of them to choose from too!

I would highly recommend Big Stock Photo to all designers. And not just because they’re giving away some choice freebies either. They’re gooooooood.

Again, Go Download Some Free Images Complements From Big Stock Photo Here And Start Creating!

Popularity: 33% [?]

Ah yes. Is there anything better than a nice big, FREE heaping bowl of your favorite ice cream? How about with pixels on the side? What???! “Pixels and Ice Cream“? Yep. That’s the name of a terrific website that offers free photoshop brushes and patters, some of which include wonderful seamless tiling backgrounds, that you can use both personally and commercially. Plus some other cool free stuff.

And that’s something I’m always on the hunt for.

While the site doesn’t have an over abundance of free-to-use resources, it does have some pretty good ones available for download. Many of those are more geared towards the “girly” end user. But, hey, I AM a girl, so I like it. And I’ve included it here for you as yet another terrific free graphical resource to add to yours.

I’m interested to see how this site grows over time. And what other fabulous freebies they come up with next!

Visit Pixels & Ice Cream Here to peruse through their “menu” of free goodies. You may just find something delectible to enhance your tasty designs there.

Popularity: 96% [?]

I have seen anywhere I found quite by accident doing a search through Google.

See, what happened was….

I discovered this cool new online handwritten font tool at vLetter and planned on using that for making some handwritten signatures and headlines for some upcoming web pages, but found that vLetter converted the written text over to images on a flat white background.

And that just wouldn’t do for me.

I needed something better.

Something I could edit out the rear without having to remove the backgrounds.

So, I went on the hunt for some good, free handwriting fonts.

And I hit the jackpot with FontGarden.com

While the fonts are free to use for any personal pages, you can simply “donate whatever you think commercial use is worth to you”, and then you can also use these beautiful handwritten fonts commercially.

( I’m not sure if you have to donate for every single font you want to use commercially or not, but it would be nice to throw the author a few bucks for each one. Plus, you can always contact the owner and find out. )

Pretty cool, right?

I was amazed at the quality and variety of handwritten fonts. Frankly, I hadn’t seen anything like these anywhere else on the web. To boot, they were all free, right there for the taking, and installing!

Of course, when I found FontGarden.com’s selection, I just had to hop right on here and share it with everyone.

So, if you’ve been looking for some beautiful handwritten fonts, then I highly recommend you visit FontGarden.com and see what’s there.

It’s one resource you will want to bookmark and go back to again and again.

Popularity: 39% [?]

Took a while, but I’ve managed to add 3 all new free OpenOffice Writer ebook templates to the Free Templates page.

I’ll try to get a few more up in the next week for you to download as well.

But, for now, enjoy the new templates!

Popularity: 32% [?]

Before we get into the actual creation of our very own OpenOffice Writer Template, we’re going to need a few tools.

Now, for the basis of this, and other tutorials available freely on EZebookTemplates.com, I’m going to make some assumptions about the tools you actually have. I’m going to assume that you have the same tools I do.

But don’t worry, I’ll also have alternative suggestions for the higher priced tools that I use .

Okay, with all that out of the way, it’s time to get down to the first portion, which is. . . . .

Being Prepared By Having The Right Tools Handy

Simple, right?

But, having the right tools can make a huge difference in what types of OOo ebook template creations you can come up with.

So, here’s what I use:

1.) OpenOffice Writer — Duh!

2.) Photoshop 7

3.) Iconico.com’s Color Picker Tool

4.) A Good Resource For Color Schemes — like www.colorschemer.com

5.) A Slammin’ Place To Generate Web 2.0 Stripe-y Backgrounds — www.stripegenerator.com/

6.) A Few Extra Graphic Resources — like Photoshop Layer Styles, Photoshop Brushes, Ebook Cover Actionscripts (that’s for Photoshop too ), Royalty Free Images that can be included inside “for sale”, or “commercial”, template designing, a place to help with template ideas, etc.

Now, if you’ve got good resources like those listed above, coming up with killer OOo ebook templates is much easier to do.

But, don’t be fooled. It’s still kind of tricky to do, and does take some time. However, it’s nothing you can’t learn with a little bit of help .

So, if you don’t have the things on the above list, it’s time to let you in on where to get them and some great cheaper alternatives to some of the tools.

1.) OpenOffice Writer Alternatives
Um. Okay, why would you need one??? It’s FREE dammit! Plus, it’s really the entire basis of this tutorial, and the entire site, so if you don’t have it and you want to continue on, then GO GET IT!!

2.) Photoshop 7 Alternatives
Really, I think you should be using Photoshop when following along, but I know it’s pretty expensive. Even for the older version I’m using.

So, a good alternative, that’s also FREE, would be GIMP.

Lots of people use it. And it works fine for them.

However, there are certain things that we’ll be using in the following parts of this tutorial that will require you to have Photoshop, like Brushes, Layer Styles, and Actionscripts. Those are designed to work solely with Photoshop, so it may be a good idea to download a free 30 day trial of the program from Adobe.

At least that way you’ll have 30 days to play around and learn how to use Photoshop .

3.) Iconico.com’s Color Picker Tool Alternatives
Well, I don’t know why you’d need an alternative since the tool is free. But, if you do, you can purchase a similar tool from www.colorschemer.com. But again, you really don’t need an alternative to free. . . . .do you??

4.) Good Resources For Color Schemes
The color schemer site isn’t the only place to check out cool color schemes. There are a few more places. Oh, and every one of them is free to check out the color schemes, so there’s no worries about cost here!

ColorBlender.com – for those of you that prefer to create your own unique color schemes

ColourLovers.com – a terrific place to spy all kinds of neato color schemes, patterns, and other cool colorful stuff

ColorSchemer Gallery – the standard for checking out tons of color schemes

Daily Color Scheme – nice site that offers new color schemes every day

Page Painter Color Scheme Gallery – a number of color schemes to check out

Adobe’s Kuler – pretty cool site with very attractive color schemes

5.) Web 2.0 Stripe-y Generator Tool Alternatives
Well, again, the Stripe Generator site online tool is free to use. Plus you can browse other people’s stripe designs and get some great ideas of your own. So, I think this one is the only one you need

6.) Extra Graphics Resources
You can never have too many of these sites bookmarked. The tricky part is finding sites that offer free, or not too expensive, graphics to use inside designs you plan to sell. Those are few and far between at this juncture, but I’ll do my best to provide you with a few places . . . .

Creating Online – so far, looks like you can pick up some free stock photos and can use them multiple times within your designs without having to purchase an extended use license, but this is for the FREE photos listed ONLY

Wikipedia Public Domain Image Resource Page – this has a pretty good listing of places to get “so-so” images you can use commercially for free

Image*After – a decent resource offering free images that can be used commercially in your designs

SXC.hu – this use to be a great place to pick up some free images to use within your template designs, but they have since changed their terms and this is no longer allowed.

but, you can get some great ideas for desiging by browsing through their gallery.

and, if you’re just making ebook templates for your own use, then adding their images is all right, so long as you’re not reselling it? messy stuff, i know!

feel free to read through their terms of use, maybe you can decipher the usage rights.

Big Stock Photo – this site is a little bit more lax with their terms of usage, but if you’re going to be reselling your template multiple times, then you’ll need to purchase one of their “special licenses” for every photo/image you use.

again, check out their terms of use before using any images in your “for sale” products.

Free Photoshop Brushes – contains a nice list of places to pick up personal use and commercial use PS brush sets

bsilva’s Squidoo PS Brush List Page – even though you’ll have to pay $9.99 for each commercial brush set you want to use in any resellable works, b includes some really nice free Photoshop brush sets you can play around with, along with tutorials and other interesting stuff

SpoonGraphics Urban Brushes – these can be used within commercial designs( read the comments on the page and you’ll see what I mean ) and they are very, very good

Emma Alvarez’s Butterfly Brushes – a lovely collection of soft butterfly shapes that can be used in commercial designs with a few restrictions

Nice And Easy PS Brushes – free for commercial use, a few sets that are interesting and could be useful to you

Free Web 2.0 Layer Styles – the best web 2.0 styles I’ve found anywhere online, free or otherwise. i prefer to use these on my text and sometimes within a header/footer design. they’re fantastic!!

Okay, that was a LOT to digest.

I know. But think how much more prepared you’ll be when we start designing our very first ebook template. And how much simpler it will be.

Tomorrow we’ll start getting into creating a simple design that doesn’t use a whole mess of extra graphics.

Then, future tutorials will include creating more complex graphics and how to turn them into killer ebook templates.

Popularity: 17% [?]