EZ Ebook Templates

I posted this argument, er, point of view inside a Squidoo Lens I set up a while ago and thought it might be a good idea to include portions of the post here for you if you’re still “stuck on the fence” about switching over to OOo Writer from MS Word.

It’s pretty good stuff. Hope you like it.

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Still Using Microsoft Word For PDF Ebook Creation?

Why are you still doing things the hard way??!

That’s right. I said it.

Why on Earth would you still be creatively limiting yourself with such a crappy piece of software that costs out the rear when you can have a much better application that doesn’t cost you one red cent??

And, you can use it to make yourself wads of cash, without spending any??

Don’t get me wrong. I really like using Windows — go figure?

But I absolutely loath trying to figure my way around some cruddy “trial” junk that is so complicated to use you have to read like 12 manuals on how to add chapter links and background images to your ebook templates.

That’s just plain STOOPID.

What would have taken me months to learn using MS Word took literally HOURS in OpenOffice. Or OOo if you prefer.

Plus, I get to design beautiful ebook templates with, err, updated graphic elements that fit into the new generation of web components. You know, like creating a “web 2.0″ looking PDF ebook?

It’s a breeze with OpenOffice Writer.

And, if you are at all familiar with MS Word’s interface, then making the transition over to OpenOffice will be total cake for you.

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Just How Easy Is It To Create A PDF From Inside OpenOffice Writer?

Well, how fast can you click a button?

No, I’m not kidding.

Inside OOo Writer there’s this little bitty “PDF” icon that sits inside the tools menu bar ( *hint: it’s at the top with all the other “little” icon thingys ), and all you have to do is “left click” it once and a new window will pop open asking you to give your freshly created .ODT document a name.

Next thing you know, after you name it, you have a cool PDF file of your .ODT document sitting right on your hard drive, ready to distribute.

Can’t get much easier than this. Can it?

I don’t think so.

Why Are You Posting This Here…Now?

Because I got a message from a fellow marketer in my inbox that was promoting one of my EZ Ebook Template packages and he had suggested that his subscribers use a 3rd party PDF creation software.

Which, as he learned later, was very unecessary as OOo Writer already has this ability within the main program.

“Score 3 Points For OpenOffice! Yeah!”

Why Is This Important?

Because most folks that use Microsoft Word exclusively for their PDF ebook creations have to use a 3rd party software for PDF creation.

People who use OOo Writer don’t. Perfect!

And if Gabriel Aguinaga didn’t know about it, it’s a pretty safe bet that there are plenty other people that don’t know it either.

This is what happens when you’re use to doing things a certain way with a certain word processor program and have no idea how new software can uncomplicate your life.

It can sometimes be as simple as clicking a button.

Amazing.

Since this site discusses designing ebook templates, and I like sharing my finds with others, here’s another list of really cool “Retro” style resources you can use commercially throughout your ebook and website designs.

• MUJKA - This site has awesome patterns, cool templates, and rad retro vectors. The prices are decent and the designs are outstanding.
• Art by Andy Nortnik - Can you say “Retro Overload”?! Amazing retro royalty-free clipart packs hand crafted by Andy Nortnik. Really cool sets can be found here for a really good price.
• Free Retro Clipart Gallery - Yes, a whole collection of free retro clipart images. Not sure if these can be used commercially as I couldn’t find any terms of use, so you may want to use this resource for personal only designs. Or do a bit of further investigating. Oh, and try not to go blind with the site layout design….it’s horrid!
• My Retro Clipart.com - A nice collection of royalty free retro style colored clipart images. Not bad, not bad.
• Time Tunnel - Super cool collection of Royalty Free retro clipart collections. And, if you register on the site, which is free, you can also download a new retro clipart image every month. Not a bad deal for nothin’!
• RetroClipper.com - Sells royalty free retro images at $1.00 each. Pretty neato collection. The site says all images are downloadable after payment and come on a plain white background. Obviously, the images are not colored but simple black and white.
• NewAgeWholesale.com - Good assortment of vintage style clipart images. Most in black and white, but you can get like 400 images in a collection for $9.95. Not a bad deal. Categories of image collections include: Angels & Fairies, Goddess, Egyptian, Suns & Moons, Wiccan, Medieval, and more.
• Simply Dark Free Clipart - Not really “retro”, but hey, skeletons are always in fashion Good collection of free to download clipart images. Some are animated, and some are not. Still, a nice resource to have in your pocket.
• Civil War Clipart - Collection of civil war images found across the web, and some even scanned and uploaded from original 19th century newspapers. All images claim to be “copyright free”, and freely available for download and use in your own designs.
• Designed To A T - Good collection of free to download and use on both personal and commercial projects clip art. Various categories to choose from, even Victorian! Not great, but good enough to make the cut.

Okay, that’s all I’ll add to this list. Hopefully, that will be enough to keep you busy until I can add more resource lists in later posts.

If not, you can always try doing some “digging” of your own through Google.

Happy Downloading!

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.

Now that I’ve got your undivided attention…..

I recently saw Kung Fu Panda and it was a fantastically fun movie for the whole family. Which we all thoroughly enjoyed to the max!!

So, being inspired by the movie, I designed a new free ebook template with the “Kung Fu Panda” feel.

There’s actually 2 different colors right now — red and blue

But I will add a few more colors soon — like green and pink, etc.

The templates are the last 2 to be added, so they’re numbers #13 and #14

Go and download ‘em now!

They wreak of awesomeness….

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!

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.