Publicity Tip #46

Whether you need help designing a DIY cover to spec, are looking for guidance in formatting your manuscript, or are looking to generate a bar code for your book so you don’t have to pay someone to do it for you, this site is a great author/publicity tool:

Creative Indie Covers

I stumbled across this site looking for a way to generate a free bar code for a collection of short stories I plan to release via a local book printer. I’m getting 25 copies printed as a limited edition text that leads into my book to be launched Oct. 1st. I didn’t want to go through a free DIY self-publishing site that does POD because by the time shipping and handling is added, the price of the book will outweigh its cost – and that doesn’t bode well for sales.

So I needed to make sure my back cover for the book was correct – bar code and all. Creative Indie was a fast, easy solution that allowed me to plow ahead without delay and the PDF file generated for my ISBN number (yes, you will need to have one of those ahead of time) was relatively simple to convert to a PNG file. From there I was able to manipulate it in Adobe Photoshop. As you’ll notice with the image provided, I did not include a price on my bar code so the code is the shorter version. The bar code generator provided by Creative Indie takes into consideration what you need before it supplies you with your image.

This site also offers advice for how to create your own cover using MS Word and gives a plethora of helpful tips and tricks from a man who has been designing book covers and publicity for both major and minor authors in the industry for many years.

… free is always good as long as you’re willing to learn how to do something the right way 😉

Categories: Publicity

Tags: bar codes, book formatting, book publicity, cover design, DIY, free services, manuscript formatting, publicity, publicity tip