Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey there, little Thursday thunder. A little different. Today. We're going to actually create a cover for a paperback book, and we're going to do it in under ten minutes. Ready? There we go. I'm at lulu. Lulu.com, and I logged in. I created a free account, and I'm going to just very briefly go over a print book. And what I want to show you is making a cover for a paperback book is actually really difficult. And we are going to use Lulu's built in cover creator rather than try to figure it out in canva, which is not impossible. It's just a little harder. So here we go. As you saw, I just created a book, and then I'm going to create a print book. I'm just going to go through these options really quick. I just went into my reedsy where I downloaded my PDF. So we're going to upload that in a minute and I'm going to pretend I don't have a cover at all. Okay. So I want a print book.
[00:01:01] And what do I want to do? I want to. I don't want to publish my book. I just want to print it. Okay, so this is, this is my one word book.
[00:01:11] Focus.
[00:01:13] Just wonder why they care about the language. But whatever category, like nonfiction or. Okay, whatever, design your project.
[00:01:24] Remember, I want to do this under ten minutes. So drag and drop here. So I have my, my file.
[00:01:32] See if I can get it here real quick.
[00:01:38] Okay. I've got my print ready. I'm just going to drag it. There's my file. Remember, this is just from Reedsy. If you're in my one word book program, you know what that's all about. Or worst book ever.
[00:01:49] So it's a print ready version that's almost done. Transparency, whatever, that's fine.
[00:01:57] Okay, so there we go. So I've got my PDF's or the actual contents of the book. Got that. Ready? Now, in reedsy, I said what kind size I wanted and either it detected it. Yeah. So based on the interior file I uploaded, it showed me it's four and a quarter by six or whatever. 108 by 177 mm. Okay. It's really small. And then it also figured out the page count. 132. Awesome, right? Okay, so already, thanks to readsy and the design that it already created, it's already making life easier. Interior color? I definitely do not want color. I just want black and white. Standard is fine, by the way, these things, I think that's a little globe. And I think these are available internationally. I'm in the Netherlands here. I usually pick one of these. White or cream? I kind of like cream for some reason. Now, this one's also really interesting. So if it were workbook, we could do coil. I've done paperbacks and hardcover. So again, we're going to find out what the little globe means. I want to do hardcover because I did it recently. It's just beautiful.
[00:03:09] I'm going to choose map and it's going to show me the cost. Oops, there we go. So print cost €10. But if I had done paperback and then mat, print cost, it's going to show me paperback, mat, ten. Why is it also ten?
[00:03:37] Unless I did something wrong. Okay, whatever, that's fine. Paperback, mat. And there we go. Four. So like five, right? Pretty awesome, right? And remember, we don't have to order 5000 of these things. We can order one. I mean, the shipping is going to cost more in the book, so. But I want to do hardcover and I want to do mat. Now here comes the fun part. So here, this is where if you have done your PDF, and as I said, it's totally possible in tools like book brush or canva. But I only recently saw this thing create your cover using our cover design tool. Whoa, look at that. So the beauty of this thing is that it's already built to the specifications of exactly my book. So this is a beautiful thing. What is this?
[00:04:28] New group elements. Okay, so they're getting better with their designer. Now, remember, I have barely been in here, so I barely know what I'm doing, right? But here, let's just take a peek. And remember, I want to keep this thing short. How far we got going here?
[00:04:45] I've been at four minutes. I got five minutes, right? So it's taking me five minutes to get in here. And so unlike canva, they don't have a gazillion options, right? They've got some.
[00:04:57] So. But look at this, right? We're already, I already have some kind of background image. I've got a title and I've got a back of the page. Right? And I'm sure if I wanted to get in here and, you know, change some background colors, I could, right? Look at this. Super easy. So, by the way, this is really difficult in other programs. And we can do it. I do it. I can. I know how to do it. I can teach you how to do it. But I've never seen something where this is actually our book. Right? It's not just, oh, you know, we're going to, we're going to make this cover and hopefully it'll fit no, this is, it actually is your book. So I'm just going to. Because I don't, I'm just goofing around here. I just want to see how much I can do. Right. So what is this book called? This is my book called Focus.
[00:05:56] There we go. This is my subtitle, which I can't read, but that's okay because I can change some of these fonts.
[00:06:09] What is my subtitle? I don't know. Right. So I can zoom in. There's my subtitle. Here we go.
[00:06:17] Focus by.
[00:06:20] This is me. Right? So this is basically what I want here. Of course we would copy in my bio.
[00:06:30] Bio, bio, bio.
[00:06:35] Right. I'm just showing you the goofy stuff that we can do here.
[00:06:40] Fit. So there we go. This thing was probably. I wonder how much I can think to get rid of that. Oh, look at that. Okay, cool. I got rid of that image that was kind of in the middle of everything and so we could be done. Right. Because this is, I mean, we're done. Preview, cover. So remember those lines that brown is like the safe zone or the danger zone and you want to stay out of that. Right. So all we're doing, remember, I'm still under ten minutes here and we have a simple color. I'm sure we can bring in an image. Are you. There you go. You upload an image from canva or wherever you got it. Be careful of copyright stuff.
[00:07:21] There's awesome. There's some basic stuff in here, right? There's some shapes and basic things, templates. You say, oops, I actually wanted, you know what? I actually want a totally different thing. Fine. There we go. Focus.
[00:07:42] Okay. I just wanted to show you how quickly we can get this done in something like Lulu where it's working with our actual book. That's the big difference. So in Amazon, if you know Amazon, there's also a cover designer which is not even as easy and friendly as this one. And this one is. We're, we're good right here. Like, I have a book, I have a cover here and I even have a spine because my book is, you know, over 60 pages or whatever and we're good. That's it. So let's say I'm going to generate my cover.
[00:08:27] Remember, I already uploaded.
[00:08:29] Checking on my time. Eight minutes. All right. I got to wrap this thing up, but I wanted to show you just how quickly. And this is again, just an advantage that I know so many tools, right? I have so many tools. I know what they are. I test them, I play with them. I try them out and then I can teach you and show you what they are. Like Reedsy, like Lulu here. So look at that.
[00:08:54] There is my book with a cover that I even blabbed on for half of this video and I created it in a few minutes. Of course, we can change the oranges and then I can go in and change it right here. Or I can do the print ready cover file. Or there's my preview again, right?
[00:09:13] And then it's going to say, I'm going to review book and I can confirm and publish. Now, publish doesn't mean I'm ordering it yet. It's kind of like making it. It's like confirm and make sort of. And then I can go choose to buy it or not. That's it. That's what I wanted to show you. This is the kind of thing we're doing. It is currently Thursday. I'm hosting my one word book workshop the day after tomorrow. If you happen to be in the Netherlands, 22 June 2024. This is the kind of stuff we're going to get done in one day, we're going to do. I mean, this took me ten minutes, right? We got the whole rest of the day. Get you booked up. That's it. Bradley Sherman, are we podcast Thursday Thunder. See you Saturday. If you're in the Netherlands, come on by. And if not, see you online. Thanks for watching. Bye for now.
