Vital Author Resources
Striving to make your book the best that it can be!
After all, not only is your reputation at stake but so is ours. In the interest of our authors, we try to provide excellent resources. Whether you are a first-time author or a seasoned pro, these resources should be bookmarked and kept on hand for all your writing needs. There are some tools on our site already that will help you before you start to write, or enable you to properly format what is already written. We try to offer the best external links possible. If you have a site to recommend, please let us know. Click on the orange title links to view and download the pdf guides, or to see or order that resource.
Guides, Resources and Tools on Picky Press:
Guide to Publishing with Picky Press: A beginner’s guide covering from creating your account to publishing your book. (14-page pdf incl covers) (Click here to see a Flipbook version of this file.)
Picky Press Book Publishing Specifications Checklist: A general checklist, plus a more advanced checklist for those wanting to create their entire book project themselves. (2-page pdf) (Click here to see a Flipbook version of this file.)
PickyPress Author Forms and Official Documents: This link takes you to all of the needed forms for book publishing and royalty payments.
A Color-Coded Book Layout: This originally “virtual” guide shows which elements of a book should be found where and in what order by way of color-coding. (20-page pdf incl covers) (Click here to see a Flipbook version of this file.)
Interior Design Book Format Samples: This guide gives nice examples of interior design and formatting, and has a handy visual summary of what goes where at the end. (5-page pdf) (Click here to see a Flipbook version of this file.)
How Graphics Work In Print: This article explains how graphics in a printed book differ vastly from what you see on the monitor.
Interior Templates: Pre-formatted interior book templates made especially for use with Picky Press. Don’t pay for templates when you can get ours for free (as long as you publish with us).
Decorative Additions: Samples of our font packages, and free flourishes, page borders and decorative additions that can truly make your book special and fancy.
Funding Your Project: Ideas to raise funds.
Approbations and Endorsements: How to go about it.
Various Author Tools: This page has a summary of the many exclusive tools from Picky Press such as Words-to-Pages, Minimum Retail List Price, and Royalty Estimators, and Book Cost Calculator. These can be an invaluable aid to determining how many pages and what format your print book should be in, and how much to charge for it. The links are with the descriptions.
Choosing A Publisher: This explains the various publisher options available to the independent author, and goes through their pros and cons. See why Picky Press is the best option in publishing!
Book Options: A page complete with price sheet to see all of our available print book options.
Links to Other Resources
Although none of the following sites are connected to Picky Press, we offer the following links to help our authors. It is mandatory to make your work the best, so legal photographs or artwork are a must, as well as proper spelling, grammar, punctuation and other things to use. If you want to save money, have a knowledgeable, yet impartial and honest friend or relative proofread your work. (Maybe not your mother!)
Writing Resources
Style Guides
Some publishers stick to specific “Style Guides”, such as the Chicago Manual of Style (the source Picky Press uses), or the AP Style Guide. These can often be purchased online, but we try to keep your costs as manageable as possible. Other sites offer courses on style. Unless you have not written anything yet, you may not have the time for taking a whole writing style course. We are presuming that you already have something written, and need to proof-edit what’s there. These links may help you find out proper capitalization, abbreviations, and many other aspects of writing.
https://www.thebalance.com/which-style-guide-should-i-use-1360722
http://www.thewriter.com/what-we-think/style-guide/
https://www.uc.edu/ucomm/resources/stylebook.html
Dictionaries and Thesaurus:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/
http://www.dictionary.com/
http://www.thesaurus.com/
Rhyming Thesaurus:
https://www.rhymezone.com/
Reverse Dictionary:
Helpful for when you know a definition but just don’t have the word to say it:
http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml
Grammar and Punctuation
http://www.chompchomp.com/rules.htm
http://www.grammarbook.com/
https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/GramPunct.html
Homophones:
Words that sound alike and may be confused with one another:
https://aceseditors.org/news/2000/words-commonly-confused/
Acronyms
https://www.acronymfinder.com/
Title Capitalization Checker:
http://titlecaseconverter.com/
Writing Tips
https://www.powa.org/
http://www.writing-world.com/index.shtml
Writing Stylebooks
http://lgdata.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/docs/575/851879/Five-minutestylebook-2013.pdf
Writing Footnotes and Citations
http://www.citationmachine.net/resources/the-ultimate-chicago-style-guide/
Public Domain and Royalty-Free Graphics:
It is extremely important that any graphics you may use in your book or more especially on your cover, are your own, or not used by anyone else. If someone else owns the copyright on work you use without permission, not only is it illegal, but it is considered theft! Unlawful use is a pathway to getting sued.
If you do want to use something that is under copyright, you must get written permission from the owner and should make a statement to that effect in your copyright notice. We use Pixabay for a lot of our work. Do not use pictures in websites like Pinterest, unless you get written permission. There are many places that post pictures and old advertisements claiming to be under the Fair Use Act, and this is very shady.
There are “Creative Commons” resources, such as Wikipedia, but even for these, you must make sure which license they are using. Some still require attributions, others do not. Only if something is listed as being released into the “Public Domain”, is it available for use without permission. Attributions may be listed along with the picture or separately, sometimes on the copyright page and at other times with a picture, depending on what the Terms of Use are. Below are Royalty-Free and Public Domain sources for quality graphics.
Photography:
https://pixabay.com/
http://absfreepic.com/
https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/images/image-gallery/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Featured_Pictures_in_the_Public_Domain
https://pxhere.com/
Clipart:
http://www.clipartoday.com/
Old Line Drawings and Vintage Artwork
https://snappygoat.com/
Png Photo Objects with Transparent Backgrounds
http://pngplay.com/
http://www.pngmart.com/
General Photographs
http://publicdomainarchive.com/
https://unsplash.com/
http://realisticshots.com/
http://www.lifeofpix.com
https://gratisography.com
https://stocksnap.io/
https://kaboompics.com/
https://isorepublic.com/
https://www.foodiesfeed.com/
https://mmtstock.com/
Hi-Res Photos for Backgrounds
http://travelcoffeebook.com/
http://cupcake.nilssonlee.se/
https://designercandies.net/
Formatting and Fonts
Ideally, for the body of text, and especially for E-Books, you should choose a common, easy-to-read “True Type” or “Open Type” font. (These file extensions are .ttf or .otf.) However, for chapter headings and book cover titles, your imagination is the limit.
Identify and Match a Font:
This enables you to choose a font that you like but don’t have, and then download a match to your computer. (Great for title creation.).
https://www.fontsquirrel.com/matcherator
Identify Fonts
See all the fonts you have on your computer and what file they are.
https://wordmark.it/
Convert Font Collections
If you receive a font collection that is TTC or DFONT that refuses to install, it needs unpacking or conversion and here is the place to do that.
https://transfonter.org/ttc-unpack
Book Creation Guides Online
Guides for New Authors
This link contains a list for all kinds of resources, from scholarships to style:
https://couponfollow.com/research/money-saving-guide-authors-writers
Book Construction Blueprint
Picky Press recommend this pdf E-Book Book Construction Blueprint by publisher Joel Freidlander. It is a definite “need to read” for Independent authors wanting to design their own books. It can be found here:
https://www.thebookdesigner.com/bcb/
DIY-Book Designing Resources
https://www.thebookdesigner.com/
Book Creation Services (Editors, Artists, Designers)
http://www.blurb.com/dreamteam-collaborators