Flip an image with Photoshop

Sometimes you want to flip an image either horizontally or vertically.

For example, in this cover I wanted to horizontally flip the image of the woman so that she was facing right, not left.

There are two options, depending on the situation:

  1. You can flip the entire canvas.
  2. Flip a single image layer.

Flip the entire canvas

If you want to flip everything, you can flip the entire canvas.

  • Select Image > Image Rotation > Flip Canvas Horizontal (or Vertical).
     

Just keep in mind that this really will flip everything – all of your image layers, any text you’ve added, etc.

Flip a single image

  • Select the image layer you want to flip.
     

     
  • Select Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal (or Vertical).
     

     

Photoshop version

The version of Photoshop used for this post was the 2017.1.1 Release of Adobe Photoshop CC, 20170425.r.252 x64, on OS X 10.13.1.

   
 

Sign up for the Blackbird Publishing newsletter!

Publish and distribute an audio book on Findaway Voices

Findaway Voices allows you to publish and distribute an existing audio book. There is no requirement for exclusivity, and you control the pricing.

You keep 80% of the royalties Findaway Voices receives. The actual percentages vary by the type of partner, channel, and business model.

These instructions assume you have an existing audio book, but you can also use the platform to find a narrator to record your audio book.

Prerequisites

  • Audio book files.
  • A book cover.

Here are the five types of audio files you’ll need. Note that all but one is required.

  • Opening Credits (required)
    Material preceding the main text. Examples: Dedication, Introduction, etc.
  • Body Matter (required)
    The main text.
  • Back Matter (optional)
    Anything following the main text. Examples: About the Author, Bibliography, etc.
  • Closing Credits (required)
  • Retail Sample (required)
    A 1-5 minute long sample of the book. Customers will be able to preview this sample before purchasing your audio book.

Draft2Digital and Findaway Voices

If you have a Draft2Digital account, you can create and manage your audio books through their site. The integration is pretty seamless. I set up one audio book through Findaway Voices, and then selected an existing ebook on Draft2Digital to set up audio for. Both books appear on my audio books dashboard. I can’t see the one that’s only set up in audio book form in my regular ebooks panel on Draft2Digital, but that makes sense as I haven’t made it available as a stand-alone ebook

Set up your audio book

  • You’ll be prompted to start a new audio book when you create your Findaway Voices account. If you’ve already created your account, log in and click on ‘My Audiobooks,’ and then click ‘Start New Audiobook’ and set the button next to ‘Do you already have audio for this book?’ to ‘yes.’
     
  • You’ll be prompted for information about your book – title, description, narrator(s), copyright information, BISAC code, etc.
     

     
  • Upload your cover. Audio book covers are square, so you can either upload a regular, rectangular book cover, or make a square cover yourself.
     
    If you upload a rectangular cover, a frame will be added to your image. You can choose the color for this frame based on a selection of colors Findaway Voices picks from your image.
     

     
    Or you can create a square version of your existing cover.
     

     
  • Add your audio files.
     

     
  • Set the price for your book.
     

     
  • Select which distributors you’d like to use for this book.
     

     
  • Review everything and make sure it’s correct.
     

     
  • Set up your Payment Profile. This includes selecting which tax form to use (W-8BEN, W9, etc.).
     
  • Click ‘Submit for Publishing’ on the ‘Review your Audiobook’ page to publish and distribute your book!

References

   
 

Sign up for the Blackbird Publishing newsletter!

Bundle story: “Can You See the Real Me?” by Sèphera Girón

Welcome to the eighties!

A time when going off to University signified true independence, smoking in the dorm rooms, and partying.

Tia has her eye on the resident hottie, Dana.

Although she’s not terribly pretty, she hopes she can entice him in other ways.

Find out what happens behind closed residence room doors in this creepy little tale.

“Can You See the Real Me?” is in the Witches’ Brew bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.


Bundles With Stories by This Author


More by the Author


About the Author

Sèphera Girón is a multitalented artist with a background in stage, film, and music as well as writing. Her main love is horror and most of her work embraces themes of occult, metaphysical, erotica, and suspense.

When Sephera isn’t writing, she’s a professional tarot card reader. She also holds Certificates in Reiki and Touch for Health. Her acting has led her through theatre shows and movies, including Slime City Massacre and Killer Rack. She’s currently a co-producer for The Great Lakes Horror Company podcast.


Find the Author

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

   
 

Sign up for the Blackbird Publishing newsletter!

Basic ebook download setup with BookFunnel

BookFunnel is an ebook delivery platform that allows authors to deliver books directly to their readers. You upload your ebook files to BookFunnel, create a download page, then provide the link to that download page to your readers.

These instructions cover the basics, but there are lots of different options – you can customize your landing page, integrate with your mailing list, etc.

Prerequisites

You have created a BookFunnel account. 🙂

Create an author pen name

BookFunnel allows you to have multiple pen names – how many depends on which plan you’ve signed up for.

  • If you haven’t created a pen name on BookFunnel, you should be prompted to create one when you log in. If this doesn’t happen, or if you’ve already created a pen name and want to create another, click on ‘Add New’ and then ‘Add New Pen Name’ in the left sidebar.
     

     
  • A popup will appear asking you to enter your author name, email address, and URL. Fill these out, then click ‘Save Author’
     

     

Add a book

Once you’ve created a pen name, you need to associate a book with it.

  • Add a new book by clicking on ‘Add New’ in the left sidebar, then ‘Add New Book.’ You’ll be prompted to distribute either an epub/mobi or a pdf. Select the appropriate option.
     

     
  • Enter the details for your book. This includes the ‘book label’ which is a descriptive label only you will see. It can be the same as the title, or can be any text you want – the tagline, etc.
     

     
  • Upload your book files – your epub, mobi, pdf, or some combination thereof, plus the cover of the book.
     

     
  • Click on ‘Save Book.’
     

Create a download page

  • Click on ‘Home’ in the left sidebar.
     

     
  • If you haven’t created any download pages, you’ll see a link to create one. Click on ‘Create a Download Page for [your book name]’ and then select the desired book from the dropdown.
     
    If you have created at least one download page, go to ‘Books’ and select the desired book, then click ‘Add Page’ in the Download Pages section.
  • Decide whether or not you want to require the reader to provide their email address before downloading your book, then click on the appropriate button.
     

     
    If you choose ‘Yes, collect the reader’s email address’ then you’re creating a Giveaway Page; if you choose ‘No, just let them download the book’ you’re creating a Download Page.
  • Set the settings for your download or giveaway page, and then save the page.
     
  • Select the desired link from either the Download Pages section or the Giveaway Pages section. This link is what you’ll provide to people to download your book.
     
  • To edit your book information, download/giveaway pages, view statistics, etc., click on ‘Books’ in the left sidebar, and then click on your book.
     

     

References

   
 

Sign up for the Blackbird Publishing newsletter!

New release: Stars in the Darkness


Stars in the Darkness is a collection of stories about why being just matters, and what the ramifications are for individuals, groups, towns, countries, or even worlds if justice is not expected, encouraged, or enforced.

The stories cover a wide range, from historical fiction to fantasy to alternate realities. Every tale, whether set in ancient Egypt, in a future where only the rich can afford to increase their children’s intelligence through genetic engineering, or about a man turned into a zombie by accident, sends a message about what matters. These stories show bravery, compassion, courage—and consequences.

All proceeds from this collection will be donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Human Rights Campaign.

Available on Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Books2Read.

Learn more about the anthology on Facebook and Goodreads.

   
 

Sign up for the Blackbird Publishing newsletter!

Bundle story: “Living with the Past” by Dayle A. Dermatis

Former Hollywood party girl Nikki Ashburne sees ghosts—in fact, many of them are her friends. Okay, they’re kind of her only friends. Most ghosts stick around because they’re happy here and have no desire to move on…but sometimes, they need help.

Like when a decades-dead Marilyn Monroe impersonator wants Nikki to find her granddaughter. In Los Angeles.

Yeah. That’ll be easy.

Another story in the Ghosted urban fantasy series featuring Nikki Ashburne.

“Living With the Past” originally appeared in Fantastic Detectives (Fiction River, 2014).
 
“Living with the Past” is in the Fantasy in the City bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.
 


Bundles With Stories by This Author


More by the Author


About the Author

Called “one of the best writers working today” by bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith, Dayle A. Dermatis is the author or coauthor of seven novels and more than a hundred short stories in multiple genres, including the first seven Uncollected Anthology anthologies and the forthcoming urban fantasy novel Ghosted. She is a founding member of the Uncollected Anthology project.

A recent transplant to the wild greenscapes of the Pacific Northwest, in her spare time she follows Styx around the country and travels the world, which inspires her writing.


Find the Author

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

   
 

Sign up for the Blackbird Publishing newsletter!

Create a table of contents for an ebook anthology using volumes in Vellum

A ‘volume’ in Vellum is a way to group things together. Volumes can be used to associate content with individual authors and generate a table of contents for an anthology.

What is an ‘element’ in Vellum?

A book in Vellum is made up of a collection of elements. Each element can be formatted differently, displayed or hidden, appear/not appear in the Table of Contents, etc.

For example, the Chapter element can be configured to automatically display the chapter number at the beginning of each chapter, and the first paragraph in every chapter will have the same style applied.

Initial setup

  • Create a Chapter element for each story, and place the contents of the story in this element.
     
  • For each story, create an About the Author element after the author’s Chapter element, and add the author’s biography, links, etc. to this element.
     
  • Generate the ebook.

Your file and the generated table of contents should look something like this:

The table of contents correctly lists each story, but does not display the author’s name, and the ‘About the Author’ sections are displayed – but they look jammed in, plus it’s a little unclear which author each one links to.

This is super easy to fix!

Modify the structure to generate the new TOC format

  • In Vellum, select both the Chapter and About the Author elements for a story. Right-click and choose ‘Create Volume from Selection.’
     

     
  • Change the name of the volume to the name of the story.
     

     
  • Select the volume page, and then select ‘Add Author’ from the dropdown. Add the name of the author.
     
  • Select the chapter page, and then select ‘Hide Heading in Ebook’ from the dropdown.
     
  • Edit the Table of Contents settings, and uncheck ‘List elements within Volumes.’
     

     
  • Generate the ebook.

Your Volume should look like this.

And your Chapter like this.

Now your generated table of contents displays each author’s name, their story title with a link, and the about the author links no longer appear in the table of contents.

Make sure to test your ebook on multiple devices and make sure everything looks as expected.

This particular configuration mysteriously adds blank pages on the Mac OS X version of the Kindle, but looks fine on the Kindle apps on the iPhone, iPad, etc.

References

Software versions

Versions used in this post:

  • Vellum 2.0.5
  • macOS High Sierra 10.13.1
   
 

Sign up for the Blackbird Publishing newsletter!

Bundle story: “The Scent of Roses” by Jamie Ferguson

Lori recently moved into an old Victorian which, as is often the case with old houses, makes creaks and hisses and all kinds of noises. Occasionally she hears three knocks in a row, as if someone were knocking on a door, and every time that happens she swears she can smell the scent of roses.

One windy night Lori’s brother, who had spent the day helping her work on the house, decides to tease her about the knocking sound – so she calls his bluff and tells whatever is knocking to come in.

And so it does…
 
 
“The Scent of Roses” is in the Haunted bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.
 


Bundles With Stories by This Author


More by the Author


About the Author

Jamie focuses on getting into the minds and hearts of her characters, whether she’s writing about a saloon girl in the American West, a man who discovers the barista he’s in love with is a naiad, or a ghost who haunts the house she was killed in—even though that house no longer exists. Jamie lives in Colorado, and spends her free time in a futile quest to wear out her two border collies since she hasn’t given in and gotten them their own herd of sheep.


Find the Author

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

   
 

Sign up for the Blackbird Publishing newsletter!

The differences between bundles and collaborations on BundleRabbit

BundleRabbit was initially created as a story bundling platform. It now offers another feature: collaborative projects, often referred to as ‘collaborations.’

Terminology

curator: The person who organizes the bundle/collaboration. (Note that curation for a single collection may be done by several people working together, just like an anthology could have multiple editors.)

author: An author of a story included in a bundle/collaboration.

content marketplace: An area on BundleRabbit where curators can browse existing ebooks and contact authors to invite them to participate in a bundle.

What is a bundle on BundleRabbit?

A bundle is a collection of ebooks that is organized by a curator. It’s essentially a box set of stories, whether they’re short stories, novellas, novels, or a combination. The curator selects the stories, and BundleRabbit compiles all of the the ebooks into one big ebook.

What does the curator do?

  • Sets the theme for the bundle.
  • Decides what story lengths are allowed.
  • Invites authors to participate. This can be done by contacting an author personally, by requesting a story via the content marketplace on BundleRabbit, or by a combination of both depending on the author/story.
  • Each ebook has its own cover and sales copy, both provided by the author; the curator is responsible for creating the cover and sales copy for the entire collection.

What is a collaborative project (aka collaboration) on BundleRabbit?

A collaborative project, or collaboration, is a collection of stories organized by a curator. It’s closer to an anthology than to a box set. The curator selects the stories and combines them all into an ebook.

What does the curator do?

  • Sets the theme for the bundle.
  • Decides what story lengths are allowed.
  • Invites authors to participate. This is currently done by contacting the author personally (i.e. not through the content marketplace, although you can find authors/stories there and then contact them offline).
  • Creates the cover and sales copy for the entire collection.

What are the differences between bundles and collaborative projects?

What Bundle Collaboration
Percentage of revenue split between curator & authors 75%

5% goes to the curator; the rest is split equallybetween the authors

90%
The curator sets the percentage that goes to each person involved in the collaboration; different percentages can be given to different people
Available on BundleRabbit yes no

(will likely be added in 2018)

Available on other sales channels (Amazon, etc.) yes yes
Print available? no yes
Ebook formatting, cover, sales copy Each author formats their own ebook, provides their own cover, and writes their own sales copy; the curator provides one overall cover, and writes the sales copy for the collection Authors provide their manuscripts to the curator; the curator formats the single ebook, provides one cover, and writes the sales copy for the collection
Formatting consistency Formatting varies by author The curator formats the ebook, and can choose to have consistent formatting for all stories

In either situation, the curator may act as an editor – however, this would be handled between the authors/curator directly (i.e. outside of BundleRabbit).

Summary

Which approach a curator should pick will depend on factors like the content being included, the amount of work the curator intends to invest in creating the collection, and the goals of the curator.

For example, if you’re creating a collection that will include ten novels, a bundle will allow each author to format their own book exactly how they want it – which means that there could be significant differences in formatting from book to book. A collection of ten short stories, however, might look better if all of the stories were formatted the same way.

One way to think about this is to compare a collection to the more traditional forms of anthologies and box sets. In an anthology, there’s a standard look and feel; with a box set, each title can look very different.

A collaboration requires more work from the curator, since the curator must combine all of the manuscripts into one ebook; with a bundle, BundleRabbit does the combination.

A collaboration also provides a finer level of control. For example, the curator can write an introduction to the collection, an afterward, and can do custom things like add images in between each story; with a bundle, the formatting is handled by BundleRabbit, and cannot be customized.

Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages – you just need to figure out which one works best for your situation.

And regardless of whether or not you go with a bundle or a collaboration, BundleRabbit handles the revenue split, and takes care of delivering royalty payments to the curator and the authors. 🙂

References

   
 

Sign up for the Blackbird Publishing newsletter!

Bundle story: “The Flat Above the Wynd” by Alexandra Brandt

As a half-Wyndling, Sky Patel already carefully stands with one foot in her beloved Edinburgh and one in the magical Wynd, a realm just on the other side of any Old Town alley (if you know how to get there).

But now Sky must also protect the doorways between those two worlds. And when past mistakes come back to haunt her, she begins to question the one man she thought she could always trust. The very man who gave her the role of Protector of Old Town in the first place.

All this with new, vulnerable charges to guard against the grasp of the Wynd.

Can Sky even protect herself…let alone anyone else?

“The Flat Above the Wynd” is in The Faerie Summer bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.
 


Bundles With Stories by This Author


More by the Author


About the Author

Alexandra Brandt spent most of her childhood dressing up in fairy wings and parading in front of the mirror telling stories to herself. Not much has changed — she still loves a good costume, and tells herself stories every day. Her stories appear in Fiction River and other anthologies. “We, the Ocean,” her story in Fiction River No Humans Allowed (Vol. 22) was described as “inventive, heartbreaking, and wholly original” by Hugo award-winning writer and editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

When not spinning tales, reading, or debating worldbuilding details with her writer husband, Alex writes marketing copy for a medical practice and does graphic design work, including freelance book cover design. She also sketches, sings, watches too many Sci-Fi and superhero shows, and welcomes any excuse to sit down and play tabletop games — from D&D to board games to cards.


Find the Author

Website | Facebook | Goodreads

   
 

Sign up for the Blackbird Publishing newsletter!