Rhoda Baxter's Blog, page 4

Make a short teaser animation for a thriller using Canva

Okay, I don’t write thrillers, but if I did, I would totally use this. This is a funky animation that shows blood flowing into a word until it is readable.

Just hit the big red button to watch the video in YouTube.

If you’ve found this tutorial useful, please share it (and subscribe to my YouTube channel – I’d be very grateful).

If you’d like a free Canva template – sign up to my newsletter here: https://jeevanicharika.com/canva-for-authors/

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Supercharge your social media with Canva bulk create

If you’ve just had a blog tour or had a book on Netgalley, grabbing all the reviews and making lots of social media posts can take ages. Now, you can do it really quickly, using the cool trick in Canva.

You still have to capture all the reviews, but you can bung them straight into a design and having something ready to go in the time it takes to make a cup of tea.

Just hit the big red button to play the video in YouTube.

If you’ve found this tutorial useful, please share it (and ...

Book review: The Housekeepers by Alex Hay

This is one of the best books I’ve read this year! Lady con-artists and an audacious heist. I raced through it.
Mrs King and Mrs Bone are both so well described and easy to root for (they aren’t NICE, but they’re each relatable … and formidable in their own way!).
I loved the heist aspect of it and was genuinely tense reading the climactic scenes. There was a subtle mystery thread running through the book, which added an extra layer of intrigue.
Wonderful!

Also, that cover is just amazing.

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Canva for Authors: How to turn your ebook cover into a 3D book image

If you’re with a digital first publisher (or a digital only publisher), you will get your ebook cover image well before you get any print copies. You want to have nice packshot (3D) pictures of your book to show off on social media, so how do you convert it?

There are ways to do it within Canva itself, but in this video, I show you another website. www.diybookcovers.com, which let your easily convert your 2D ebook cover into a set of 3D images. I will walk you through the process and even giv...

Canva for Authors: How to do 3D overlaps in Canva

Sometimes, you want images to overlap and look like they’re going THROUGH each other – like the flowers going through the text in the thumbnail below. So, how do you do that in Canva?

Let’s find out.

In this video, I show you how to create a book cover using free elements and how to layer the images so that they go through each other convincingly.

Click on the red play button to watch the YouTube video

If you’ve found this tutorial useful, please share it (and subscribe to my ...

Canva for Authors: Templates – the simplest way to make book marketing images

Making book marketing images can be daunting. After all, we’re writers, not graphic designers (unless you are a graphic designer, in which case, you already know all this stuff and more). So how do you make pretty images if you haven’t got a clue where to start? Canva templates, that’s how.

In this video I go through the two types of templates – the ones available in Canva itself (usually for free) and the ones that you can buy from places like Etsy for a small fee. They really are the simple...

Straight as a Jalebi by Ritu Bhathal

I was offered a copy of Straight As A Jalebi to read in return for a review quote. As you know, I try to keep up with any new romance novels that feature South Asian characters, so I was delighted to read it.

Sunny is the ‘good’ son. He works in the family business and is generally very straight-laced. His niche shop in Birmingham has started a collaboration with the Indian clothing designer Milan, whose dazzling wedding clothes are bringing UK desi brides to the shop in droves.

Milan...

Canva for authors: How to make a tropey marketing graphic for your book

Have you seen those graphics that have a book in the centre and then list all the reasons you should read it – with romance, it’s usually done by listing tropes. This works because romance readers tend to like tropes. You’ll often see social media posts that say ‘I love this trope – tell me more books that have it, please’. So someone scrolling through their social media feed might come across the image of your book cover and clock that they like a certain trope in it … and hopefully click thr...

Canva for authors: How to Design a book cover with curved text on it

I enjoy making book covers. Sometimes, you just need to make your text curve round to look good (especially if you have long words in it!). Here’s a guide to how you do it.

Earlier this year, I set myself a challenge to create 25 book covers based on titles generated by ChatGPT (you can buy them as pre-made covers and put your own title and author name on them). Doughnuts and Consequences was one of those titles.

In the video below, I show how I made the cover using several different free...

Canva for authors: How to show off your books on Facebook

You’ve written a book (or several books), so naturally you want to show them off wherever you can. If you’re on Facebook, why not put them on your page banner, so that anyone who pops past your page can see them?

Not sure how to make one of those? Let me show you.

In this tutorial I will:

Walk you through how to add your books to a Facebook bannerShow you how to make sure the important things (like your name!) don’t get cut off when viewed on a mobile phoneShow you how to...