My Book Review ---- How I make my book covers

Book covers are a wonderful visual on our book reviews and they are relatively easy to do.   In order to add book covers, you need two things -- a source for your cover - and - an online hosting service for your pictures.   I use photobucket for my online picture host, though I think any online photo album site would work, perhaps flikr? ..... Photobucket accounts are free, so if you don't have one you can open one easily ... and I think you'll find that photobucket can be a fun way to share pictures   .....     click on "more" --->

if your bookcover appears anywhere here on the eHarlequin site you can direct link to that cover ..... (I'll explain how shortly) .. however, often the covers are removed after six months, and these book reviews are hopefully forever on this new server ..... so I do suggest that you save the image to your computer and then upload it to your Photobucket album (or other online album host)  .... to save a picture to your computer, simply right click on the image, then select "save picture as"  ... this will save the picture to your hard drive , you can name the folder you want it to be saved in ... I usually use "My Pictures"  ...... then you will "upload" the picture to Photobucket .... that's easy too ... you do it the same way you uploaded your avatar in your profile

You could actually take a picture of the book you've just read with your digital camera ... you would save it to your hard drive and again upload it  to your Photobucket  album

You could find the image of your book from another online source, perhaps an online retailer or reseller or perhaps, the author's website .... I'm not going to be specific on a source, simply because of website rights .... I don't think it would be a problem to "save picture as" from an online retailer but technically you are supposed to ask their permission  ..... and I do not recommend linking directly to a book cover on another website without that permission esp. as we are linking onto the eHarlequin Community and not our own personal website .... another very good reason to make the book cover yours by putting it in your Photobucket album

if you are using an online album, I suggest you put your book covers in a separate folder from any other pictures you may have ..... perhaps call it eHarlequin Book Covers or Book Review Covers ....... this way you will know that any cover you put in that folder should not be deleted .... once you delete the cover from your online album, it will no longer show up here in your book review ... you'll get that rather annoying box with the red X in it

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okay you've now got the "source" for your book cover .... now what?

if you are direct linking to a book cover on the eHarlequin site, you need it's URL ....... simply right click on the picture, click on "properties", highlight the URL address and "copy"   ....if your book cover is in your Photobucket album, than copy the "Direct Link" information .. now that address is on your clipboard  .... next on the editing tool bar (grey area on the body/comment box) click on the icon of the "tree" .... an "Insert / edit image" box will pop up .... you will need to input the following ....

Image URL -------- "paste" the url address of the cover you just copied from the eHarlequin site or from your online photo album

Image Description ------ I use the title of the book

Alignment ------ this is a drop down list of the various positions to place the cover in your blog post  -- experiment in a practice blog ---- I use "Left"

Dimensions     ____ x ____   ---- this is the size the picture will be in your post ...... for covers I use 115 x 175  ..... below you will see various sizes that are common and chose a size that works for you ...... I like 115 x 175 as it's large enought to see the cover, yet it is not too large that it takes over the book review

Border --- I think this would be useful if we were able to put a background colour to our entries .... but as we can't this really is not of any value  as the border is white and doesn't really show

Vertical Space .... this is a value for the amount of space vertically around your picture that will be blank ... the higher the value the more space between the picture and the text  or the less crowded the post will look --- I prefer 10

Horizontal Space .... same as above  --- I prefer 10

once you've indicated your values in the "insert/edit image" box, click on "Insert" and voila!  ... you now have a picture in your post

if you selected "left" for you alignment, you can now type some text beside your picture and this is where it will appear on your "full version" of your book review  ...... and if you know how to "split" your review for the "trimmed version" the text will appear to the right of the cover in the "trimmed version"  ... if you don't know how to "split" your review, I will be giving details in my next blogs about My Book Reviews

Examples of various book cover sizes and vertical / horizontal spaces ----

The size of this cover is   100 x 160

The vertical space = 10

The horizontal space = 10

The size of this cover is   115 x 175

The vertical space = 10

The horizontal space = 10

This is the size I prefer to use

The size of this cover is   127 x 200

The vertical space = 10

The horizonal space = 10

This is the small book cover size that appears on the eHarl shopping pages 

(there's something about a man in a wet t-shirt!)

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What is that "Image" upload function all about, that appears just above the "body" section?

You can use this function to directly "upload" an image to the eHarl website ..... if you use this function to upload your book covers, I'm not sure you will not be able to control the split on the  "trimmed version" of your review  .... but this is a handy way to make your non-book review / blog entries unique with pictures you'd like to share with the community and not have to have an online photo album

I'm sure Tammy included most or all of this information in her blog entry  Posting Pics ... I'm including it here again as a refresher and to accompany My Book Review blogs

I hope the "My Book Review" blog entries have been helpful ... you are welcome to follow any formating layouts that I use ... always though your review is "yours" and you can design them any way you wish .... these blog entries are only intended to give some tips that I have learnt while playing with my own reviews ... there really is no "right or wrong" way to do a review so have fun with them  ...... if there are any unaswered questions on formating, ask away ... if I know the answer I will gladly share :) 

~~ KatherineT ~~ I'm a Harlequin Addict, and I'm proud of it!
~~ Quiet Canadians ~ 2008 Book Challenge Blog