How To: Make A Postcard In Microsoft Word. Postcards are highly versatile for businesses, organizations and creative types. They can be employed a number of different ways, either as invitations, leaflets or maximized business cards. Although primarily used for word processing, MS Word does have the capability of postcard creation. These steps will guide you through the process of creating a postcard from a template. Disclaimer: Designing a postcard in Word is certainly possible, but for the highest quality design, cheapest price and most customizable options, we recommend using a professional postcard printer. Step 1. Create a new document. Open Microsoft Word and start a new postcard project (File> New> Blank Document> Cards> Postcards). As you can see, there are several subcategories available. Explore a bit and pick the template you like most or the layout that matches your design goal. TIP: There are also different sizes of cards available. I will be using a postcard template that is 4 inches by 6 inches. To open the chosen template, click on its thumbnail in the list and click the Download button under the preview in the sidebar. Step 2. Enter custom information. 1. Start Word. Click the "Page Layout" tab. Click the "Size" button below the tab. Click the "More Paper Sizes" option. Enter the dimensions for the newspaper into.A postcard is made of a front and back. The document you will be customizing is made of two sheets, one for each. Microsoft Word 2013 is an excellent book writing tool -- as long as you stick to typing text for the book's chapters. It's less than stellar at handling jobs such as. After avoiding the 7 deadly sins of résumé design, you may be asking, “If I can’t use crazy colors, clip art, and other types of decoration, how do I make my. Home > Support > Search. Troubleshooting MICR Font & Components. The solutions provided below may solve MICR E-13B read errors and check processing problems reported. Using templates, you won’t have to trouble yourself with the placement of the front and back. The template guarantees they’ll match up for printing. You only have to worry about the actual content of the postcard. I will start by editing the card’s text. To do so, just click on the areas where you see the sample text and enter your own. Right click on the text to edit the font, size and style. Select the default image by clicking on it and hit the backspace button to delete it. Now go to Insert> Picture and browse your computer to find the picture you want to add. Adjust the placement and size of the image to fit the template. Try different options in the Text Wrap panel. TIP: A good postcard uses striking visuals to create a distinct theme or personality, so choosing high- quality images that are relevant to the project is a must. Step 4. Replace the logo. If you are creating a postcard for your company, you will want to use your own logo. Replacing the default logo is as simple as changing the other images. Select the default and hit backspace to delete it. Go to Insert> Picture and browse your folders for your logo file. As you did for the image in the previous step, you can adjust the placement and size of the logo and select different Text Wrap options to move the logo around with ease. TIP: Having a logo with a transparent background is not a requirement because Word has a Remove Background feature. Nevertheless, it’s definitely easier to work with a file that doesn’t need tweaking. Step 5. Style other areas. You can customize your postcard beyond what I’ve done so far. Templates are basically a combination of shapes, and all shape areas of the postcard are easily edited by double- clicking and choosing among the various available fills, outlines and special effects from the Format tab. For example, you can change the look of your postcard by applying gradients, textures, patterns and adjusting the weight and color of each shape’s border. Step 6. Switching to the back. Once you’ve finished editing the front, you can focus on the back. Add your information and logo, change colors and so on.The techniques are exactly the same for the front. . Step 7. Fill both sheets. Each sheet of the document contains two identical postcards. In this case they are sized 4 inches by 6, but specs may vary depending on the template. By repeating the steps you followed above for the front and back of the card, you will have a ready- to- print postcard document. Step 8. Save the project. When the document is ready, click on the save icon at the left corner. Saving in the PDF format is recommended for files you need to print. TIP: Even if Word automatically saves your document at frequent intervals, remember to save your document as often as you can so no changes are lost. Here is the preview of the final postcard. Now you have your own postcard! Using Microsoft Word’s templates is a very simple way to make postcards for a business on a budget. If you like using templates and are interested in more options beyond what Word offers, check out our template reviews to find one that works for you! Photo source: Flavoloka. Updated: Nov 2nd 2. Aaron Shepard's Publishing Blog (Amazon. Lightning Source, Create. Space, Kindle)Spam Authors, and How to Nail Them. Nov. 2. 8, 2. 01. Since my first post about spam books on Amazon, there have been some excellent news articles on the subject. I was especially intrigued by Caitlin Dewey’s article in the Washington Post. She focused not only on how these books are produced and promoted but also on the fact that many of their authors do not exist. It turns out that it’s common practice among spam authors to create fake identities with fabricated credentials. This gives an appearance of authority and trustworthiness, or at least presents an attractive persona. Obviously, the real persona of a spam author would be less than attractive and trustworthy.)At first glance, you may think this is nothing more than the old practice of using a pen name. And of course, there’s nothing wrong with that practice—in fact, I use one myself. But the difference is huge. For the bio of my pen name, I pick and choose facts from my background and career that relate to the books written under that name. The pen name represents only a part of me, but it’s still me, and everything I say about myself is true. Even a corporate name, such as used by book packagers for a children’s book series, is different. Yes, the named author may be a nonexistent personality credited with the work of multiple authors hired by the packager. But you won’t be told that this author has an MBA from the University of Michigan plus twenty years running a health spa and lives with her husband and three special- needs children in Savannah, Georgia. Spam authors, on the other hand, just make such things up. They present themselves as something they’re not, to get you to buy their books. This is called fraud, and it’s both unethical and illegal. These authors could, and perhaps should, go to jail. They certainly shouldn’t be allowed to sell their books. I’m finding it fairly easy now to spot spam nonfiction, given the slick covers with stock photos, the copycat, keyword- heavy titling, the publishing frequency, the focus on stock subject areas, the lack of paperback editions, the flood of 5- star reviews just after publication. But how do you spot a fake author? You might investigate the author’s bio, as Dewey did—but that’s pretty labor intensive. Dewey mentioned, though, that her main example had used a stock photo for his (her) author pic—the portrait photo that appears on an Amazon Author Page, among other places. I wondered if using stock photos was common. I also figured that a faked photo of this kind was a dead giveaway that the entire identity was fake, so I really wouldn’t need to look further. So, I set out to investigate the author pics associated with a number of books that looked to me like spam. The first thing I discovered was that many of these authors don’t have author pics at all. Though that limited the usefulness of my approach, I also found that the spam authors most likely to have pics were those with the most books. In the end, I examined ten author pics for authenticity. How to do that is not widely known, but it’s really not hard. It’s done with what’s called a reverse image search. That means you upload the picture to an online search service and within seconds get matches to pictures found around the Web. I used two such services: Google Images and Tin. Eye. com. I found I needed both, because each gave different results, and sometimes only one search was helpful. Here’s what I found: Of the ten author pics, three came out clean, with no suspicious matches at either search service. Three pics were stock photos, available for purchase from numerous online agencies. Another pic had been lifted, directly or indirectly, from a portrait photographer’s Web site in Hong Kong. The remaining three were the real surprise. They were cases of outright identity theft. The publishers had stolen photos of real people. And not just anyone, but people of some prominence, including one TV personality and one author of real books sold on Amazon. In other words, these publishers were not just deceptive, and not just dishonest, but also downright stupid! With the discovery of seven faked pics out of ten, the question now was, what would Amazon do with this kind of information? First I’ll tell you what they should do, as I recommended to Amazon. Any author who has submitted a faked author pic should have his or her KDP publisher account terminated immediately—because a faked pic is a sure sign that the rest of the author’s identity, and the books themselves, are fraudulent. What’s more, I believe Amazon staff should themselves run reverse image searches on every author pic submitted, using the two services I’ve mentioned. Unfortunately, what I found was that Amazon itself does not yet know how it wants to deal with fake authors. It has become a vigilant crusader against phony reviews, but the issue of phony authors is new to it and confusing. In fact, Amazon has not yet even sorted out the difference between a pen name and a fraudulent identity. I found, though, that some people at Amazon are listening and considering. What they need now is to to hear more about the prevalence of the problem and our concern over it. So, I invite you to join me in this campaign. If you spot an author identity that’s likely to be fake, run the reverse image searches. And if you find that the pic is a stock photo or a stolen identity, report it to Amazon KDP. In my own report, I included the author name, the Author Page URL, the search service that provided the best results, and my conclusions from these results. For the identity thefts, I also included an email address for each victim, for Amazon’s verification. I had already searched these out and notified the victims myself. I figured, if Amazon didn’t want to listen to me, it would certainly have to listen to them! If your first response from KDP is inadequate, bounce it back so your issue will be sent to the next level. Also, you’re welcome to refer to this blog post for explanation, if you need to. There are many factors currently causing the world of Kindle publishing to self destruct. But this might be one we can do something about. JPEG XR on Kindle. Sept. 2. 8, 2. 01. Updated Dec. 1. 9, 2. In my last post, I wrote about the new Kindle Format X, which Amazon has developed to go along with its new layout engine. One of the features of this new Kindle format turns out to be the conversion of all pictures to a new graphics format: JPEG XR. Originally developed by Microsoft, it gives higher image quality at smaller file sizes. Using JPEG XR makes perfect sense, now that Amazon has drastically raised its file size limit for submitted graphics. It also makes sense that Amazon prepares grayscale JPEG XRs of most pictures for delivery to monochrome Kindles. What makes less sense is something I’ve seen through my testing: It’s not only JPEGs that get converted to the new format, but also GIFs. That means that, for Kindle Format X, you can no longer use a GIF to get the cleanest possible lines and text in a picture. You can’t use GIFs for transparency, either. On conversion to JPEG XR, transparent portions of GIFs are flattened to white—which looks fine on a white background but dumb on sepia or black. Though JPEG XR does support transparency, Amazon ignores that capability. Whether that’s from a decision to keep file sizes smaller or is just a remarkable oversight, I can’t tell. Is there another way to get what you could with a GIF? You could instead produce your image in SVG, a format that’s related to PDF and that’s displayed by all but the oldest Kindles. But then you’d need to compose your book directly in HTML or in an app that imports and exports SVG. Microsoft Word certainly isn’t one of those.)You may wonder if the adoption of JPEG XR changes my recommendations for size and format given in my book Pictures on Kindle. First let me clarify that there’s currently no way to submit pictures in JPEG XR to Amazon KDP. The format isn’t recognized by Kindlegen, which is still used for initial processing. Technically, the best acceptable format to submit pictures for conversion to JPEG XR would be PNG, because of its lossless compression. To avoid unnecessarily large files, you could use 8- bit PNG for GIF- style pictures, and 2. PNG only for JPEG- style.
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