Are These FREE Templates Any Good?

About this video

Dale walks through using his free children’s book templates to build an illustrated children’s book on a budget. He says you need PowerPoint, Mac Keynote or Google Slides, plus his free templates, and warns viewers to do the work and put their own spin on the books: platforms are, in his words, getting wise to identical interiors and actively shutting down accounts over duplicate interiors. Before finalizing, you need a cover image (he suggests free resources like Book Brush or Canva, or hiring a Fiverr designer) and stock image licensing or your own graphics. He says free image sites like Pixabay are an option but recommends investing in graphics or creating your own, since widely used free images offer little differentiation; he names Vexels and Deposit Photos for licensing. The walkthrough covers choosing a trim size, downloading and organizing images in the order they should appear, duplicating slides to reach the desired page count while always keeping right-page/left-page pairs together, deleting unwanted template elements, and respecting the template guides: for a no-bleed book keep elements inside the red box, and for edge-to-edge (bleed) books keep text inside the box and important graphics away from the bleed line. He demonstrates with a 6x9 no-bleed template, dragging in images and adding text boxes with chosen fonts and sizes, then exporting as a PDF for the print version. For the ebook, he opens Kindle Kids Book Creator, fills in the metadata, sets the layout, chooses ‘create book from PDF’ to upload the cover and interior PDFs, and saves for publishing as a MOBI file, reassuring viewers that KDP does accept MOBI files for fixed-layout books.

Key takeaways

• The templates work in PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides, and the creator warns against churning out unchanged interiors, saying platforms are shutting down accounts over duplicate interiors.
• A cover can be made with Book Brush or Canva or hired out on Fiverr; for images he cautions that free sites like Pixabay offer little differentiation and recommends licensed sources such as Vexels or Deposit Photos, or your own graphics.
• Duplicate slides to reach the page count, always keeping right-page and left-page pairs together and in order, or the template will not work.
• For no-bleed books keep elements inside the red box; for bleed books keep text inside the box and important graphics away from the bleed line, then export a PDF for print.
• For the ebook, use Kindle Kids Book Creator: enter metadata, create the book from the cover and interior PDFs, and save for publishing as a MOBI file, which he says KDP accepts for fixed-layout books.

Episode details: published February 17, 2022 · 4:25 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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