15 creative classes that will help you make and sell your book

Creative Live is an online education platform, offering free, live classes in photography, art and design, and more. Bookmakers can brush up their skills, learn new ones, and find new ideas for their book. To get you started, here are 15 Creative Live courses that will help you get your work into the world.

With each of these classes, you get:

• Lifetime access, anywhere, anytime
• Streaming and downloadable files
• Available on desktop, mobile and tablet
• Watch offline with iPhone & iPad
• 100% satisfaction guarantee

Online book creation courses

1. Making a Magazine: Photographer Dan Milnor walks you through the entire process of creating a magazine using Blurb’s InDesign Plug-in, including creating master pages, content placement, and pre-flighting your files.
2. Creating a Photo Book: In this class, you’ll learn how to set up your book in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, working with text and backgrounds, and customizing page layouts.
3. Creating a Trade Book or Ebook: See how to create layouts, learn best practices for workflow, and understand typography and licensing for ebook fonts.

Online photography classes

4. Fundamentals of Photography: By taking this course, you will learn how to bring together the elements of manual mode to create an evocative image, how to choose the right gear, and develop efficient workflow as well as how to recognize and take advantage of beautiful natural light.
5. Adobe Lightroom Photo Editing: The Complete Guide: You’ll learn how to import and organize your images; optimize your photos, using all levels of adjustments; make your images searchable within the program; and optimize your workflow, including exporting, printing, and troubleshooting.
6. Apple iPhone Photography Tips: In this beginner-friendly class, Julia will help you understand how light behaves and how to take advantage of it when composing a shot. You’ll learn about the hidden options in your Apple® iPhone® camera and how to make adjustments to get great images.
7. Natural, Realistic Retouching in Photoshop: Learn how to use Photoshop efficiently to create beautiful and realistic retouched images that look natural.

Online design courses

8. Basics of Adobe: Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign: Integrate Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign into a more streamlined and easy-to-follow workflow and learn some basic actions in each.
9. Thinking Like a Book Designer: Take this class to learn about the elements that go into designing a book, including how to create a successful book cover, book anatomy, typography, design grids, and best practices in book design.
10. Building a Brand Book: When, Why, and How: Create a book that establishes brand guidelines for large and small businesses, get pointers for setting the standards for the design look and feel for your brand.
11. Creating Your First Web Page (with code!): This course will walk you through the process of evaluating, planning, and creating a web page from a design comp. We’ll explore strategies for setting up your HTML, slicing and saving web graphics, and applying CSS rules that will re-create your design vision in a browser.

Marketing and self-publishing courses

12. How to Write and Publish an Ebook: Take content you’ve already created and turn it into a book fast. Learn about formatting and different selling platforms.
13. Sell Your First 1,000 Books: Book sales depend not only on the quality of your work, but also on the strength of your marketing. You will learn how to develop a strategic outreach plan to engage your current audience and introduce yourself to the right new communities.
14. Write Your Story: Learn conflict, character, and scene building, create a strategy that will help any writer build characters and plot, and find out how to grow a scene to reach its full potential.
15. Market, Launch, and Sell Your Next Big Thing: In this class discover how to use email and social media in a smart, strategic way that will grow a devoted audience of happy, buying customers. You’ll also see how to do this in a way that feels authentic to you and your book.