In this tutorial, Shaun Whynacht explains how to enhance the visual appeal of PDF resources used in email campaigns and landing pages by creating 3D book cover mockups with Adazing's free author tools. He walks viewers through accessing the site, navigating the free‑stuff for authors section, handling the lead‑generation pop‑up, selecting a mockup template, uploading a high‑resolution first‑page PDF (recommended 300 DPI), and downloading the generated image. Shaun highlights common pitfalls such as improper scaling, angled templates, and overlay artifacts, and evaluates the quality of several mockups, noting where edges, binding lines, or text interference occur. He then shows how to embed the mockup into a website to make the resource more enticing for opt‑ins. The video concludes with a brief promotion of Adazing’s broader author resources and a call to like, comment, and subscribe.
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Hey, good morning. What about those times when you create a resource or your client creates a resource that's a PDF download and you're going to go and put it into an email marketing campaign, a landing page on your website, you really need to look a whole lot better? Well, I was in that situation this morning and I wanted to find a quick free resource to be able to make what's called a 3D cover. And then I did a Google search and I came across a website that has a lot of free tools and their main focus is tools for authors. So what I'm going to do here in this video is show you this site and walk you through what it was that I found and actually bookmarked. So when I bookmark something, that means I'm going to be using it over and over again, and it's a great tool. So why don't we hop right into it here and take a look? Okay, so here's the site. It's called Adazing. So Adazing, Adazing, I don't know how you say it, but I call it Adazing. Okay, so this company has publishing resources for publishers. So they got a lot of different tools that are out there. But when you go to the website, in the top right-hand side, you're gonna see a Free Stuff for Authors button. Now when you go to that— I did this in multiple tabs— but when you go to that, you're going to go to this page. You're going to get this pop-up. I didn't want to disclose this pop-up, uh, or close it because you're going to get $1,200 in editable, in an editable media kit here. Just opt into their list. Obviously it's a lead generator, so you're gonna get some emails from them. But if this is a value, this is something, excuse me, this is something that you might want to take a hold of. Then once you're on here, you're gonna see there's a lot of other cool stuff that's on here from ebook cover designers, book trailer templates, um, a bunch of different things that you want. What I'm gonna look at here with you is the book markup crea— or mockup creator. So when we check this out, We go over to that side. This is actually the page that I came across when I first came to the website. Now, it wasn't exactly this part. This is actually step 2. I came across this step 1. So they have several of these templates that are available to you. Now, I did a couple of them, um, and I'll show you some of them. Now, it's not 100% great on the, the, the more angled ones for like this one here. Uh, let me just pull up a, um, mockup version of that one and show you. So here's one that we pulled over for a client. Now, as you can see up here in the corner, obviously it's just an overlay, a computer-generated overlay. Uh, I, I wasn't happy with this one. Okay, so that's okay. Um, I just chose a different one. So then I went and I did this one here. Obviously my page layout was a bit wider than this, so you got to keep that in mind. It's going to squeeze, uh, and it's not going to scale properly for that reason. So straight on phone mockup. Um, I mean, does fine if you have the graphics the right size. Uh, and then I went ahead and did this one right here. So what I'm gonna do is we're gonna go ahead and do one of these and I'm gonna show you how it works. So we're gonna go ahead and click on this template and it's basically gonna ask you to put in your information. So I'm gonna do that. And then you're gonna choose the COVID image. Make sure you have a high resolution version. Uh, so something that is like a, a 300 DPI. Obviously it's not going to look great if it's like 72 DPI, but if you're building it in Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, wherever it is, you should be able to do that. Or even if you've got a PDF version that was supplied to you, you can export that and then use that first page. But make sure you're just choosing that first page. So there's that first page. We're going to go ahead, we're going to click Open, and we're going to click Finish. Now when you click Finish, it takes you to a thank you page, and there's a video here you can watch where they're trying to sell you on on buying their, their service here. But at the top is where you can download that mockup. So one click. So I'm going to download here on the very bottom, and I'll show you here in a second how this one looks. Okay, so here it is. This one here I'm happy with. This one, um, this one does a pretty good job. Um, you don't see any, any real, um, fractures around the edge. The only one I noticed was this one here. You've got the the perforation line here, or the binding. It does line up great there. And then on this one here, it runs over the letters, which is minor. I mean, for a free tool, this is something that, that is completely passable and 100% fantastic for you. So when you go to implement that into a site— let me just go find that site there— here's what I did, right? So you gotta put the image in there. It really just ups that whole presentation of your, um, your free resources by having something like this in place. People can see it and visualize it, uh, and it's more enticing for them to opt in. So check it out, uh, addazing.com is where you can get that, uh, free resource. And like I said, there's a whole bunch of different things that they offer. If we go back here in just a second, uh, you can see logo templates, secret lists. I mean, their main focus is authors, so I was able to utilize this not as an author, but as able using this tool, uh, for a client to market their free resource as well. So check it out. And, uh, if you like this video, please comment, share. Uh, I'll reply to the comments that are there. Like it, subscribe to our page. Uh, really appreciate you, um, taking the time to watch this video.
