I have found that students love publishing their own books, but it can be daunting trying to publish on the front and back of pages when you are working with a classroom full of anxious young authors! There are some great online book generators, as well as templates that you can use with students to make publishing easier. The books and templates I am sharing today can be printed on one side of paper. By the way, I generated the Dummy book on the right using the Dummiez Book Cover Maker 2009. Perhaps students could design a book cover and paste it to the front of some of the books they generate using the tools and templates I am sharing in this post. The picture I used in this post has been reduced. The generated image is larger in size.

Stapleless Book
This book generator is wizard driven and allows users to create with ease an eight-page book simply by folding and cutting. No tape or staples are required. Students can choose from seven different layouts for the pages of their books. The downside to this book creator is the fact that it cannot be saved online, meaning students must develop their book in one sitting. You can print a planning sheet to facilitate composition when students are working at their desks. That way they can focus on typing their book while they are sitting at the computer.

ABC Teach Print Free Shape Book
Students can select from 10 shapes, set up the text style, and size, and type directly into a form that will generate the text inside the shape. This generator is great for differentiation. Strong writers can program a smaller font or print numerous versions. Struggling writers can use a larger font. Can you guess which shape is my favorite?

Flip Book
“The Flip Book is designed to allow users to type and illustrate tabbed flip books up to ten pages long. Students and teachers can use the flip book for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating question and answer booklets.” Once students have completed their books by typing content in an online form they print, cut, and staple the books together. These are great books that can be differentiated through the use of text and image “holders” that leave blank spaces for illustration. The downside to this book generator is the fact that books must be created in one sitting (there is no way to save work).

Pocket Mod
This site generates marvelous books similar to the Stapeless book generator I created earlier. I would suggest that these books are more suited to middle school/high school students. They can be used as mini study guides, calendars, storyboard planners, and more. I have included a brief video clip below that shows how the books are folded and created.

A while back I created a portal site for a Bookmaking workshop class that I taught. The site includes information about bookmaking, as well as Microsoft Publisher templates I created for the workshop . Click on the Screenshot below to access the site. The Microsoft Publisher templates can be used by students who do not have permission to use online resources.

Students also enjoy creating mini-books using PowerPoint. Click on the screenshot below to access resources I created for a PowerPoint Picture Book Workshop I taught a while back.