I'm a writer working on self-publishing my four book fantasy series. I've written all four books, the first two are ready for publishing starting in April. The first two books use the original map, the second two use the first map expanded as maps. I like what I did by hand, but it's not professional enough, especially the calligraphy, for a polished look. Because the maps will have to be in paperback books, and paperbacks have relatively small pages, I need to keep this simple so the reader can read the map. Thus, I don't need anything exotic.

I'd like to make the maps myself as this self-publishing has already become quite expensive. I see there is some free stuff on this site somewhere. Is it possible to use that to make a simple map with a decent border and text using that? I'm guessing I will need a pdf file to paste in a MS Word image frame in the book publishing template. Is that right?

Any thoughts and suggestions would be helpful.