Let’s Make A Book!

I’ve loved books as long as I remember, and I’ve spent years studying them. With your content and my design, we’re about the make something great together.

Whether you are working with a publisher or launching your book independently, strong design will help your book reach your target audience.

I know how to work with typography, color, paper, and space to turn your manuscript into a fully-realized volume that people will want to hold, that invites them to settle in and immerse themselves in your content.

Interior Design Process

The interior design for your book begins with an in-person or virtual consultation with you to discuss the book, its market, your branding, as well as your thoughts and preferences for the interior design.

I’ll undertake a thorough review of your content, so I can understand how each element of the book works internally, and make a plan to present it to readers in an elegant, logical, and visually appealing way.

Next I’ll create some sample pages, including a chapter opening page, and, taking your feedback into consideration, refine those sample pages until we settle on a final design. Most projects require only a couple of revisions.

Up till now, maybe we’ve been working with a manuscript that’s not-quite-final. Maybe it’s still being copyedited. That’s fine. Once it’s fully edited, complete, and final, I’ll lay out the entire book with care and precision. When we’re done, you’ll have polished, press-ready files.

I’ll send you a set of full interior digital proofs. These should be proof-checked by someone other than us, ideally someone who hasn’t read your manuscript before.

Once you approve the sample proofs, I’ll send the files to the printer or deliver to you as print-ready PDFs.

Your part of a successful interior design project includes:

Cover and Jacket Design

The cover design for your book may be done either concurrently with the interior design, or after it’s been completed. We’ll take your preferences and your market into consideration and create a cover that authentically reflects your content and practically leaps off the shelf.

Digital files uploaded to your printer, or delivered to you as PDFs

Your part of a successful cover design project includes:

It’s difficult not to have fun doing what I love, and while I don’t take myself suuuuper seriously, your book is another matter. I have very high quality and communication standards. But you don’t have to take it from me.

More About the Process

Most of our communication will occur via e-mail, and may include a kick-off meeting if you’re local, or a call if you’re not.

After you submit your request for a quote, we’ll e-mail back and forth or talk it through on the phone until we reach an agreement, and then I will send you a contract to sign and an invoice for the initial project deposit. Once I have your signature and your deposit, I’ll get to work making your excellent book!

Plan on at least 4 weeks for your book design. I’ll give you a firmer timeline estimate with your quote. If you already have a launch date, please let me know. 

We’ll share files via Google Drive, Dropbox, e-mail, or Freedcamp, depending the unique needs of your project. I’ll make sure you know where we are in your project’s progress, and request feedback as required.

I am prepared to accept manuscripts in one of the following file types:

  • Preferred: Google Doc, Markdown, Plain Text
  • Other acceptable formats:  PDF, Apple Pages, Microsoft Word, Rich text.

Editing your Manuscript

Whether or not you are working with a professional editor or publisher, it’s important to send us a manuscript that’s ready to publish. Here’s why.

When we design and lay out your content, we spend a lot of time fine-tuning each page, adjusting paragraph and character styles, and typographical settings such as character spacing and line height to ensure that your work shines! 

Making edits or revisions, even minor ones, after the text has been imported and styled can create cascading changes to your document, potentially requiring hours more work to make it look awesome again. It may be difficult to believe, but making content changes once you’ve submitted your manuscript to us for design will result in a delay in project completion, as well as additional fees for time spent executing change requests or re-importing your content.

Proof-Checking vs. Editing

Even if you’ve hired an editor, we strongly recommend hiring someone who is not already familiar with the text to check your designed proof for errors before sending it to press.

Proof-checkers should be on the lookout for copy-level errors such as misspellings, mis-punctuation, stray characters, and image and pagination errors. 

If you want to do the proof-checking yourself, we recommend reading the book back to front or inside out to make the content more novel to your brain and trick it into being “fresh eyes” for the work.

E-books

Fixed, non-reflowable e-book files (.epub or .mobi) appropriate for Kindle, iBookstore, and most e-readers are included included in your book design package at no additional cost.

Images

If you don’t have the images you need, and want help finding or making them, fear not! I can help you find the right stock photography, connect with local photographers, and create custom graphics for your project. If you need an assist with images, let me know in the quote request form linked below.

Let’s make a book!

I want to know more about your book and you need to know what kind of an investment your book design will be. Hit the button below and tell me about your project so that I can provide you with a quote for design. Pricing starts at $635.