Tips for Vetting a Book Interior Designer
Hiring someone to design and format your book interior can be daunting, especially if you're new to publishing.
The truth is that an inept book designer can be worse than none
at all.
Most people know very little about how a book is formatted, and therefore don't know what questions to ask. Furthermore, book layout services are offered at a disconcertingly wild range of prices.
Here, I will attempt to provide some clarity around what you should expect from your book interior designer/formatter.
The Designer's Job at a Glance
A book interior designer's job is to take your manuscript and format it in a consistent and aesthetically pleasing way that is properly set up for print and/or ebook publication.
The designer starts with the final manuscript, which is usually a Microsoft Word, Pages, or Google Docs file. The manuscript is imported into the design software (typically Adobe InDesign) for formatting.
Your designer will choose the best fonts for your book, set the margins (white space around the edges of the page), and design the chapter start pages and any other special elements. They should also add pagination and running headers or footers.
The Author’s Job at a Glance
Your job is to provide the final, edited manuscript in one single file. You also provide any photos or illustrations you wish to include (unless you've discussed a different arrangement with your designer—such as paying them to find stock images or create graphics).
The designer will need to know your book's trim size, if you will be publishing an ebook as well as a print book, and where the book will be printed (so they can set up the file correctly).
Don't forget to add your copyright page (including your ISBN number) to the manuscript.
If you're including images, you'll need to specify where they should be placed in the book (as well as any other special instructions). I prefer such instructions to be typed into the flow of the manuscript, set off in brackets with bold, red type. For example:
This is a sample paragraph in your manuscript. This is a sample paragraph in your manuscript. This is a sample paragraph in your manuscript. This is a sample paragraph in your manuscript.
[insert image file-name.jpg here]
This is a sample paragraph in your manuscript. This is a sample paragraph in your manuscript. This is a sample paragraph in your manuscript. This is a sample paragraph in your manuscript.
Having instructions directly in the manuscript like this (as long as they stand out) makes it so much easier for your designer and reduces the chance of anything being overlooked or forgotten.
Questions to Ask Before Hiring
Your book designer should do a lot of under-the-radar tasks—the "secrets" that people don't think about but are the difference between an amateur- and professional-looking book.
Check with any potential designer to make sure they take care of things like the following:
Widow and orphan control (if they don't know what this means, run away)
Setting proper hyphenation
Using character styles to maintain your use of bold and italics in the text
Generating a Table of Contents if applicable (this should be auto-generated and you should not be required to list the page numbers yourself)
Converting images to CMYK color mode and double checking the resolution (note that if an image doesn't have a high-enough resolution (is too poor quality), there's nothing your designer can do to fix it)
Adding running headers or footers, including pagination—with roman numerals for front matter and arabic numerals starting at the Introduction or first chapter
Preparing a print-ready PDF to meet your printer's specifications
Creating an ebook file (if included and applicable to your book)
It's also a good idea to clarify up front if any revisions are included in the price, and what the rates are for additional revisions. Even though your manuscript should already be thoroughly edited at this point, it's common to find a handful of text corrections once you set fresh eyes on your newly formatted book file.
Native Files
Finally, ask the designer if you'll be given the packaged native files once the project is finished. Native files are the original, editable files created in whatever software your designer uses (like Adobe InDesign).
You probably won't be able to use them yourself, but if you ever need to hire a different designer to revise your book in the future, you'll need them.
With books, it's common to find a few errors or want to make some updates later on after the initial publication, requiring the need for a reprint. It's also common for random freelancers to be unreachable a few years down the line. You never know where life might take someone, and if you don't have the native files, you'll be unable to make even the simplest of changes without completely starting over.
Whether or not native files are given out to clients is a hot topic amongst designers in all industries. Usually they aren't given out, or at least incur an extra charge. There's good reason for this, and I don't disagree. But book files, in my opinion, are a different story. I always send my clients the native book interior files.
In Conclusion
My final word of advice, which probably goes without saying, is to never hire a book designer without seeing samples of their work first. Never ever ever.
A book designer is a type of graphic designer, but not all graphic designers are book designers. Even if someone is incredibly talented, if they don't have experience making books, stay clear. It's a specialty niche, and there are a lot of technical requirements involved in the craft. You want someone with experience.
I hope this was a helpful starting point in your search for a book interior designer. As always, I welcome your comments and questions as I strive to create resources that address authors' most pressing needs.