An Overview of the Book Design Process
Once we decide to work together, here’s what the process will look like:
1) Strategy—Laying the Foundation
approx. 1 week
Your book cover is product packaging—a marketing tool—and all good marketing revolves around the target audience. Every project starts by discussing your target reader, goals for publishing, and your personal vision for the book.
Questionnaire
I’ll send you a questionnaire to provide some information about your book, your target audience, and your design preferences. I’ll also ask you to provide examples of other book covers that you like, so I can get a sense of your preferred style.
Design Strategy kick-off Call
We get on a call to go over everything about your book and the design strategy before I get started designing the initial 3 front cover concepts. I’ll clarify anything I want further details on from your questionnaire, we’ll talk about the other covers you like and what you like about them, and I’ll answer any questions you have at this point.
2) Front Cover Design
2 weeks
You sit back and relax while I design 3 unique front cover concepts. Here’s an inside look at my process:
Research
I begin with research. I spend at least a couple of hours researching, sketching, and brainstorming before I start designing anything. I look at competing books in your genre, brain-dump and mind map ideas, and think about what colors and fonts might best convey your message and speak to your target audience.
Design Concepts
Next, I actually begin designing front covers. I do this work in Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and/or Illustrator. I play around with dozens of ideas, and whittle it down to the top 3 contenders that I then finalize and send to you.
Required to begin:
Finalized title, subtitle, and any other front cover text (this cannot change after design begins, or it may incur addition fees). Make sure you’ve googled the title to ensure there aren’t other books using it!
Chosen trim size (book dimensions)
Know your book format(s) – dust jacket, case wrap, softcover, ebook, audiobook, etc
Know your printer if at all possible (i.e., IngramSpark, Amazon KDP, Lulu, etc.). If no final choice, at least make sure the printers you are considering all offer the trim size and formats you want.
If you are providing an image or illustration for the cover (this is optional), it must high resolution and you must have permission to use it if you did not photograph or create it yourself
Completed design questionnaire (I will send to you)
Schedule your design kick-off call (optional but recommended)
Revise and Finalize Front Cover
1–6 weeks: timeline varies based upon author review time, and number and complexity of revisions
You can pick any of the 3 front cover options as-is to be your final cover. However, if something is off or needs tweaked, we'll make revisions to get it right. You have up to 3 rounds of unlimited revisions, which is more than enough to make sure you love your cover.
3) Book Interior Design
A professional book interior layout is crucial not only for legibility and readability, but for making the content inviting, digestible, and memorable. An amateur layout will discourage readers from buying your book, let alone actually reading it. It will tarnish the impression of quality and credibility.
I have 14 years' experience designing book interiors and perfecting all the intricacies that entails. Your book can (and should) be indistinguishable from a traditionally published book. All too often, authors know to invest in cover design, but cut corners on the book interior. It's a dead giveaway of an amateur book, and readers can tell instantly. Even if they don't know why exactly, they'll still know that it looks off. There's a reason that "it looks self-published" has become a common (and sadly, negative) term. Expert book design will make you proud to say that you self published!
Page Design
1 week
During this stage, I will determine how the book interior will look—this means choosing fonts, setting margins, stylizing the chapter opener pages and title page, and setting the design for any special elements like tables, pull quotes, image captions, etc. I will send you a few sample pages to review the design. You have the opportunity to make one round of refinements (to the way it looks—this is not a time to make grammatical or text changes). Once the design is approved, I will move on to format the full book.
Some extra things I include are:
Pull quotes
Book marketing page design
QR codes
Image evaluation and editing/upsampling/color conversion
Required to begin:
final, edited manuscript—including the copyright page and all front and back matter
any images or graphics you wish to include (if any) supplied in high resolution and with permission to use if you did not photograph or create them yourself
Layout/Typesetting
typically 1 week, may be longer for non-standard, complex layouts
During this stage, I will format (typeset) the entire book interior. That includes laying out each page, creating the table of contents, and adding running headers and/or pagination. Once complete, you'll receive the entire file for review. You can make up to 75 total revisions, submitted over no more than 2 "rounds" or batches. (Additional revisions are accommodated if needed, but will incur an extra charge.)
Required to begin:
approval of the page design
Book Interior Revisions
2-5 weeks for review and revisions process—heavily dependent on author review time
I implement any revisions you have submitted and send you a new PDF file for review and approval
4) Back Cover and Spine Design
1 week; up to 2 weeks if there are revisions
During this stage, I create the back cover and spine design, which includes creating the barcode.
Required to begin:
Final, edited back cover text
ISBN(s)—should already be included on your copyright page
Book price (optional)—only needed if you wish to include it on the back cover
Your logo (optional), if you wish to include it on the back cover or spine
Author photo (optional) if you wish to include it on the back cover—must be high resolution and you need permission to use it if it's a professionally-taken photo
Final approved book interior—need to know interior page count to calculate the correct spine width for the printer
Book interior paper color choice (this depends on your printer—for example, Amazon KDP offers creme or white paper) and cover finish choice (i.e., matte or gloss). The paper type affects the spine width calculation.
5) Ebook Conversion
1 week—can be done in tandem with finishing the back cover
During this stage, I convert the final book interior to an ebook (for most text-driven books, this means a reflowable epub file suitable for Kindle and/or other e-readers).
Required to begin:
Final approval of book interior file. All revisions should be completed before the ebook is created. (If book interior revisions occur after ebook is created, recreating the ebook will incur an additional charge.)
Wrapping Up
2-3 days
During this stage, I export the final cover and interior to PDF files with the proper specifications for your printer. I'll provide you with the final PDF files for the printer, the ebook file, your book style guide PDF, and all other files or deliverables.
Required to begin:
Final, approved book interior and cover