Book Design

On Saturday, July 23 I attended a Publisher and Writers of San Diego meeting. The topic was book design. The speakers came from TLC Graphics. Some of the tips they gave: book covers should have four colors. If possible carry an element from the cover (for example: a design around your brand, a stripe at the edge of the cover or a shade behind the chapter heading) to the interior pages. Color on the interior pages will add to your costs, but will also add a the professional look to the book. Book designers can work only on your cover or treat the entire book with proofreading, design, turn your book into an e book. have book printed. All book text should be fully justified. A box around the text adds to the appearance.

Introduce new paragraphs with either a space or indentation, not both. Be careful of quick conversions from printed text to e book. Scanners make mistakes, such as turning fancy h into a b throughout the book. Production process takes from 6 to nine months.

A cover only design ranges from $300 to $2000. Complete design process with the printing of 1000 copies ranges from $10,000 to $12,000. Turning your text into an ebook only costs $300 to $500. Average cost for proofreading is $25 per hour.

New in cover design: Ebossed title; debossed title; hard copy books without jackets; matt background color with glossy title. If you are a relative unknown, then title should be larger than author name.

Signs of a poorly self-published book: header on first page of a chapter, two spaces between sentences; double dash instead of en dash. You may use a space on either side of an en dash or not, but must be consistant.