Book Design Made Simple

You can do it yourself.

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What your dog can teach you about book design

April 11, 2016 By Glenna Collett 8 Comments

dog on cover of Book Design Made SimpleFor some reason I never fully noticed this before. But when I helped out at two book sale events this past fall, it became all too clear: People love dogs more than anything else. Dogs are cute. Dogs attract. Dogs are cuddly and lovable. Dogs rule. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Cover Design Tagged With: book marketing

Typesetting math in InDesign

March 7, 2016 By Glenna Collett 6 Comments

collage of colorful math typesettingHave you ever tried to typeset any kind of math and driven yourself almost mad? And have you ended up setting each part of the equation in a different type frame, then piecing it all together and grouping it? I confess that I have done both. But with a little perseverance I figured out a way to do it properly in InDesign, and I’m hoping that this article will prevent you from suffering as long and as hard as I did. [Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: typesetting

Developing an eye for good design

February 8, 2016 By Glenna Collett 4 Comments

eye_openerIn Book Design Made Simple, we have given you samples and instructions that serve as foundations for your own book designs. And if you follow them, you can be certain that you have produced something very good. But are you confident about your work? Do you think it looks good? Do you wonder if anyone else will think it’s good? Do you worry that if you come up with ideas of your own they might be “bad”? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Cover Design Tagged With: color, typesetting

Designing a cookbook

January 11, 2016 By Glenna Collett 5 Comments

­­Typical cookbook photoIn Book Design Made Simple, we mention cookbooks a few times but never sit you down and explain in detail how to go about designing one. Once you’ve had some experience with designing and laying out other books, you’ll see at once that you’ll need to apply some extra effort to make a good-looking, readable cookbook. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: text frames, typesetting

Is your image high enough resolution for printing?

August 26, 2015 By Fiona Raven 14 Comments

Is my image high-res enough for printing?How can you determine whether an image file is high enough resolution to use in your book? That’s a question I get asked all the time! Images should be at least 300 ppi (pixels per inch) at the size they’ll be printed at— and that’s where most people need help. How do you figure out the size of an image, and whether or not it’s suitable for printing? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: book printing, images, Photoshop

Preparing a screenshot for print

March 19, 2015 By Glenna Collett Leave a Comment

Sample InDesign screenshotHave you ever tried to add an image on your screen to your printed materials? And noticed that it looked terrible in print—all blurry and pixelated? We had the same problem! Our book has a lot of screen shots in it. We mean a LOT. We use them mostly to show you InDesign dialog boxes—each view of the screen saves many words. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: images

How to price your book

November 14, 2014 By Glenna Collett 2 Comments

barcodes showing prices on book back coversPractically every author thinks and wonders about this a lot. How do people come up with just the right price for their books? Well, maybe the prices that are printed on their books are not actually working for them, and that might be because they used the stab-in-the-dark method of pricing. Let’s see if we can figure out the best, most rational, price for your book.

There are two main factors at work here. One is to set a price that is comparable to similar books. And the other is to set one that will give you enough returns to pay your expenses. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: book marketing

Your field trip to the bookstore

September 30, 2014 By Glenna Collett Leave a Comment

variety of books on shelfBefore you start designing your book or cover, you really need to take a trip to a bookstore to check out the competition. (Yes, you will have competition!) Visit the section of the store where your book will be placed and take notes on the following: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: book marketing

Is book design REALLY simple?

July 11, 2014 By Glenna Collett Leave a Comment

open book with strong colors to indicate good book designIf you are a book designer reading this, you have probably just put a huge question mark at the end of our book title, Book Design Made Simple. “There’s nothing simple about it!” you say, and I have to admit that I agree with you. Especially when typesetting and page layout are added into the mix with book cover design elements. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Cover Design

How this whole thing started (for me)

June 6, 2014 By Glenna Collett 2 Comments

book with glassesFor my entire professional life, since the mid 1970s, I have been a book designer. But back in 2008, my two best textbook publishing clients suddenly stopped using freelancers, and the bottom dropped out of my business just like that. So I scrambled for a new way to make some money as a book designer. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Publishing

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Recent Posts

  • Writing your back cover copy September 11, 2023
  • Our 10-year adventure in self publishing July 10, 2023
  • InDesign book template by Book Design Made Simple April 19, 2023
  • Self-publishing and book marketing: A success story March 12, 2023
  • Crop marks and other printer’s marks January 8, 2023
  • Advanced live index features in InDesign November 7, 2022
  • Create a live index in InDesign September 12, 2022

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