You can do it yourself.
Below you'll find links to all the information about book design that’s available on our website, book, videos, and blog.
Get started with Part I of Book Design Made Simple, where you’ll learn how to lease and install Adobe InDesign, create a document, and import your manuscript from Word. Download Part I for free by subscribing to our blog—simply use the form below.
Below are all the blog posts in the Book Design category, starting with the most recent post.
Book endpapers (also called endsheets) are probably the least noticed part of a hardcover book. But the endpapers are literally what hold the pages and the cover together. And they can add value to your book if you use them well.
If you’re publishing a paperback, take a look at the examples in this article for ideas anyway; you’ll find that the same principles can apply. [Read more…]
Front covers attract and back covers sell—we’ve said it before. At the same time, a book spine should broadcast.
Most books in stores and libraries are shelved with their spines facing out. If a book has a great title and a well-designed spine, it’ll attract a lot more eyes than its neighbor on the shelf. So here’s how to accomplish that for your book. [Read more…]
In Book Design Made Simple, we suggest type sizes that should work in most situations for adult readers. But there are so many other situations! What about children’s books? What about large type books? Reference books? In this article we’ll suggest solutions for these kinds of books. And we’ll only discuss printed books; with ebooks, the reader can enlarge or reduce the type size to whatever works for them. [Read more…]
Want to design a workbook? Who uses those any more?
Lots of folks, actually. Even though there are apps for practically everything these days, children still enjoy workbooks for mazes or drawing or learning practically anything. Adults can use them for recording their latest bird find or geocaching location, or for word or number puzzles, for instance. A coloring book can be considered a workbook, too.
We’ll help you design a workbook that will work well for your audience.
Why, you might ask, is the coauthor of a book about InDesign reviewing a direct competitor, Affinity Publisher?
Because it’s new and I wanted to check it out.
And because it’s so much more affordable than Adobe’s Creative Cloud: $600 a year for the Adobe suite vs. a one-time total of $150 for the full line of Serif’s products: Publisher, Photo, and Designer (all at half price until May 20). We both bought the Affinity software for desktop, and I must say that for the most part, we love it.
The Affinity Publisher app is for desktop use on PCs and Macs. Photo and Designer can also now be used on iPads, so check back on Publisher to see when the iPad version becomes available.
[Read more…]
Children’s picture books are fun to design! They’re colorful, full of images, and everything is packed into a small number of words and pages.
To design a children’s picture book, you’ll need to consider lots of factors: book size, page count, quality of images, flow of text, color, and more. Let’s take a look at those factors. [Read more…]
Coffee table books. Are they a blast from the past? No, actually, folks are still publishing them, and you can, too. Do you have an idea for a coffee table book of poetry and photography? About a specific artist or a place you love? About your local history, or something completely different? With good planning and design, your book could become very successful. [Read more…]
Every book has front matter elements. A title page and a copyright page are absolutely essential. But many manuscripts have arrived at our desks with a jumble of other pages that are misnamed, out of order, or sometimes simply puzzling. So I’m going to straighten this out for all you indie authors and publishers, because a professional-looking front matter is the best beginning for any book. [Read more…]
Do you use a layout grid? A few months ago, I saw a survey on Twitter for designers. The one multiple choice question went something like this:
I had to laugh, but then I began thinking that some of our readers could benefit from learning about this topic. [Read more…]
The term book arts encompasses an endless variety of books, usually handmade or produced in a limited edition. Included are all kinds of artists’ books, ezines, graphic novels, printed ephemera, and “other experimental forms of publication.” (Doesn’t that sound interesting?)
Search for “art book fair” and you’ll find that book arts are alive and well around the world. Here in Vancouver, Canada, our Vancouver Art Book Fair 2018 will be held from October 18 to 21 at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. This prompted me to share with you some of the books I’ve created as a book artist rather than as a book designer.
Paperback: Amazon
Ebook: Kindle, Apple Books
