Book design resources for indie authors

Below are links to book design resources that we’ve found very helpful. We hope they’ll come in handy for you while you’re designing your book!

These book design resources provide useful information, and many include blogs and newsletters you can subscribe to. This list is a work in progress, and new resources are added whenever we discover them.

bar codes
blogs
book printers
CIP data
design inspiration
digital files (transfer and storage)
ebook conversion
fonts
images (stock photography)
InDesign (tips, tutorials, and plug-ins)
ISBNs
typesetting and typography
websites for authors

Book design resources

This list of #bookdesign resources includes links to everything you need to design and #publish your #book, including where to get ISBNs, bar codes, fonts, images, etc. Share on X

Bar codes

Create Bar Codes – Download a high-resolution EAN Bookland bar code for $10 USD.

Blogs

These blogs are excellent book design resources, written for book designers, authors, and self-publishers, and contain lots of useful information. You can join their mailing lists to receive updates.

Book Design Made Simple – In case you haven’t discovered our blog yet!

The Book Designer – Joel Friedlander’s blog contains hundreds of posts about every aspect of writing and publishing books. An excellent resource!

The Creative Penn – Joanna Penn shares her self-publishing journey with articles, videos, and audio about writing and creativity, publishing options, book marketing, and being an authorpreneur.

1106 Design – Michele DeFilippo is a book designer, but her blog is about so much more, including self-publishing, book marketing, and printing.

Jane Friedman – Blogs about writing and publishing in the digital age, and keeps up with the rapid transformation in the publishing industry.

Raven Book Design – Lots of great book design resources, including info on book design, page layout, and self-publishing issues such as ISBNs.

Book printers: digital, offset, POD

Bookmasters – Works through Baker & Taylor Publisher Services to offer short run printing (minimum 100 copies) plus a variety of services including storage and fulfillment, marketing and an online bookstore.

BookMobile – Offers digital printing for trade paperbacks, hardcover books and full-color illustrated books.

Edition One Books – Offers printing and binding for art and photography books, color coffee table books, and hardcovers with special treatments such as inset images and foil stamping.

Printorium Bookworks / Island Blue – Offers short-run digital printing for books, including color pages and softcovers with flaps.

Friesens – Manufactures books for publishers across North America specializing in full color hardcover and softcover books. Located in Manitoba, Canada, they give very competitive quotes for printing and shipping books to the US.

IngramSpark – Is affiliated with Ingram and offers a simple publishing solution for self-publishers with one book (for both print and ebooks).

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) – is an Amazon company, offering digital POD printing and ebook production.

Lightning Source – Is affiliated with Ingram and offers color POD as well as reasonable prices for offset printing.

CIP data

CIPblock.com – (U.S.) get cataloging-in-publication data from a private source.

The Donohue Group – (U.S.) another source for CIP data.

Lisa K. Hauner, a Spanish cataloger in the Oregon library system who is happy to assist with bilingual CIP data.

Design inspiration

Canva – Lots of awesome book cover design ideas.

Communication Arts – Covering graphic design in all its forms—in our opinion, simply the best place to find design inspiration.

InDesign Skills – Book design inspiration.

Onextrapixel – 50 beautifully designed book covers for inspiration.

Pinterest – A collection of book covers by From up North.

Raven Book Design – See page design samples from different genres of books ranging from simple novels to complex nonfiction books.

The Book Design Blog – Book design inspiration.

Digital files: transfer and storage

WeTransfer – Free transfer of files, very easy to use.

Dropbox – A popular service for saving and sharing files in the cloud.

Email Large Files – Free transfer of files that are too large to email.

SendBig – Send up to 30GB for free.

Ebook conversion

eBook DesignWorks – eBook conversion and design service.

Fonts: identifying and purchasing

Identifont – Identify a font you admire by appearance, name, or similarity.

Font Shop – A great place to shop for fonts, and check out their blog too.

My Fonts – Another great font store, plus you can identify a font by uploading an image to their “What The Font” page.

Fonts.com – Another good place to shop for fonts, and they have frequent sales.

Images: stock photography and illustrations

Can Stock Photo – Offers professional royalty free stock photos at reasonable prices. High-quality images start at just $1.00, and their license agreement gives you flexibility.

First Light – Represents over 200 of its own photographers, and in combination with Design Pics Canadian based photographers, has the most extensive collection of Canadian content available anywhere.

Foto Search – Provides high-quality images to creative professionals for use in their designs and presentations.

Getty Images – A leading provider of digital media worldwide, creating and distributing a range of assets—from royalty-free stock photography and editorial images to video, music and multimedia.

Image Zoo – Specializing in royalty-free stock illustrations, rights managed and custom illustrations from hundreds of artists in all different styles.

iStock Photo – Just enter a word or phrase in the keyword search box, and away you go! You can save images in a lightbox to keep track of the images you’re interested in.

Masterfile – Buy photos, vectors and illustrations for web, mobile and print.

Morguefile – Free photos with no strings attached. Beware of photos from Shutterstock (not free) scattered everywhere throughout.

Pikwizard.com – Free stock photos for use in books and on book covers.

RGB Stock – All images on RGB Stock are free for personal and commercial use. You may use them in digital format on websites, blogs, multimedia presentations, broadcast film and video or in printed material such as magazines, books, brochures, flyers and text books.

Wikimedia Commons – Free images in the public domain; excellent for historical events, famous people, etc.

InDesign: tips, tutorials, and plug-ins

Book Design Made Simple YouTube channel – In case you haven’t discovered our YouTube channel yet! Watch tutorials on how to use InDesign for book design.

InDesignSecrets – Free online newsletter that answers readers’ questions and offers tips and new ways to use InDesign.

CreativePro – Similar to InDesign Secrets but relates to the entire Adobe Creative Suite.

LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com) – Online training for the most popular Adobe products, including InDesign, of course.

Adobe InDesign: Learn & Support – Adobe’s free online tutorials, accessible through the Creative Cloud interface. Hint: InDesign has the same tools and works the same way as Adobe Illustrator for drawing, so if you need to learn about drawing, try Illustrator tutorials. Similarly, if you need to learn about images, try Photoshop tutorials.

Rocky Mountain Training – Paid interactive training with Adobe Certified Instructors. Also an excellent blog covering all kinds of InDesign (and other Adobe product) topics, both basic and advanced.

MathMagic – An equation editor for InDesign.

Movemen – Solutions for mathematic, scientific and financial equations.

Proper Fraction 2 – Easily make fractions using even non-OpenType fonts.

Adobe help – How to install and use plug-ins.

ISBNs

ISBN number (Canada) – Library and Archives Canada: information includes FAQs, a User’s Guide and online Application Forms for ISBN numbers. Must be Canadian to get an ISBN in Canada, and ISBNs are free.

ISBN number (United States) – Purchase ISBNs from Bowker Identifier Services. Must be a US publisher to purchase an ISBN in the US.

Typesetting and typography

Butterick’s Practical Typography – An inviting site that explains basic typography.

The Chicago Manual of Style – Subscribe, or get the first 30 days free.

The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation – Instant, free grammar checker.

Recipes into Type: A Handbook for Cookbook Writers and Editors by Joan Whitman and Dolores Simon – A guide to editing recipes.

Resources