How your book looks once it’s in a reader’s hands is almost as important as the content itself! Please note that this process can also be called “formatting,” “typesetting,” or “layout services.”
Book Design Timing
Now that you’ve had your work copy edited and gotten a cover made, it’s time to focus on how the interior of your book is going to look. The process is slightly different for printed books and digital books.
It’s my belief that waiting until after copy editing is completed is the most effective time to get book design services. This is because this is the point at which your content is pretty much set, meaning no major (or even minor) adjustments will be taking place at this point. The copy that is currently within your manuscript is pretty much exactly what you’ll be publishing for sale. Once the layout specialist designs the interior of the book, you shouldn’t (in theory) be adding or removing sections, nor rearranging anything.
Doing Nothing
The easiest method of typesetting is to do nothing at all. However the manuscript looks in your word processor is essentially how it will look once printed or uploaded for sale. While this is the path of least resistance, it necessarily means the book won’t look as nice as it could. Doing no formatting also often means that your book files will not be accepted by your publishing platform of choice, and that it will not be easy to read once printed or downloaded. If you’re okay with all of that, forge ahead! Otherwise, I recommend following one of the strategies below to ensure a more professional-looking book that suits your audience and genre.
Trying DIY
If you’d like to try doing your own formatting, you’re more than welcome to. If you’re not savvy with a lot of the more sophisticated software, you may need to be patient as you spend the money to purchase the software and take the time to learn how to use it via YouTube videos, online help forums, or just jumping in and playing around with the system. Choosing this option means you’ll spend less money on formatting over the long run (just paying for the initial investment of the software of your choice, if it isn’t free), if you’ll be publishing multiple books. It also means you’ll be acquiring a new skill set that will serve you for the rest of your literary career. If you can be patient with yourself and love learning new things, this strategy may be an awesome fit for you. ‘
Here is a list of a few of the more popular book design programs on the market:
IngramSpark’s Book-Building Tool
Don’t be afraid to shop around to find a program that you like. Many of the paid ones offer free trials and / or money-back guarantees to give you a chance to take a test drive before you commit to the purchase.
Software will come and go, improve and decline over the years. Be open to trying new things and willing to step away from something if it doesn’t work.
Word Processor Formatting
Designing the interior layout of your book within your word processor can be tricky. This is especially true if your software is something free or cheap that isn’t built to handle the job of formatting a book for digital or physical consumption.
In this situation, your best bet is usually going to be Microsoft Word. It can handle allowing you to create section breaks, adjust margins, insert page numbers, and create an automatic table of contents that always reflects whatever is within the text. However, at its heart, Word is not a design program, so your options and abilities within it are still pretty limited.
For the best results, be sure to preview what your book is going to look like once printed / converted. Each publishing platform normally provides a way to do this so that you are less likely to be surprised by some layout snafu after you’ve already published the book.
Preparing to Contact Typesetters
If you don’t want the hassle of trying to figure out this stuff on your own, there are plenty of professionals who can help with your book design needs.
Before reaching out to them, it’s helpful to understand what you’ll be asking them for.
It’s important to understand what your top priorities are before you start shopping around for professionals. If you need a refresher, check out the Illustrations lesson.
Figure out what is most important to you between price, speed, and quality.
Generally speaking:
- If cost is most important to you, be prepared to sacrifice a bit of quality or a bit of speed.
- If quality is most important to you, be prepared to pay more or to wait longer for your finished product.
- If speed is most important to you, be prepared to pay more or to get a lower-quality product.
So, what’s most important to you?
Which of these is your second most important consideration?
Based on your budget and preferences, you’ll be looking for a book designer who can be described in one of these three bullets:
- Fast and cheap (so they’ll produce a lower-quality product).
- Fast and high quality (so they’ll cost more money).
- Cheap and high quality (so they’ll take longer).
Now that you’re clear on what’s most important to you, it’s time to prepare your quote requests.
Quote Requests
Based on which of the service trinity components you prioritized, your quote request will look slightly different. But here is a general example:
I am looking for a layout specialist for my 59,513-word romance novel. I need book design for both the paperback and the e-book.
I describe “book design” as managing the appearance of the interior content of the book, including handling margins, leading, tracking, widows, orphans, typeface selection, pagination, headers and footers, and text justification.
I don’t need anything fancy, but I want the book to look clean (not cluttered) and easy to read.
There are no illustrations to handle.
I like the interiors of books such Thick as Thieves by Sanda Brown or In Too Deep by Julie Olivia.
I’d like a 4″ x 6″ trim size.
I have a budget of $1,500 (negotiable).
I’d like someone who can complete this project within 60 days of acceptance.
If interested, please reply with your estimated completion date in the subject line and I will set up a time to talk to you via phone or video chat.
I appreciate your time and attention.
The format of the quote request doesn’t matter all that much. What’s important is what goes into it. This is an opportunity for you to (1) let the formatters know what they’re getting themselves into, and (2) do some early vetting of the professionals you’ve contacted.
Be sure to include the following information in your quote request:
- The type of book you’ve written (manga, graphic novel, children’s book, poetry collection, etc.).
- The service you need (using a description, not just a label).
- How much of the service you need (in this case, how many words long it is and the formats you want designed).
- What your budget is.
- What your desired completion timeline is.
I encourage you to add a mini-vetting step for the pros like putting a particular word in an email subject line or only submitting quotes via the contact form on your website. Keep it simple! You don’t want people to think you’re a difficult client and not want to work with you for that reason.
At the same time, when you’re working with someone virtually, it is critical that they be able to carefully read and follow written instructions because this will make up most, if not all, of your communication with them. So, giving them a tiny direction to pay attention to and follow is a great way to weed out the people who don’t follow instructions. Not receiving a quote request from them would be like dodging a bullet, so there’s no loss there. They just eliminated themselves from your list of prospects so that you wouldn’t have to!
Take a few minutes to write out your quote request. This is what you’ll be using to contact book designers.
Finding Book Designers
Book layout specialists can be found all over the internet. But it can be difficult to find someone to work with who is talented, communicative, and professional. To help narrow down the search, I recommend skipping open forum and freelancer marketplace sites like Fiverr, PeoplePerHour, Upwork, or Craigslist and shooting straight for professional organization sites. At this point, you’re not actually reaching out to your potential professionals, you’re just making note of their contact information so you can dig deeper in the next step.
I recommend finding five formatters that you like and noting their name and website to use in the next step.
Here are some options for you:
Just complete the request form and you’ll be contacted with a free quote and guidance customized for your project.
The Editorial Freelancers Association
You can find book professionals of various kinds on this site.
Yet another great place to find professional book designers.
Vetting Book Designers
Design specialists are a little easier to vet because you can instantly see what they’re capable of based on their portfolio. You either like it or you don’t. Pretty simple!
My recommendation is to find five book designers that you would love to use for your book. From that list of five, you can start narrowing down to the one you’re going to hire. Even though their talent is the top issue for most authors searching for a pro, their ability to behave in a professional manner is important as well.
First Cull
The first round of elimination takes place by contacting each one of your prospects by email or direct message with your quote request. See who gets back to you, how soon, and whether they follow instructions.
As I stated, some people are going to eliminate themselves for you because they won’t follow whatever instruction you left for them at the bottom of your email / message.
Others will eliminate themselves because they won’t respond to you at all for whatever reason (swamped with current clients, aren’t interested in your project, etc.).
So, at this point, you’ll probably be able to cut your list by at least one person and only have 4 left.
If after two business days (not calendar days, not holidays, no weekend days) of waiting, you’ve only heard from a single typesetter, it looks like you’ve found your pro!
But for those who still have 2 or more left, you’ll need to do a second round of eliminations.
Second Cull
Of the pros who remain, you may already be able to see a clear winner based on the quote they responded with. If someone stands out head and shoulders above the rest, you’ve found your typesetter and you’re ready to hire them.
If not, you move to the next round of elimination. You do this by applying the service trinity characteristic you thought was most important.
For instance, if speed is most critical for you, eliminate people who give you a timeline for completion that is the slowest. If you’re focused on price above all else, eliminate people who have quoted you a price that’s over your budget.
At this point, you should only have one person left on your list, OR you see a clear winner based on them following your mini-vet instruction, responding to your quote request in a reasonable time frame, and generally treating you with respect when interacting with them (especially if you got the opportunity to speak to them via phone or video chat).
Now, it’s time to hire!
The One
At this point, you’ve singled out the person who fits you and your project best. Now it’s time to deliver the good news!
Please note that you want to contact the pro that you’ve chosen BEFORE you contact the people you didn’t select. This is because, during the time you were making your decision, the pro you wanted could have been hired for other projects. This could change their projected timeline or even their ability to take on your project at all. So, before you tell everyone else that they weren’t chosen, be sure that the person you want is able to accept your project.
When you contact the person, be sure to repeat and clarify the details of the project. While they may be defined in the contract or service terms, interpretations of words can vary, so you want to make sure that you directly address each of the following:
- The price and how payment will be submitted. This includes their willingness to let you make payments over time instead of making a single advance payment. Many professionals have accounts on various platforms such as Venmo, PayPal, and CashApp so that they don’t miss out on sales simply because of not accepting a payment processor you like to use, but always be sure to ask just to be safe.
- The projected timeline for completion and update frequency. Things can change throughout the project duration, so this will only be an estimate. However, it’s helpful to have some idea of how long it will take for the sake of professional clarity and to help reduce your anxiety. Some professionals only contact clients when a project begins, if there is a problem, and when the project is completed. If you’d prefer more frequent contact, such as a monthly or bi-weekly update email, let them know you’ll be reaching out for updates every couple of weeks / month. I highly recommend avoiding weekly or daily updates for most projects. If a project will be completed in less than a week, there’s no real need for updates anyhow since you’re going to be getting your final product soon (this might be the case for shorter works like poetry books or children’s books). If the typesetting you ordered will take a few months to complete, then a monthly or bi-weekly update makes more sense. You don’t want your pro spending more time updating you than they spend working on your project! Step back and let them do their job.
- How many / if rounds of revisions are included. You may have gotten a cheaper price because you’re working with someone who doesn’t offer included revision requests. That means that whatever they create is what you have to accept and pay for, without you getting any say in the matter besides your original notes on what you want. If there was any sort of miscommunication or misunderstanding on their part or on your part, you may be expected to pay to have them make adjustments. Most pros do offer at least one round of revision requests, but it’s always better to be sure by asking directly.
- What their deliverables look like. When the project is completed, you should be receiving at least two kinds of files: Display files and source files. The display file is what you’ll be uploading to your publishing platform in most cases (.pdf, .epub, etc.). Display files are displayed to your reader on their device or in their hands as a finished book they can read and enjoy. The source file is the file that the pro used to create that beautiful book (.indd, .book, etc.). You want to have the source files on hand so that, should something happen to your book designer, you can go to another person if you need adjustments made to the book. For example, if you asked for 13-point font and now want to create a large print version of the book with 18-point font, your new typesetter will need to change that in the source file. They would then send you the source (InDesign, for example) file in addition to the display (ex: PDF) file. You could upload the .pdf file to your website or publishing platform. You would put the .indd file away for safekeeping.
Delivering the Bad News
For the last two people to get cut from your list, I strongly suggest that you reach out to them and let them know that they weren’t chosen. By behaving professionally, you set yourself up for success in the future. As noted in the example above, you never know when you may need to call on one of these people instead of the book designer you originally wanted to hire. If your top pick falls ill, dies, retires, has their hands amputated, or otherwise is no longer able to continue your project, you’ll want to have people available who you can turn to. Since you already like these pros enough to put them on your list at all, hold on to their contact information and do them the courtesy of letting them know that you made a decision.
You may not get responses from them, and that’s okay. They’re busy running a business, so they may not see the need to invest any more time or energy into a project that they didn’t get selected for. But they will appreciate knowing for certain instead of wondering what happened or having to take the time to reach out to you about where you landed.
Seeing how well you behaved, they are more likely to be willing to help you if you need it. You come off as reasonable, courteous, and professional. You’ve presented yourself as someone they wouldn’t mind working with in the future.
The contact doesn’t have to be anything lengthy and uncomfortable. A simple message will do the trick. Here’s an example:
Good morning, Gandolf!
I’m just writing to let you know I have selected a layout specialist for Ride and Die II.
Even though I won’t be working with you on this project, I’ll hold on to your contact info in case I need your services in the future.
I appreciate your time and consideration and hope you have a great rest of the week!
Moving Forward
Now that you have your files, it’s time to move on to preparing your gorgeous book for sale on the open market!