Generally conducted very early on in the discussions about your book and ideally before you have committed to using our graphic design services. This step is intended for you to share with us your ideas, preferred style, and provide us with guidance on what you like and don’t like. It is beneficial to provide examples of various books that appeal to your taste, so that we can have an idea of creative direction we can pursuit going forward.

Ideally you will have chosen a designer who doesn’t work from pre-generated templates, so their first job is to come up with come concept layouts that incorporate the things discussed during the consultation. These concepts should give an indication as to page layout, text formatting, image treatment (if required), information hierarchy, and colour palette (if applicable). The designer will send you a number of options for you to consider and chose from. Depending on the terms of your contract with them, you may have the opportunity to request revisions prior to making a final decision.

Next your designer will take your chosen concept and expand it into a master template where every aspect that will be required to create your complete book will be standardised. Master pages will be created for all of your chapters and/or various page types; style sheets will be generated for every heading level and type of text that you book contains (i.e. quotes, call outs, bullet points, image captions, etc.), as well as the formatting for any tables that your book may have. All of these things ensure consistency throughout your book.

Now that all of the design decisions have been made, your designer can proceed with typesetting your book start to finish, including placement of any images, charts, or graphs that your book contains. Next the designer will add in any table of contents, index, and any references that may be required. Once the initial typesetting is done, a good designer will go back through the book and fine-tune the formatting to eliminate any widows and orphans, and fix any awkward line and page breaks before sending you’re a PDF proof.

The terms of your contract with your designer will determine how many rounds of proofs you get to review before signing off your book; but you want to make sure that there is at least one. During this stage, the onus is fully on you to review the proofs provided by your designer as carefully as possible. Even though a professional will likely have edited your book by this stage, still take the time to read it through line by line again – you’d be surprised at what you can spot now that your book is in a different format. Each designer will have a preference as to how they want to receive amendments back, but the best way is to make notes directly in the PDF using the Comments tools that are available in Adobe Reader or Acrobat Pro. If you’re not sure how to use these tools, ask your designer.

Some designers will prefer to do the cover design first; others will save it for last. Neither way is right or wrong, my only preference for doing it first (or at least in conjunction with the interior concept development phase) is that you have it fairly early on in the process to use in pre-launch marketing activities. The process for designing your cover is pretty much the same as for the interior. Your designer will present a number of concepts for your consideration, and after some back and forth with suggestions and revisions, you’ll end up with a final front cover that your designer will expand on to generate the back cover and spine art.

Once all designs are finalised and you are satisfied with the results, it’s time for your designer to export the approved artwork into press-ready PDF files that comply with the technical specifications of your book and the requirements of your printer or publisher.

Not all books are suitable for the ebook format (such as image intensive art books), but you should always consider having an ebook edition of your book available as it increases your potential book sales.