Book Page Design

When readers look at a completed book for sale in a bookstore, it’s hard for them to appreciate what went into creating a professional-quality book that is pleasing to the eye and easy to read. There’s art as well as science in the effort.

Many times, a bookstore or book distributor decides to accept a book based on its professional look, inside and out. Purchasers don’t know why they’re drawn to a book, but if they are, then the book designer has done his or her work well. There have been many studies about book readability, so the professional book designer knows how to translate your aesthetic thoughts into something readable for the audience.

New authors are budget-conscious, but graphics is one facet of the business that pays to have a qualified professional. Hire an experienced book designer to create the interior of your book. He or she has access to high-priced book layout software like InDesign, which allows a graphic artist to set parameters to decide how many words should be on each line, when to break and hyphenate a word, and when to move a word to the next line, along with the spacing between letters, words, and lines of type. Such maneuverability is just not possible with the word processing software that’s just fine for writing your book.

The designer will read your manuscript, talk with you, and attempt to understand what you want the book to look and feel like. Are you reaching a business audience, stay-at-home moms, or artists? The style and design used for a book must be consistent with the words and geared for the intended audience. If you have definite preferences or the ideal model that you’d like your book patterned after, be sure to share this with the designer.

One of the first decisions made will be the typeface and size; next will be the amount of white space (the margins); and third, whether the book is either justified (all the lines begin and end at the same place at the right and left margins) or set in an informal flush left, ragged right style (all the lines align on the left but are uneven on the right). These represent only the beginning, especially if the graphic artist needs to incorporate photos, illustrations, footnotes, and more.

A designer will generally charge a flat fee for creating several samples for you to select from, costing from $750 to $1,500 and including several rounds of tweaks to the selected design to get it just right for you. Plan that it will take between two and four weeks from the time you select the graphic artist until you have selected the design you want.

After you select the design, there is an additional fee to set the type and design of your book that is either charged by the hour or per page. Usually it’s $40 to $60 per hour or $4 to $10 per page (not your typed manuscript page, but finished designed page), not counting charts and graphics.

Once your book is finally finished and proofed. it will go through the process in approximately two to four weeks, depending upon the complexity. You should get a first draft back in about two weeks; then there will be final tweaking on your part and on the designer’s part until it is just the way you both want it.