Designing and Producing a Journal

Motivational speaker Debra Searle approached me in 2019 to help her design and lay out a journal. Debra is a positive force and adventurer known for her “choose your attitude” message. She has been journaling for years to help herself achieve her goals. She had created journaling pdfs to share with others, and wanted my help to:

• design and lay out The “Choose Your Attitude” Journal as a product she could sell or include in a goody bag at events where she speaks

• liaison with a printer in China for production of her “Choose Your Attitude” Journal, helping to make sure the printer understood what she wanted and produced it according to plan.

I was happy to help Debra’s beautiful journal vision come to life. In this post I will talk about the four main parts of the project, sharing a few insights to help others who may also be wanting to design and produce journals.

Photo copyright Shoal Projects Limited

Design of the Journal 

Debra has two main audiences: 

• corporate crowds (for example, when she speaks at an HBBC event), and 

• females around Debra’s age range (who may follow her on social media or watch her “Choose Your Attitude” show). 

She wanted to produce two journals that were the same inside but had different covers. The general look and feel of the journal needed to suit both audiences, and suit her current branding…which involves a lot of teal!

After I understood her audience and her goals for the journals, the first step was to create cover designs and sample layouts for the interior. She provided Word files with the text and simple layouts showing what she wanted. I designed a few simple covers for each journal, as well as a sample of about 10 pages of the interior. I chose a clean, open san serif for most of the book, and added some interest with a handwritten font called “High Tide” (also a nod to Debra’s background, rowing solo across the Atlantic).  Debra’s team gave me ideas like what you see on the left (below) in their draft, and I created an interior that matched their vision but also matched the overall look of the journals.

For the journal that needed to have a broader appeal, Debra chose a grey color and I designed a straightforward cover without too much “flounce”. For the more feminine journal we used teal and the handwritten font on the front. In the end, this is how the journal covers looked:

Photo copyright Shoal Projects Limited

The design aspect of this project also involved designing icons to match the key themes on the journaling pages, and designing a belly band that would wrap around the journals. This was the main design on the belly bands, which were made to suit both journals.

Journal Design Tip: Designing an interior and belly band that matched both covers saved a lot of money at production time.

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Full Journal Layout

Once we had established a look for the journals, I created the full interior in the same matching style. It included, in order:

• Title page

• Copyright page

• About the Author

• Introduction

• Quick Start Guide - a two-page visual guide to how to use the journal pages

• How To Guide - a more detailed explanation of how to use the jouranal pages

• Goal Setting section

• Journaling pages - The heart of the book, the same journaling page repeated many times

• A logo and “ad” in the back sharing where the reader could get another copy of the journal

Journal Layout Tip: Be sure to test and re-test your journal contents before your get the journal laid out professionally. Even though Debra an her team were very organized and had done a lot of planning and testing, we still ended up having at least ten rounds of proofs before the journal interior was perfect and ready to print. This kind of back-and-forth on a project like this is not unusual. We were all pleased with the final product that we sent for printing.

Photo copyright Shoal Projects Limited

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Journal Production and Printing (in China)

Debra also hired me to liaison with the overseas printer whom I have worked with before. I exchanged over 40 emails with the printer, discussing the details of producing the journal. These emails related to:

• Pricing - Some back and forth as the project specs changed a few times

• Samples - Before placing the full order, we asked for two “dummy” journals to be made with a rough version of the cover design and blank sheets inside (the actual final paper). One cover had a grey PU (leather-like) cover (no ink), and one had a hardcover with teal ink. These dummies gave us a feel for the size, weight and look of the final product. We also asked for physical samples of the different PU materials, so that Debra could feel the different materials and see the color swatches in person. With the printer I use, requesting samples like these can cost around $100 to $200 to produce and airmail to my client in about a week, but is worth every cent to be sure that the final product is what we are expecting them to be!

• Production Details - As I wrote in my article How to Communicate Clearly with your Overseas Printer, it’s really important to be clear and direct in communication with the printer. Because we wanted two journals that were so similar but also different, I knew it could be a confusing project. I created some visuals to help make sure all the production details were clear. For example, they both journals had ribbons bookmarks, pockets in the back, etc. But the grey one had rounded corners and rounded spine, and the teal one had a hard cover with square edges and a squared spine. In the end, both journals had all the detailed finishing work done correctly, with the exception that they had been individually packaged in plastic bags - something we had not wanted!

Journal production details like a back pocket and pen loop required extra attention to detail both in our order and in the production at the factory.

Photo copyright Shoal Projects Limited

Journal Production and Printing Tip 1: Always pay the extra $100-$200 to get proofs or samples sent to you when printing in China. Ask to have samples of the actual final paper or material (ie: PU, ribbon, back pocket, post) as well as a printed proof of the final product, if possible.

Journal Production and Printing Tip 2: If you’re printing a product (journal, book, etc.) overseas, you are likely doing so to get a much more affordable product. Expect that about 10% of the final products will not be sellable; be pleasantly surprised if more of them are! 😉

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Journal Shipping (from China)

When shipping a book abroad, there is a lot to be considered. Overseas printers can ship to the client’s door (more expensive) or nearest port (less expensive, but you have to get it through customs, etc. yourself). They can ship by air (much more expensive) or by sea.

Debra used a shipping broker who picked up the journals from the production facility in China and ensured that the journals arrived at her warehouse in England. The warehouse also took care of some shipping / receiving / distribution duties with the final products.

Journal Shipping Tip 1: Before transferring the last 50% payment to the printer in China, we asked to see photos of the final products. This is always a good idea when working with a production house so far away.  We received various photos of the journals that showed that they had indeed been produced — below are the photos we received before Debra sent the final payment.

Journal Shipping Tip 2: We learned with this project that soft cover rounded-corner journals shipped much better than hardcover square-corner journals. The squared corners got more beat up in transport.

Journal Shipping Tip 3: It’s pretty complicated dealing with shipping from abroad. It’s usually better to print locally for small quantities or simple products, to save dealing with international shipments.

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Photo copyright Shoal Projects Limited

I hope this article about designing and producing a journal has been helpful, whether you’re planning to print locally or abroad! Shout out to Debra for the beautiful pictures of her final product!

If you’re considering producing a journal, read this case study by my client Felix, who used his podcasting platform to develop and sell a motivational journal. Or sign up for my Book Done newsletter to get more stories from people who’ve gotten their book projects done!

NEW OFFER: Book a one-hour brainstorming session with me to get a head start on your journal planning and production! I’ll save you a lot of trouble by sharing what I’ve learned through trial and error with my journal design clients, sharing which printer we have used most successfully, and whatever else you want to know!

Can I Send My Book Designer My Manuscript in Parts?

In recent months, when facing the crunch to provide me with book manuscripts for large book projects, several clients asked me some variation of this question:

Is it possible for us to deliver to you the manuscript section by section?

I guess it seems to make sense, I must work from beginning to end of the book, right? So why can’t they send me pages 1-100, and later pages 101-200, etc.?

I always have to tell my under-the-gun client the “bad” news that I request the whole manuscript to be delivered for formatting at once.

But really, it’s not “bad” news; it’s in the client’s best interests and in the book designer’s best interests as well.

It’s in the client’s best interests because if some parts of the manuscript are still being edited, it’s common that changes to the end of the book can also affect the beginning. An editor, at the end of a read-through, could decide to make a change that ends up affecting earlier pages in the book. A manuscript that an author thinks is ready for formatting can then be called back for some significant changes. It’s best for the author, editor, or proofreader to work on the book as a whole and give their final approval to the whole thing, not to a section at a time. To make a global change to the body text that affects various parts of the book can be easy when the author is toying with a Word file on on his or her own laptop, but it gets expensive when the book (or in this case, part of the book) has already been typeset (laid out).

And it’s in the book designer’s best interests because there are a lot of tasks in book formatting that are done globally to the whole book at once. A lot of this is what book formatters call “cleaning up” the text. Some of the global tasks I do are:

• flowing the full text into my file, using specific import settings to not lose formatting from the Word document

• checking and correcting spaces (For example, a common change is to remove double spaces after periods and make them single spaces.)

• checking if hyphens and dashes have been used correctly and if not, correcting them (Do you know the difference between a hyphen (-), en dash (–) and em dash (—)? If you don’t, you’ll be glad that I do.)

• removing extra hard returns and manual indents and instead assigning paragraph styles in InDesign that achieve the same results in a cleaner way

• assigning character and paragraph styles, to control the formatting of the book on a global scale

It is much less efficient to do all of this clean up multiple times, and possibly less accurate as well, if the designer forgets one of the cleanup steps for part of the manuscript but does it for another part. Although every book designer works differently, I think it’s safe to say that book designers don’t generally work 100% from front to back of the book, perfecting the layout of one chapter before moving on to the next.

When major changes happen to the manuscript after the full layout is completely typeset, they become expensive for the client and possibly also hard to schedule for the book designer (if up to 2 hours of changes to the book layout are expected after full layout, and that becomes 10 or 15 hours, the client may find herself or himself with a long delay to receive the finalized layout!)

Years I ago I had a client who had me design and format several books in a series for him, only to come back with major changes to the original manuscripts, over and over. There were large gaps of silence (over six months at a time) when I assume he was once again rewriting, testing and editing his manuscript. Then I would hear from him again, asking for an update to his layout. This was costly for him, and frustrating for me. Eventually one time when he resurfaced asking for my help, I was on leave, and I must admit that I was happy to turn over the files to him and ask him to engage another book designer (I gave him a few contacts to try). He and I both would have been better off if he had waited to send me the book manuscripts when they were truly finalized.

The long and the short of it is that no, you can’t send your book designer your manuscript in parts, because it makes for a messy, expensive and time-consuming workflow. But I know, if you’re a visual person, you’re dying to see what your finalized manuscript will look like as a book! As I wrote in this article, two “visual” tasks you can get your book designer to work on before the full manuscript is ready for layout are the design of your book cover, and a sample interior layout.

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In case you can’t tell, I’m a complete book design nerd. I’m happy to answer your questions about your book project. Do you want a live consultation?

Planning Content and Preparing Files for a Journal

After writing a post to help those looking into Designing and Producing a Journal, I wrote a follow-up article about how to Produce a Journal in a Small Quantity. I got a response to those posts from an American creator who is planning a journal and needed to know how to prepare his ideas and files for me to format for printing. This post will share with you what I shared with him, so that it’s easy to work with a professional book designer to get your journal into print.

Photo by Hope House Press - Leather Diary Studio on Unsplash

Your book designer needs two or three files from you to begin to design and lay out your journal, and this is what they should contain.

File 1: Main content of the journal - just one copy of each page

Journals are unlike most other books in that they have a lot of repeating pages. In your file, you may have repeated the pages multiple times to see how they look when repeated. But before sending the journal to your designer for design and layout, you should just include one copy of each unique page or each piece of content. For example, maybe you want to have 50 pages with grid lines, or 20 notes pages in the back. Your designer just needs to see one of each kind of page, otherwise it can be unclear if there are differences between different pages.

File 2: Journal outline

Next, prepare a text file with an outline listing all the planned page numbers or page ranges, and what should appear on each page. This is a very simple example, but this gives you the idea:

• Title page (page 1)

• Copyright page (page 2)

• Intro letter (page 3)

• Background Story (pages 4-5)

• How to use this Journal (page 6-7)

• Habit tracking page (page 8)

• Monthly goals page (pages 9)

• Daily pages (pages 10-40)

• REPEAT pages 8-40 five more times (41-200)

• Summary goals pages (page 201-202)

• Order page (page 203)

• Closing page (page 204)

Of course, every journal is different, and your content might be more complex. But an outline like this is invaluable, both in your planning and for your book designer to know which pages should repeat, when and how!

Remember that if your book is printing digitally, the final page count should be a multiple of four, and if it’s printing on a traditional offset press, it should (probably) be a multiple of sixteen — double check with your printer if you’re not sure how your journal will be printed.

File 3: Other filler material

Although many pages in a journal may be similar, they may have different quotations or decorations or something to differentiate each repeated page a tiny bit. If you want, for example, a different quotation on each of the daily pages (in the example above, that would be 30 x 6 = 180 quotations) it’s best to just list these 180 quotations in a separate simple text file in the order in which they should appear.

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What else to tell your journal designer

Your book designer also needs to know about your style and/or your brand, to give visual direction to your journal project. For pages that are more complex visually, sharing a picture of a rough sketch you’ve made or a screenshot of a similar page gives your designer a starting point to understand what you’re wanting to achieve! If there are any other journals that you like or want your journal to sell next to, screenshots or links to similar journals are useful for your designer to see the kind of final product you’re picturing. You can share this visual direction in a document file with graphics in it, or through a folder with jpegs in it.

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I hope this article has aided you in your journal design journey! I’d be happy to work on more journal cover designs and interior layouts. If you’re my type, let’s talk about your journal and get it into your audience’s hands! Or go ahead and book a one-hour brainstorming session with me to get a head start on your journal planning and production! I’ll save you a lot of trouble by sharing what I’ve learned through trial and error with my journal design clients, sharing which printer we have used most successfully, and whatever else you want to know!

Custom Book Interior Layout to Match Your Branding

Last year I designed a book interior for Kirryn Zerna, a keynote speaker and branding expert. Her self-published book, The Stand Out Effect, teaches how to stand out on social media in order to create a successful business or brand. Kirryn has a distinct and consistent brand (as anyone writing a book on social media should!) and my goal was to make her book interior layout match her brand and also the topic of her book. 

Author’s Brand Mood Board

After my initial consultation with Kirryn, I learned more about her brand. Below you can see a kind of “mood board” that shows the look and feel of her brand (these are screenshots from her website and social media profiles, as well as a few of the files she shared with me for the book). What words would you use to describe her brand?

Author’s Brand Description

I would use words like: bold, bright, confident and striking to describe Kirryn’s brand. (Which words did the mood board bring to your mind?) For her visuals, she uses yellow, black and white as a consistent colour palette, and mostly geometric shapes (squares, circles) as well as stars. ⭐️

On-Brand Custom Interior Layout Solution

After Kirryn told me that her business cards are square instead of the standard oblong shape, I asked Kirryn to request that her printer quote on two different options for printing:

1. A traditional oblong format book, with a black ink interior

2. A square book format with black and yellow ink.

The square shape would go with her personal branding and also be reminiscent of social media platforms like Instagram which have popularized the use of squared graphics. As I expected, the price difference for the unusual shape and color was too prohibitive for a first book, so we went with an oblong shape with a black and white interior. (Make this book a best-seller and then her next book will be square with splashes of yellow! 🙃)

But there were still many ways to keep her book on-brand without using yellow or a square format. Below are some screenshots from the final book interior layout created for Kirryn. Can you see how the unique book interior elements tie in with her brand?

I designed a stand out interior for her stand out brand by:

• using her bold brand typeface as the display (heading) typeface in the book

• using a sanserif typeface for this fun, easy read on a casual subject like social media

• using bold geometric shapes like circles for the pull quotes and chapter numbers, and bold black bars for subheadings

• redrawing or reworking certain visuals (like the bullseye graphic at the centre, above) to make the graphics match the style of the rest of the book and her brand

• adding some fun extras like small stars as dividers on her copyright page (why not?) or and a fun “thanks for reading” page on the last page with her website and book hashtag…tying in again to the ”online influencer” theme of her book and branding.

By doing some planning before the book design started, I achieved a book layout that is bold, bright, confident and striking, just like Kirryn’s brand. Her book’s content is memorable, and I hope the book’s layout is as well!

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Kirryn told me that she felt I had treated her book as if it were my own, which was some of the sweetest praise I could hear. I hope each of my clients feels the love that I put into making their layout suit their personal or brand style. If you want your book interior design to match your brand, use my book project questionnaire or book a live consultation to tell me more about your book.

Producing a Journal in a Small Quantity

After my last post about designing and producing a journal in China, I got an e-mail from Alex, who lives in NYC and wants to design and produce a journal locally. She isn’t sure that the quantity she needs is high enough or the demand is great enough that she place a large order or print overseas. She’d like to just make a few journals first and see how it goes. Maybe you can relate. In this follow-up post, I share some of the answers I gave her about producing a small quantity of journals. I hope they help some other entrepreneurial journal-creators, too!

Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash

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Pros to producing a journal in a small quantity

You can keep your costs low.

Of course, the main reason you might want to produce just a few journals first is to see if there is indeed a market for them before shelling out a lot of money for a pile of journals that will collect dust in your garage.

You can easily try out different styles or looks.

Not sure if your audience likes yellow or green better, or script or block print? A short run allows you to have the liberty to produce just a few of each style of journal, if you wish, and see how they sell.

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Cons to producing a journal in a small quantity

The per journal cost is high.

Set-up costs for printing are high, but once a print shop starts printing and binding, it doesn’t take much longer to make a few more journals — which is why the price usually starts to come down for greater quantities. Your profit margin will be significantly smaller. You will probably pay two to four times as much for each journal as you would pay when printing in a large quantity and/or overseas.

Finishing options will be limited.

Some features that make a journal feel high touch may be unavailable for low quantities (like deboss, emboss, foil, leather or PU / faux leather material, etc.) because the set-up is complicated (read: expensive) enough that it doesn’t make sense to do when you are only printing a small run of journals (ie: 25, 50, 100).

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Finding a journal printer or producer locally

As far as finding a local supplier or printer for custom journals, what you need depends on what kind of journal materials, printing and binding that you want. For example, do you want:

• regular softcover, regular hardcover, PU (faux leather) cover, real leather cover…?

• black and white interior or full color interior?

• glued binding, stitched (sewn) binding, spiral binding…?

Or maybe you want to decide these details based on what your local printers can do for you. Try googling phrases like:

• “full service book printer”

• “short run book printer”

• “short run journal printer”.

You can add the name of your city or state / province to your search and see what you find. Hopefully you can get an idea from the printer or journal producer’s website if they are low or high end. However, there are a lot of printers with out-of-date websites who can do perfectly good work, so be careful about judging a book by its cover! More important than their branding or marketing is a printer who understands what you’re asking about, or answers emails or calls quickly and thoroughly. Sometimes I ask for references if I’m having a hard time getting a feel for the printer’s experience/background.

A few good questions to ask a local journal printer are:

“Have you produced journals before?”

It’s always easier to work with someone who has done this exact kind of work before.

“Can I see samples of previous journals you have created? Is it possible for you to create a real mock-up of my final journal product after I give you my digital files and instructions?”

Giving you a real mockup is usually hard to do, at least for an affordable price! But the printer should be able to give you samples of previous books or journals to have or to look at, and swatches of materials or paper or colors. Printers will usually give you samples like this before you commit to working with them.

“Will you produce the entire journal in-house, or will you outsource part of the process?”

Some smaller print shops will tell you they can make journals, but they might be outsourcing to a bigger printer, which means they probably can’t give you as good a price as a company that is doing it all in-house. For example, if you live in a small town with a small print shop, they might tell you they can make journals but actually be getting the journals from a bigger city or from an online provider. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s fair for them to tell you their process.

“This is what I am envisioning, but if you can suggest ways to make small adjustments that will either give me a BETTER or MORE AFFORDABLE final product, could you do so?”

Sometimes a few tips from an experienced print representative could save you hundreds of dollars or give your product a more professional finish.

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Finding a journal printer or producer online

If you’re finding the price of printing a small quantity of journals locally prohibitive, or simply not finding a local supplier, you might widen your search and just look for any online custom journal source within your country, or look for “print-on-demand” printers (like Blurb or IngramSpark) and maybe even build your journal around their preset sizes and styles to keep the price reasonable. For example, Blurb offers this “notebook journal” product which can be ordered in any quantity. Just a note that lots of online printers say that they offer “custom journal printing”, but by that they only mean that the covers are printed with a custom design, but insides are blank or lined. If this is the case, you might be able to contact them and ask what it would cost to have a custom interior.

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Making a journal as a product seemed so easy in your head, right? Let me know if you need any help with design, pre-press checks of your journal files, or finding a printer! Or book a one-hour brainstorming session with me to get a head start on your journal planning and production!

How to Make Your Book Look Longer Than It Really Is

I recently ordered a book by one of my favourite authors. It is a book that was published posthumously; it is the transcript of some talks she gave many years ago, that were unearthed and transcribed after her death.

The book was not cheap — I believe I paid 18€ for it — and when it arrived, I was surprised at how brief the text itself actually was. The publisher was successful in making the transcript of one author’s speeches into a book, although the word count was low.

Using photos of the book in question, here are some ideas for making your book look longer than it really is!

1. Start with ample margins.

Setting up the page with ample margins is always the first step to creating a roomy book interior layout. This book has about 0.75” inside and outside margins, 1.1875” top margin (not counting the header), 1.0” bottom margin (not counting the footer/page number). Plenty of room for note-taking, or dog-earing.

2. Be generous with the body font size and leading.

Making the body font size bigger has to be done tastefully.…otherwise the book will look like it was typeset by a five-year-old! The book on the left below is one that I formatted and has a body text size of 10.75 over leading of 14.75 — I’m guessing that the font this publisher used (on the right below) was about 12 point over 16 or 17 point leading. (Leading is the space between the lines on which the text sits.) Even a slight increase in font size or leading makes a significant difference in how many words will fit on a page.

3. Always start new chapters on a righthand page.

In this book, no matter whether the previous chapter ended on a righthand page or a lefthand page, the new chapter always starts on a righthand page. This means that there are a few completely blank pages throughout the book. (Although starting chapters on a righthand page is fairly standard in non-fiction books like this one, it is not always done if the page count needs to be decreased.).

4. Sprinkle pull quotes and full page quotes liberally throughout the book.

Another way in which the typesetter of this book made it thicker and longer than it had to be was by adding pull quotes with liberal spacing above and below, and stylized full-page quotes, throughout the book. Take a look below at the examples. These elements give the book a relaxed feel; the designer wasn’t trying to cram as much as he or she could onto each page.

5. Opt for a hardcover book with a dust jacket.

A hardcover book is of course thicker and heavier than a soft cover. The dust jacket adds another layer. If your book has a short but important message, and you want it to carry some heft, this is another idea that this publisher used to give this author’s last book more weight on a bookshelf.

6. Add notes, advertising or resource pages in the back of the book.

This was not something that this publisher did, but this is one more thing I’ve seen done to make a book slightly longer. If your book is being printed on an offset press, the pages are probably printing in groups of 16 pages on one sheet of paper. You can ask your printer for advice, but usually that means if your book page count is not a multiple of 16, a few sheets of paper will be blank in that printing flat. You might as well use that extra paper to add info about other books you’ve written, the Facebook group you lead, or worksheets that you usually give out at events where you share your material.

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Do you have a book that you want to print? Let’s talk about how I can help you get it off your laptop and into your audience’s hands!

Can My Traditionally-Published Book Be Self-Published on Amazon?

Do you want to take a book that was published traditionally and transition it to a self-published book sold on Amazon KDP (formerly CreateSpace)? Here’s what you should consider.

Do you have the legal right to self publish the book?

Check your original contract with the traditional publisher. If they only had rights to the manuscript for a limited amount of time, after that time is up, you may be free to self-publish.

Recently I received an inquiry from a professor whose academic book had been traditionally published, but the rights of the publishing house were expiring in about a month’s time. He wanted to have his book ready to release on Amazon shortly after it ceased to be available through the publishing house. He told me right away that he had the rights to the book, so the next question I asked him was…

Do you have the digital book files?

You might be in possession of the actual final interior PDF that the publisher used to send your book to print. It’s rare, but you might even have the editable files (probably from Adobe InDesign). Or you may only have the original text files (from Word or another text-editing program) that you gave to the publisher for formatting. If your book designer has to reformat the interior of the book, this will be a bigger financial investment than if you just pay for pre-press adjustments to a PDF that is already formatted.

The best way to find out how best to transition your book files to Amazon is to show a book designer all the related digital files that you have — PDFs (high or low resolution, watermarked or not, password-protected or not), Word files, etc. (Remember, if you made changes to the book after the layout stage, those may not be reflected in your original manuscript files!)

Usually a republished book needs a new cover design; you can ask your book cover designer to come up with completely new cover concept, or use (for example) the same color scheme for the new cover to keep some continuity between the two editions of your book.

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Books self-published through Amazon KDP are subject to Amazon’s limitations for paper quality, paper color, and cover (softcover only). Amazon KDP is not really ideal for books with a full-color interior; Amazon is best suited to books with a black-and-white interior.

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Have you read this far and still think you’re ready to move your book onto the Amazon platform and sell it independently? Let’s talk and find out what it would take to get the files you have up for sale on Amazon. For the client I mentioned above, it just took a few weeks to get his book moved onto Amazon KDP.

Creating a Book Series with Amazon KDP - A Book Designer's Perspective

In my last post, I related what speaker, writer and presenter Elizabeth Milovidov, the owner of Digital Parenting Coach, learned through creating a book series published through Amazon KDP. If you missed that post, be sure to read an author’s perspecive on creating a book series with Amazon KDP. Today I want to share some do’s and don’ts which I learned, as a book designer, while creating so many matching books for Amazon’s print-on-demand publishing arm. Some of these insights apply most to those creating a series of books, and some apply to any book design that’s being produced through Amazon KDP.

DO use masters and styles in InDesign for anything and everything possible

Creating this book series taught me more than ever the importance of using masters or styles for any and every aspect of the book design. While the books are all ultimately created separately, if the following InDesign tools are used, it will make a series of books much more consistent:

• Master pages - to set page sizes, margins, footers, headers to be consistent throughout all the books

• Paragraph styles and character styles - so that each book has the same text styling

• Common linked graphics - for some of the common pages in the front matter, that is pages at the front of the book that appeared in every book in the series, I used the same linked PDF file for each of those pages.

DON’T use a lot of drop shadows or layers in InDesign

I learned the hard way that when books are exported from InDesign using the PDF export settings recommended by Amazon KDP, some layers and graphics flatten poorly. I had to manually flatten a few graphics in Photoshop, and import those Photoshop files back into InDesign, which was a hassle and so 2003. Be sure to look through your PDFs, after exporting using Amazon’s PDF export settings, and make sure nothing flattened weirdly.

DO watch out for the crease

Every book printing on Amazon KDP has a crease on the front and back covers about 1/4 inch away from the spine. It’s not hugely obvious, but it looks better if you can avoid having the crease hit an important element on your cover.

DO make the spine the same color as the book’s front and back covers

One of the cons of having books printed one-off by Amazon KDP is that there is not a lot of attention to detail given to making sure the books’ actual spines line up perfectly with the printed spines. For this reason, if the spine is a different color, sometimes a bit of the spine’s color wraps around the front or back cover, or a bit of the front or back color ends up on the spine. In our case, we were getting white strips on the spines or purple strips on the white front and back covers. The best way to avoid this problem would simply be to design the whole cover in one color, or at least design the whole area around the spine in one color.

DO order a copy of your book before releasing it

One of the huge pros of print-on-demand is that you can see one copy of your final product before printing any more copies! You can order what Amazon calls a “test print”, ie: a sample book, to see exactly how it looks. So do it! Order a test print of the first book in your series before formatting the rest, if possible, to make sure you’re happy with all the master styles (like margins, font sizes, etc.). Or if nothing else, at least order one copy of each book in your series before releasing them into the wild.

DON’T expect every print of your book to look exactly the same

Amazon prints their POD books around the world at various facilities. This is, of course, how they can ship so quickly to every corner of the earth. When I ordered Elizabeth’s “Conversation Starter” series from Amazon.de in Germany, they were printed in Wrocław, Poland. Another Amazon KDP book I ordered a few years ago was printed in Leipzig, Germany. But the same book, when being ordered from the USA or Canada will be printed at a different facility. There can be minor variations in color on the cover, the grey tones in the interior may print lighter or darker, etc. I recommend avoiding trying to print colors like teal (which with slight variations can look too green or too blue) or neon (this never prints as bright in CMYK as it looks on your screen). In case you can’t tell, Amazon KDP / print-on-demand is not for people who are extremely particular about color, nor is it ideal for books with a full-color interior.

While I had created books for Amazon KDP before, this project was the first time I created so many books that all matched and were released as a series. I hope these tedious but hard-won insights will be helpful to you if you’re preparing to design or release your own book or book series using Amazon’s self-publishing arm.

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Are you planning to publish a book or book series through Amazon KDP? Book a live consultation with me, or shoot me a message and I’ll share more about working together on a book series published through Amazon KDP.

Creating a Book Series with Amazon KDP - An Author's Perspective

Since 2017, I have been working with Elizabeth Milovidov, the owner of Digital Parenting Coach, on the design and interior layout of books helping parents navigate parenting in the digital age. When Elizabeth came to me, she had her business branding in place, and she hired me to take the look and feel of her brand into book format, making matching covers and interiors for a wide range of guides and workbooks. As of right now, she has four series with four books in each. That’s sixteen books particular areas of digital parenting — yes, she’s been busy!

Elizabeth and I both learned a lot about what it’s like to create a book series for Amazon KDP (formerly CreateSpace) over this lengthy process of creating so many books to sell on that platform. I asked Elizabeth about some of the things she learned, to help other writers or speakers wanting to establish their subject-matter authority by publishing through Amazon KDP. The following are Elizabeth’s hard-earned insights about creating a book series to sell through Amazon’s print on demand publishing. You can also see Elizabeth’s Amazon author page here.

The best thing about creating a book series with Amazon KDP was....

“being able to put my thoughts, experiences and ideas into words, and then seeing those ideas online and available for others!

“With Amazon KDP you have the option of creating print, or eBook, or both. But I would caution everyone to remember that creating books is not a money-maker! However, it is a reputation-maker. Once you create something solid, it is yours and it can be better than a LinkedIn profile, business card or website. It is tangible proof that you are the expert in your area, and that is invaluable.”

The hardest thing about creating a book series with Amazon KDP was....

“not being able to go back and make certain changes to a title or a series on Amazon. Once your book is out there, it's out there. You have a short amount of time during which you can make changes and edits on Amazon, but after that, a changed book is considered a second edition. And you, like me, may not want to advertise to the world that you made changes so quickly! You are not allowed to delete those entries, although you can withdraw them from the market. If you look at my Amazon webpage, you will see at least two or three out-of-print books which are merely earlier editions of books that I later edited heavily or changed the title.

If I were to start over again with creating a book series with Amazon KDP, I would…

“…do everything the same, as it was a brilliant experience! But the one thing that helped me immensely was hiring Julie to do the book design. I was able to rely on Julie for her eye, so that I could focus on the content. There were times when a page layout wasn't quite perfect, and Julie would make a suggestion to add text or another image—advice like this only increased the value of my work.

The only thing that I wish someone had shared with me previously is that creating a book or even a book series on Amazon KDP is easy—what’s difficult is marketing and selling the books. But like with everything, perseverance and the desire to learn, adapt and make adjustments are key! I will conquer the Amazon marketing challenge next!”

I’m so glad Elizabeth was willing to share her perspective as an author, on publishing through Amazon KDP. In my next post, I’ll share from a designer’s perspective, some things I learned about creating a series specifically for Amazon KDP.

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Are you planning to publish a book series through Amazon KDP? Book a live consultation with me, or shoot me a message and I’ll share more about working together on a book series published through Amazon KDP.

How to Know If Your Book Manuscript Is Ready for Interior Design and Formatting

Every self-publisher or author is excited to finally see his or her book formatted for print. So excited, in fact, that the temptation is strong to jump the gun and send the book formatter a manuscript that isn’t quite ready for formatting.

Sending your designer a manuscript that is unfinished or missing information is a lose-lose: it’s expensive for the author and frustrating for the designer. Here are a few ways for you to avoid “surprise” costs by making sure your book manuscript is truly ready for the formatting stage.

If your book manuscript is ready for interior design and formatting, you will be able to answer “yes” to the following three questions.

Has your book been professionally edited and proofread?

I list this first because it is a complete must. Professional editing and proofreading is essential, not only for the quality of your final product, but also to keep the cost of formatting your book from exceeding what your book designer quoted you. Every book should be proofread again after layout, but at that point, the proofreader should only be finding minor typos or layout issues, not reworking paragraph structure or removing full sentences.

Have you merged your manuscript files into one Word file?

If you haven’t done this yet, merge all your various Word files, etc. into one file with your whole book in it — from title page and copyright to references and appendices. Having this all together (and waiting to send it until you have all the needed info) is the best way to save yourself from paying extra charges if your book designer has to bill for admin tasks like ordering and merging Word documents.

Have you collected the printer specs that the designer will need?

Your book interior layout designer can’t start on the layout without knowing the page size, or if there are any special requirements from the printer. For example, print-on-demand book printers like Kindle Direct Publishing (formerly CreateSpace) or IngramSpark have their own particular requirements listed on their websites. It’s good to get a quotation from a printer and show your book designer the specs you have given the printer — this means fewer surprises for both of you when the final layout is sent to the printer. Some designers will help you communicate with the printer; be clear with your designer if this is part of what you need his or her help with!

If you can answer “yes” to the questions above, your book may be ready for formatting! But yeah … I get it.  You’re anxious to see what your book will look like, and can’t wait to get started. Maybe the manuscript is still being edited, or the proofreader needs an extra week. There are perhaps two things you can get your designer to start on before your full manuscript is ready for formatting. They are:

Get your designer to start on the book cover design. It’s great to have your book cover designed ahead of time for marketing purposes. The front cover can be designed virtually any time after you have a finalized title and a book summary.

Get your designer to create a sample interior layout. Sometimes you may need a sample book interior layout to pitch your book to a publisher or as a sneak peak for your readers. Depending on how your book designer works, he or she may be ready to create a sample layout with a manuscript that is not finalized. For example, last year I created a cookbook interior layout sample for a client who then came back to me this year with the full cookbook contents ready for formatting. For any book layout, your designer should send you a few samples pages before the whole book is formatted.

You’re bursting with excitement (and so am I!) It’s wonderful to see your book in its final format! Hang in there — you’re close to the finish line! Don’t turn your final files over to your book designer until they’re really ready!

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If you reached the bottom of this post, you must be pretty serious about finalizing your book manuscript and beginning the book layout stage. Let’s talk about what you should do next.

Why I Print Book Manuscripts Before Formatting Them

I always encourage my clients to print their formatted books after they receive them from me. I tell them that they’ll catch more errors if they look at their books in print. But what I don’t mention to my clients is that I often print copies of their manuscripts at various stages in the design and layout process, too.

In fact, I often print a copy of their unformatted manuscripts for myself. This is a step many book interior layout designers might skip, but I’ll tell you why I think it’s important. It’s for the same reason that I ask my clients to print their formatted manuscripts: I catch more formatting errors if I look at the unformatted manuscript next to the formatted book. Printing the book manuscript improves the quality of my final product.

Most of the books that I format are non-fiction, and they have a lot of different formatting details to watch for: not just italics or bold but also images, tables, captions, superscript, footnotes or endnotes. I find that printing out the manuscript helps me to double-check my formatting and be sure I haven’t missed anything important.

Here’s a recent memoir manuscript that I printed out to compare to the formatted book on screen. (I printed it on the back of some papers I had which had been printed on only one side.)

When I am setting up the first few sample page designs, I print those out as well, to test the typeface style, weight, size and to check the line spacing and margins. Sometimes I also print out the formatted book in full, to check it over again.

Of course, I’m a print designer, I like printing things out. But there’s more to it than that — I believe that when I review your book on paper at various stages in the interior layout and design process, it gives you a better book! This extra attention to quality is, I hope, one of the things that sets me apart from other book interior layout designers.

In case you’re wondering, whenever possible I print on both sides of the paper. I always recycle the printed manuscripts when the project is complete and another happy client is sending his or her book off for production!

As an aside, here’s a peek at how this memoir looked before formatting:

And here’s how it looked after:

My client told me that he caught problems that he had not noticed before when he read his manuscript once more in the final format. Together, we made a memoir that will be treasured by his family and friends!

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A bit of attention to detail goes a long way in creating a book you can be proud of! If you’d like my help with your book project, or just want to ask me some questions, fill out this book project questionnaire or book a live consultation. The process page on my website lays out what it looks like to work with me. 

How to Shoot Photos for a Printed Book or Cookbook

I work with a lot of self-publishers, and some of them select a photographer who is shooting photos for a printed book for the first time. As someone who has been integrating photos and text in book layouts for more than a decade, there are a few common problems I run into: images that (1) are not high enough quality, (2) images that don’t fit the proportions of the book or are cropped too tightly, and (3) images that shift significantly when converted from RGB to CMYK. You can avoid these problems by considering the following points.

Shoot your photos in the highest possible resolution.

This should go without saying, but photos that will be used for print need to be the highest possible resolution. They should be at least 300 dpi at final size, but since the photographer doesn’t know how much the designer may enlarge or crop the photo, it doesn’t hurt to send the designer photos that are up to 600 dpi at final size. If you are sourcing any additional photos from a stock photo site, purchase their highest resolution image if it will be used as a full-page photo.

Consider the proportions of the book when culling the photos or selecting photos from photographer proof sheets.

Usually a photographer will take both portrait and landscape orientation photos for a book, but sometimes when the photos come to me, only one of these orientations is provided. However, most cookbooks are portrait format and some are square. If the image provided is landscape orientation, it is difficult to have any “full page photos” because the proportions of the image are so different than the proportions of the book.

Consider the cookbook with blue pages shown above and below as an example. The page format is square. In order to make the landscape orientation images fit on square pages, they either had to be zoomed in/cropped closely (top example) or the images have to be quite small (lower example). Providing a portrait version of the same recipe would have given me more options for layouts, especially full page layouts.

If you are culling or selecting images and aren’t sure which ones to use, pick one portrait and one landscape (and not too closely cropped, below) or contact your book designer and ask what they think is best, given the dimensions and orientation of your book!

Don’t crop the photos too closely.

Leave enough “dead space” around the edges of the image that the book designer can do the final “cropping” when he or she decides exactly how to position your photos in the book. There is almost always a difference between the proportions of the photo as it comes out of the camera, and the proportions of the book. If the photographer or illustrator provides images that don’t suit the proportions of the book, it is the job of the layout designer to pick the best cropping possible. For example, take this overnight oats recipe spread from a cookbook I designed. The reader doesn’t see how much the photo has been cropped…

…but when I give you a behind-the-scenes peek into how the book looks in Adobe InDesign, the industry-standard book layout software, you see that the book is a 4:5 ratio but the photos a 2:3 ratio. I had to decide how best to crop this image, and chose to lose some of the jar and canister in the background rather than to crop the jar of oats.

Another reason to not crop your photos to closely is because a book designer always needs at least an extra 0.125” around all edges of the photo for bleed, if the photo goes to the edge of the page. This area will be trimmed off, but needs to be there so that there is no unintended white edge around the photo.

For a full wrap hardcover book with a photo on it, the cover designer might even need several inches of extra space around all edges of the photo, for the photo to wrap nicely around the cover board without leaving an unintended white edge.

Related to the topic of cropping, sometimes providing the designer with several variations of the same photo for him or her to choose from can be a huge help for creating a successful layout. Just a slightly different position of a spoon or slightly different camera angle can make a big difference. For example, for the same cookbook project, the photographer sometimes gave me two similar photos to choose from.

Consider converting your photos to CMYK.

It used to be necessary that the photos used in printed books be converted to CMYK on the photographer or designer’s computer. However, because today photos and photo books are often seen both on screen (RGB) and in print (CMYK), it is becoming more common practice to simply let the printer convert all the images to CMYK before printing. However, if you are particular about the RGB to CMYK conversion, or are shooting photos in tones that show up significantly differently in RGB than in CMYK (like a neon green or light, bright aqua), you may want to go ahead and convert your image files to CMYK before sending them to the book layout designer.

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There’s not much that I enjoy more than a good book interior layout with stunning photography! If you have questions about preparing photos for a book layout, shoot me a message or book a consultation with me!

What Does Book Interior Layout or Book Interior Design Cost?

When you are researching the cost of a book interior layout online, it can be hard to pin down an exact price. Why is this? It is because your book is unique! Simply providing a word count and the genre is not usually enough to secure an price, because there are so many variables that affect the time your book designer will invest in making a professional layout. Book designers need to see the manuscript, or at least a significant sampling of it, before quoting an exact price.

Here are the main factors that come into play in book interior layout pricing:

Text

• What is the word count?

• How neatly is the source file formatted? (If the source file from Word is already formatted using paragraph styles, etc. this can ease the final formatting process.)

• How simple or complex is the manuscript? (For example: cookbook vs. novel. A novel generally has just a few different styles, but a cookbook is much more complex with small subsections of text regularly being formatted different ways.) Variables that affect complexity include:

  • character styles like bold or italic text

  • headings (chapter titles, subheadings, sub-subheadings)

  • quotations, verse, poetry

  • boxed text or pull quotes

  • forms or tables

  • endnotes or footnotes

  • indexes

Images or Diagrams

• How many images or diagrams are there?

• Do any of these images still need to be created, edited or adjusted, or will they be provided to the designer ready to insert?

Timeline

• When will the final manuscript be ready for formatting?

• How soon do you need the professionally prepared print-ready PDFs to be delivered?

Revisions

• Does the number of revisions required exceed the number of revisions the book designer quoted on? (The best way to avoid this is to have the book proofread multiple times before layout begins.)

As you can see, there are a lot of variables that play into the cost of your book interior layout! If you have a book manuscript and are looking for a book interior layout quotation, fill out this questionnaire and send me your manuscript for an exact quotation or book a live consultation. The process page on my website lays out what it looks like to work with me. 

Should I Print With an Online Printer or a Local Printer?

In the past ten years, online printers have exploded and become the go-to for many print projects that used to be printed down the street. Sure, online printers are usually cheaper, but does that mean they’re always to be favoured over local printers? As I’ve researched various printing options for clients both in North America and Europe, it’s become clear to me which projects are well-suited to online printers, and which would be better printed locally.

Photo by Kaboompics .com from Pexels

A local printer may be best for:

Creative or complex print projects requiring personalized service: Printing with a local printer lends itself to creative print projects with unique shapes, papers, folds, or finishes. Not only can you get in-person advice from someone who can help you plan your project, but you can flip through paper samples or look at ink swatches in person. Typically, online printers are set up best for standard projects in standard sizes, which is one of the reasons they tend to be more affordable. 

Print projects with a tight turn-around time: As I mentioned in my post on saving money when ordering printing, when printing with an online printer, if you need the printed piece to arrive quickly, you will pay premium prices for rush production and overnight delivery. In this case, I almost always recommend printing with a local printer; you can pick up the printed pieces yourself if needed. It’s also faster to shoot your local printer (with whom you already have a relationship) an email with the necessary instructions and a pdf attached, than to create an account with an online printer and go through all the steps to set up the order to their specifications.

High-ticket print projects: For a project where the colours need to match exactly or you are quite particular about how the photos are printed, printing locally with a more traditional full-service printer is best. You may even be able to “press proof” if needed — to make an appointment with your local printer to be there when your project is being printed, to sign off on the prints as they leave the press.

It follows that an online printer may be best for:

Standard print projects with standard lead times: If you need a 3.5 by 2 inch business card (in North America) or an A6 postcard (in Europe), any number of online printers are begging for your attention. Most of them will probably do what you need them to do. If you have about 1-2 weeks lead time, most online printers can print and deliver at their standard reduced rates. When working with an online printer, there is usually no interaction with a customer service representative, and it can be a bit harder to get help with questions or complaints. 

Low-budget print projects: There are always clients for whom budget is of utmost concern. For these projects, planning them to suit an online printer’s standard product is your best bet. For example, recently a client wanted a 6 by 6 inch marketing booklet. An online printer offered that exact size, and the local printer could not compete with the pricing because the size was unusual and the booklets would have had to be put together by hand. 

As someone who cut her prepress teeth at a local printer, I am a fan of giving back to the local economy when possible, and not contributing to the closure of yet another local print shop. But like everyone else, I’ve printed with both types of printers. One last secret about local printers though — because you’re dealing with a real human with whom you have some kind of relationship, you can also ask if there’s any way he or she can meet your budget or price match another printer. With a local printer there’s a bit more “give” — they’re happy you want to work with them.

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As a graphic designer who specializes in print design, I’m available to source or recommend printers for my clients. Whether you’re needing print design or print sourcing, let’s talk!

What Is the Best Way to Save Money When Ordering Printing?

While getting printing quotes and ordering printing for a client in the USA this month, I have been thinking about the best way to save money when ordering printing. Even if the money being spent on printing is not coming from my pocket, I hate to see clients paying double or triple as much for a print project simply because they don’t have this one thing. Can you guess what it is?

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

[Photo added to build suspense.]

Saving money when ordering printing is easy if you have time. The top reason that I see printing become expensive for clients is because they haven’t planned enough time for the most affordable printing options. In other words, print projects need to be planned well enough in advance by someone who knows what a reasonable printing timeline is.

Let’s say you’re ordering 5,000 postcards. Printing at the printer down the street might cost twice as much as printing at an online printer. But if you have to pay rush fees and express shipping for your print job at the online printer in order to get the project to you on time, you might as well support the local economy and send your project to the printer down the street, because you’ll end up paying almost the same thing. Planning print jobs with enough time to print them affordably can easily save hundreds of dollars even on a small project like postcards.

The savings become even greater if you are able to plan printing overseas into your timeline for larger projects or larger print runs. For example, that full colour cookbook that might cost $15,000 to print in North America might cost $6,000 to print in India or China…but you need to plan on at least an extra four to six weeks for printing and delivery. And even with printing overseas, shipping can become expensive if you suddenly have to have a quarter of your order sent by air instead of by sea because the timeline is too tight.

If you have time, you have choice. A bit of planning also gives you the time to:

1. Gather quotes from more printers, finding the best price or quality for the price.

2. Research other options that might also save money, like different papers or different formats.

3. Negotiate with the printer that you hope to work with. (This is a benefit of working with a local printer, is that you may be able to negotiate with them and keep your printing local.)

4. Wait for sea or ground delivery instead of air or overnight.

5. Work with your designer in a low-stress way and avoid rush fees from the designer as well.

For a big corporation, saving $100 when ordering postcards or $2,000 when ordering books might not seem like much. But these kinds of savings are especially important for lean start-ups or organizations like non-profits for whom every penny counts!

So, what’s the best way to save money when ordering printing? Good planning — that is, knowing how much time you need to keep the print project from becoming a rush order!

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Thank you for taking the time to read this post! I am happy to help clients source the best printing prices in their neighborhood, online or overseas. If you want to talk about how to save money on your next print project, please write to me through my contact page.

How I Found a Reliable Overseas Printer

Some time ago, a client asked me to assist in sourcing the printing of a large book project overseas, rather than in North America, where it had previously been printed. We had a great experience with the printer we used in North America, but as a start-up, the company’s biggest challenge was their budget for the project. The client wanted to see how printing overseas would compare to printing in the USA again.

Photo by Alex

Here's how I found a reliable overseas printer.

1. Submitted quote requests 

At the recommendation of a former colleague who has also printed overseas, I checked out a website called Print Industry, where you can describe what you need printed, and different printers can bid on your job. You can get a wide range of quotes without having to find and approach each printer yourself. My former colleague had used the site successfully in the past to find an offshore printer for a large project. 

Filling out all the details at Print Industry took some time, but after submitting them, we quickly got quotes from a few printers in the USA and from other countries (China and India). The prices provided by the overseas printers were about ½ or ⅓ of the price of the North American printers. We also requested quotes from a printer in Canada and from the printer in the USA whom we had used previously, for comparison. 

2. Sifted through the quotes

Between the quotes from Print Industry and the other quotes I requested, I received 8 to 10 quotes. I looked through them, primarily checking:

• if the printer understood our project

• how the printer’s price compared to the others’ prices.

I tried not to take into account the less-professional face of the Asian companies (their logos, websites, URLs and graphic design don't usually convey the Western idea of quality), but if their English was difficult to understand, I took that as a red flag.

If there was a printer that I felt didn't understand what we were asking for, but I wanted to give another chance for them to provide a quote, I wrote back with a request for adjustments to the quote.

3. Narrowed it down to the best prospect, a printer in China

In communication with my client, I eventually picked a printer who seemed to have understood our request and whose price was competitive, and started to communicate with them by e-mail about the project. 

4. Communicated regularly by e-mail with the printer in China

It was important to me that this company on the other side of the world be able to communicate clearly in English. Some overseas suppliers I’ve worked with can’t really understand and reply to specific questions and are not able to describe a problem or what they need. But we realized that we had found a professional guy with good English, who responded within a day or so to emails, and answered questions specifically. Green light!

Next, we wanted some proof that the company was real and that they were capable of doing the kind of work we needed. They offered to print a sample for us of the full-colour book file, and to send it to us with some other samples of their work and paper samples. The printing company requested $100 to send us two full-colour samples of our book, other book samples, and paper samples to two addresses (one in the USA, and one to me in Germany). The packages arrived quickly on our doorsteps and the quality of the printed samples was excellent. The cover paper samples they sent us matched the texture of our cover from the last printing.

We always had good communication with the printer. Over the months that we worked together, we had to change some deadlines and request new quotes, but our rep was always good to deal with. If at any point he had become difficult to deal with or hard to get an answer from, we would have taken that as a definite red light and looked for a new printer, but there were no such warning signs.

5. Committed to the printer in China

When the project was finally ready, we pulled the trigger. The client paid the first lump sum to the printer in China. I think the printer asked for an $800 downpayment to order the paper for the project, and then 50% of the balance before the printing began, and 50% before the books were shipped. 

The project experienced various delays on the client’s end, and when the files were finally print-ready, it was Chinese New Year and the factory was shutting down for two weeks for the country’s biggest celebration. This was a significant delay at the end of the project, but it was not the printer's problem, because we had expected to have the book done months before. This was the first time my client spoke on the phone with the rep in China (previous communication had always been by e-mail), and he spoke great English, was apologetic about the delay, and did his best to push the book through as quickly as he could once the factory was running again.

6. Received the printed books from China

We had 500 books sent by air to the USA (about a week for delivery) and the final 4,500 books sent by sea to a port in the USA (about five weeks for delivery). The client had to handle getting the books from the port to the company warehouse, but there may have also been a way to have the books delivered to the client’s doorstep. All in all, we were extremely satisfied with the final product and with the price, which was about ⅓ of what the project would have cost at the printer we used the year before. 

I hope this play-by-play is helpful to you if you're looking for a reliable overseas printer. If you use a bit of caution and common sense, you may find that an overseas printer that fits exactly what you're needing for a particular project.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this post! If you'd like to know more about my experience printing in China, or would like me to be your liaison for a large overseas print project, please write to me through my contact page. If you’re already in communication with an overseas printer, read this post: How to Communicate Clearly With Your Overseas Printer. If you'd like to talk to me about a book project, please take a look at my Book Design services page.

How to Communicate Clearly With Your Overseas Printer

In my last post, I wrote about how to find an overseas printer for large print projects. As I worked long distance again with a printer in Asia this winter, I was reminded of a few things that ensure successful communication with a print representative who is far away, and who is probably not a native English speaker.

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

1. Keep your written messages clear and jargon-free.

   In North American culture, we often start or end e-mails with a bit of small talk. But when you’re working with someone for whom English is not their first language, the more they have to read, the more chance there is of miscommunication or misunderstanding. Keep your e-mails or texts kind but clear and to the point. Don’t use idioms. Re-read messages before sending them to double check for clarity.

2. Make sure all your questions are answered.

   Of course, you need to have a clear contract with your printer — you know that. But if anything is not clear to you about the project, be sure to ask questions until you’re sure you’re both on the same page. It’s legit to ask for paper samples, samples of previous print projects they’ve completed for other clients, or a printed sample to be sent to you. Your overseas print representative should be able to supply almost anything your local printer could supply, just that it will take longer and cost more to ship.

3. Ask for multiple ways to contact your print representative.

   In the world of long-distance printing in Asia, phone numbers, e-mails and websites change more often than with established North American or European printers. If you’re working with a printer that you like, make sure you have at least two different ways to contact your print representative, such as e-mail and phone, or e-mail and WhatsApp.

4. Ask ahead about local holidays or festivals if your timeline is tight.

   Another aspect of working with a long-distance printer is that they celebrate totally different holidays or festivals than you do. When you’re ready to submit your proof changes, they may be taking the train home to ring in the Year of the Pig. When you’re eating turkey dinner, they may be binding your latest catalog. Double check for any holiday dates that might affect your timeline.

5. Don’t hesitate to phone if needed. (But please, check your printer’s time zone.)

   While most long-distance communication these days is done by e-mail or text message, sometimes the clearest way to sort out a misunderstanding or ask a question is by phone. Picking up the phone can smooth out differences; people are more likely to be gracious when they hear a kind voice on the phone.

As you can see, in order to receive the print project on time and done right, it’s essential to communicate clearly with your overseas printer. I hope these tips help you to have a confusion-free experience printing offshore.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this post! If you'd like to know the contact information of the overseas printer I have used, or would like me to be your liaison for a large overseas print project, please write to me through my contact page.

Design and Print Production Considerations for a Book in the Grief and Loss Genre

This week I was discussing a book interior layout project with a client who is self-publishing in the Grief and Loss genre. As I spoke with her about a wide variety of topics related to the preparation of her book, a few thoughts came to mind that might also help others self-publishing in this category. 

Self-publishers face a myriad of options but don’t always know what suits their genre best. Making thoughtful decisions about your book’s physical appearance and layout will ensure that your final physical product reflects the heart of your book.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema

1. Choose off-white or cream-colored paper instead of white.

There’s something about the warm tones of cream-colored paper that just gives a warmer and more approachable feeling to your less-than-approachable topic. Black words on white paper feel a bit stark and academic — white paper is often the stuff of office work and text books. There is no hard and fast rule about this, but cream-colored paper is most often used in this genre and feels more welcoming. If you’re self-publishing at CreateSpace, cream and white are your only two paper options.

2. Choose matte cover paper instead of glossy.

A flashy, glossy cover screams “exciting” and “new” — not really what most authors are going for when approaching the topic of grief. Opt for a matte cover paper, even if your cover design has photos on it, to lend a more subdued, respectful tone to your serious topic. Whether you’re printing on demand with a printer like IngramSpark or CreateSpace, or working with a traditional publisher, ask about cover paper with a matte finish.

3. Consider a smaller format.

A smaller, easier-to-read format lends itself to being picked up when the reader has a few minutes to spare. It makes your book easier to tuck in with a gift or to mail to a friend going through a hard time. If your book is made up of short readings, poetry or stories, a small format is particularly natural; consider a size of around 5.5x8.5” for your book. But do let the nature of the content dictate the size — some years ago I laid out this Notes from Susie book interior and it was a standard 6x9” size. This 400-page collection of the deceased author’s writings would have been too thick in a smaller format. The same might go for books that are compilations of longer essays or a Grief and Loss genre book whose nature is more academic than coffee table.

4. Choose colors that suit your genre.

In Western cultures, usually cooler colors in the purple and blue spectrums are most associated with the subdued themes of suffering, healing and grieving. Purple has liturgical ties, and blue might remind the reader of water, the sky, or Heaven. (Green probably starts to feel too earthy or medical, unless your book’s theme leans that way.) Neutrals can also be a good choice. In many Asian cultures, white is the color of mourning; and in many Western cultures black or grey is associated with death or loss. Research your audience and work with your cover and interior layout designer(s) to pick colors that best convey the material you are self-publishing. Discuss colors ahead of time, or if your designer picks colors you were not expecting, feel free to ask his or her reasons for doing so.

If you are looking for cover design or interior layout for your book in the Grief and Loss genre, I’d be happy to help you take these ideas into consideration and make your book more approachable and shareable when people are hurting. After all, you wrote it to reach those people, right? Now you’re on the home stretch — make smart design and print production choices to make sure your book catches your intended audience’s eye! Contact me here to learn more about working together.

Where Can I Find Free, High-Resolution Images for Print Design?

Photo by JESHOOTScom via Pixabay

In the past five years, there's been a real boom in websites offering high resolution, print-quality photos that are free for commercial and personal use. Whether you're wanting photos for a professional print design project or even just looking for a beautiful new photo to enlarge for your office wall, check these websites before you shell out the cash for paid photo services.

1. Unsplash

The first place I look if I want non-cheesy, free, high-resolution photos is Unsplash. The images at Unsplash are well curated, and have a young, artsy vibe. They're high enough quality for printing and Unsplash doesn't require that you start an account with them to download images. All images on Unsplash are free for commercial or personal use. Another nice feature of Unsplash is that there's little advertising on the website; the same can't be said for most of the following photo sources. I like Unspalsh so much that I sometimes even contribute my own photos to the pool for others to use. 

2. Stocksnap

Stocksnap is another great gallery to search for quality, high-resolution photos at no cost. Similar to Unsplash but a bit less hipster. They offer alle of their images under the same CC0 license that lets you do what you want with their photos, with no attribution required. The quality of the images is sharp and good for print at most sizes. You can read their image licensing details here. 

3. Pexels

Still searching for that perfect image? Enter your keyword(s) into Pexels and press enter! Pexels specifies that their images can be used in print marketing material: "Use the photos for flyers, postcards, invitations, magazines, albums, books and more" but be sure to read their licensing write-up here before you hit print!  

4. Pixabay

Not to be confused with Pexels (the "p" and the "x" in both names still throws me off), Pixabay advertises that they have over 1.5 million royalty free stock photos and videos. Pixabay requires that you create an account and log in to access the images in higher resolutions, but it's worth it if they have the image you're wanting! 

Of course, there are many more such websites, but I hope these four favourites of mine will be useful to you! It's always good to have a few different links go-to free stock photo websites in mind when you need images for a project, because particularly when it comes to free stock images, not every site will have the image you need.

If you can't find the image you're wanting for free, try a cost-effective source of paid images like Shutterstock.

Lastly, I can't emphasize enough how important it is to check and double check the licensing on "free" images before ordering a large print run using those photos. Free print-quality stock images can be a great solution in many situations, but watch for my follow-up post, where I explain why (in my opinion) you should never use a "free" image on your book cover, or front and centre in any other important, widely-distributed print marketing piece. 

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Wondering about using an image for print, but not sure if the resolution is good enough? Give me a shout through my Contact page and I'll help you figure it out! Or sign up for my Book Done newsletter to get tips and stories to help you get your book project done!

Expect Delays When Self-Publishing

If there's anything I've learned since beginning to work independently with self-publishers, it's this: self-publishing a book takes longer than you expect. Especially if it's your first book.

Photo by Christin Hume

A self-publisher often underestimates how many steps are involved in the publishing process. Maybe the photographer calls in sick. Or the editor needs an extra week. The proofreader can't work on the file right away because it came to her a different week than she expected. One small delay can have a domino effect, causing the whole project timeline to change.

When I am designing a full color book involving a lot of photography, usually the self-publisher works with me on a sample design or layout before the contents for the whole book are ready. The self-publisher talks to me about his or her ideas for the book, and gives me about ten pages of sample content. At this stage we establish the visual aspect of the book. Once the sample layout is ready, I wait — an indeterminate amount of time — until the full manuscript is ready for layout and design in the same style. On average, I would say that books come to me two weeks to two months later than the self-publisher originally intended, depending on the complexity and length of the content. 

I don't share this to be pessimistic, but to be realistic. If it's your first book, and especially if you're coordinating the project independently, I have three tips:

1. Don't commit to a particular release date. You may have a release date in your mind, but you don't have to give that date to others. Your first book will almost always be completed later than you expected. (One of my clients shares about his experience with setting a firm launch date in this blog post.) Or, give a padded date...

2. Pad your timeline. If you'd like to release your book in March, try to create a timeline that would have it releasing in January, to give yourself some wiggle room. If you give your contractors deadlines that are not your real, drop-dead dates, you won't be stressed out by every little delay that comes up.

3. Don't rush the process. Skipping important steps at the beginning of your book project can be very expensive in the end. The full layout should never be done until the text has been thoroughly edited and proofread. Major changes after the book has been laid out or after the book has gone to press can unnecessarily blow your budget.

Self-publishing a book — especially if it is your first book — takes longer than you expect! But if you expect the unexpected, maybe it won't actually take longer than you expected!

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Are you self-publishing a book? I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Give me a shout through my Contact page!