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Martin Publishing Services

Publishing and Design Services for Authors and Presses

in Book Design and Layout· Publishing Advice and Resources

Proper Document Preparation for Working with a Book Designer

If you are working with a professional book designer (or typesetter), there is no need for you to do tons of legwork. If you do happen to go crazy with formatting and styling on your own, then my question is why hire a designer at all? Part of the fee that you are paying your designer is for her creativity, market research, and intuition. (Need help determining if your designer is a professional?)

Although it may not always be feasible, before you start on your document, I suggest talking with your designer, especially if you are wanting a custom layout or if your document contains lots of images or plans for call-out quotes.

For my clients, the most succinct advice that I can give is to have them keep their Word document very simple. Bold, italicize, hyperlink, insert footnotes, and assign color where appropriate, but there is no need for them to do much more than that. I will handle page breaks, table of contents, title pages, headers, footers, etc.–all that fun stuff.

And whatever you do, resist the urge to use text frames or to create your own graphics in Word. This makes your designer think bad thoughts.

If they are feeling a little more adventurous, I love for them to use the paragraph styles in the right way. The “right” way means Heading 1 goes to the top level heading, heading 2 goes to the sublevel heading, heading 3 goes to the sub-sublevel heading, etc. The paragraph styles can be customized by the end-user, but that is not necessary. It’s really just the coding and structure I’m after, not the author’s design preferences. Design preferences are handled via a phone call and as the project develops.

Call-Out Quotes

For books that want to feature call-out quotes, there are two ways that this often plays out: 1) the call-out quote is a replication of existing text in a document OR 2) the call-out quote is used IN PLACE of existing text in a document.

Karen Engle’s book, “A People Chosen”, is a great example of a before-and-after for call-out quotes. She wanted her call-out quotes to be their own text, not a repetition of existing text. The inset image is her original Word document. She put all of the text that she wanted to be a call-out quote in double brackets. I then pulled those into their own text frames and styled them accordingly.

apeoplechosen_calloutquote

Images

In addition to call-out quotes, we have the not-so-small matter of photos. If you like your designer and want to stay in her good graces, then you will NOT embed your photos into your Word document.  Instead, you will send her the absolute highest-resolution and UNaltered photos that you have (dropbox is awesome). You will name them accordingly AND put a notation in the document as need (example: insert chapter 2C photo here). If the image needs to be corrected and/or cropped, I will take care of that. Again, that’s all part of having a designer.

Here is an example of photo notation (“Use Image file Week2Day1.jpg).

endresults_print

Conclusion

Talking beforehand about my workflow processes enables the author to focus on her writing and key elements, while allowing me to focus on structure and design.

Every designer and author is going to have her own way of doing things. You will be spending a lot of time together throughout the book designing process, so take a few minutes upfront to get to know each other and ask about preferences and workflow processes.

Hopefully, this gives you some room to breathe if you’re in the midst of preparing your own document. When in doubt, stop what you are doing and schedule a phone consultation with your designer.

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A 1-minute video overview of how I move from conce A 1-minute video overview of how I move from concept to finished cover. This is the highest bird's eye view possible, as in reality it took me approximately 20 hours to complete this cover.
I so loved working on this cover Beth Stillman Bla I so loved working on this cover Beth Stillman Blaha. Her writing is phenomenal and honed to a fine point by @shaylaleeraquel's editing skills! I can't wait to add this beauty to my bookshelf.

@beth62881
I often have requests to use watercolor in the cov I often have requests to use watercolor in the cover design, but most of the time, it's just because the author likes the look, not because it has anything to do with the content. I like the design to reflect the title/subtitle/theme of the book, not just pick a design style at random. So finally an author has a title that actually supports using a watercolor theme. Yay!

In watercolor, a bloom is a flow mark created when liquid is added to an already drying wash. These unpredictable textures are also known as blossoms, backruns, or even cauliflowers. These terms all refer to the same thing. They occur because water always seeks a state of equilibrium. (@watercoloraffair_com )

This is a concept that the author had that I was able to polish up and bring to life. #bloomwithdeb
I love tapping into the sci-fi side of my designer I love tapping into the sci-fi side of my designer skillset. Fiction novels give me room to flex, because I can delicately weave in the elements of the story.

Since this book is based in Alamogordo, NM, and also New Mexico State University as a setting, I chose a serif typeface that is similar to the typeface that NMSU uses.

As you read the story, elements of the cover will be revealed to you when you go back for a second look.
"Nurses, you know how to heal others, but who is h "Nurses, you know how to heal others, but who is healing you? It’s time to focus inward and begin to honor yourself. 'Emotional Triage' offers an unassuming, real-life perspective on caring for others while still caring for yourself."

Thank you, nurses, for all you do.

"Emotional Triage" by Olivia Lovejoy, RN, releases next week.

@olivia_lovejoy_rn_author
Of all the things I ever wanted to be, a lawyer wa Of all the things I ever wanted to be, a lawyer was never one of them. If you're a lawyer and you don't want to be, connect with Philippe and snag a copy of his soon-to-be-released workbook to help you discover what you actually want.
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