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Hello, I am currently a design student wanting to specialize in Book and cover Design as well as Illustration. I'm currently wanting advice on what sort of programs are best to look into when formatting books and doing up their covers before they head to publishing both digital and printed? I am already aware vaguely of Indesign but was wanting more input from those within the industry already.

In other words, if I have the specs correct -- trim, spine width, bleed -- can I provide a standalone jacket, as opposed to one that's dropped into their generated template? I'd save me a step if I didn't have to port my work over to their template, as I have been doing for years. But it only just occurred to me that maybe I don't have to!

I'm an illustrator who adores watercolors, and I'm in search of a skilled individual to translate my watercolor paintings into digital format for brand identity purposes.

I'm a self-published science fiction author and I need YOU to help me (please) :D

Honest feedback on the cover I came up with would be great. The story is about enhanced evolution and environmental engineering, featuring a few horror elements.

Wilderness Five is 120,000 words and I'd happily share ARC copies with interested folk. Thanks!!

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Hello I’m a writer who has written a picture book. I have the art as well but am in need of someone to put it together for me. I also need someone to create a cover using some of the existing art as well as creating a title font. If interested please contact me. We can discuss the book further as well as compensation.

Hi! I’m a freelancer designer from Brazil and I’ve done some jobs for the US and never had any problem. But there’s this particular client right now that won’t answer me anymore or pay for the job, it’s been months now. He’s already published the book, I can see it at Amazon. Is there a way to legally request him to do so? Or at lest scare him to pay?

No need for advices on how to avoid it next time or what I should have done, I’ve learned my lesson.

I recently received a quote from an independent publisher, and his designer told me she charges $250 per hour. I was stunned. Is this normal?

Hi all,

I'm in the midst of a mid-life career change, currently studying design with the hope of becoming a book designer and illustrator. As part of my research into the book design industry, I'm interested in knowing your thoughts on gig sites like Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer.

How do you think these sites have impacted the industry? Have they changed how you work, or changed client expectations?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Hello. Short of trying out many different apps/software myself, any advise would be much appreciated. This is my first ebook and I've just begun on the rabbithole journey that goes into creating one! I'm perfectly happy using indesign but realised quickly this is not the tool for ebooks. So Sigil, Vellum, D2D, Atticus, Kindle create (although I'm aware it can only be used to create kindle books)etc... does anyone use any of these? Are they worth bothering with? Are any better than others dealing with images in terms of design scope? TIA

Hi, I typeset books and was in the middle of designing a volume within a 4 part series when CanStockPhoto went out of business.

He uses lots of imagery (up until then, paid images from CanStockPhoto) and since the source we used went out of business, we cannot locate the names of the accounts to attribute photo credits to.

We are in a pickle, to try and find the photo attribution, or not attribute the photographers, seeing as each photographer’s name is no longer available to attribute (CanStockPhoto site closed down).

Is it okay to publish the book with the paid-for images with no attributions?

Hello! I've been a graphic designer for about 5 years now and I've started to gain an interest in book design over the past year with a focus on YA, Fantasy and Romance. This is something that I want to pursue but I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out where to start in terms of clients.
I've done some research but I was wondering if anyone knew of specific places where authors and writers search for designers to hire?

I’ve written a history of a very old club; it’s about 85,000 words and 500 images (a mix of b&w and color). We’re looking to publish it as an oversized book, kind of like a coffee table book. I’m currently getting cost estimates from book printers.

I’m looking for a book designer with experience with books of this size/length/image-count to design the interior layout, overall look, and also (ideally) the cover. If anyone does this work or can recommend someone who does, please DM me.

I’m also curious to hear what people think the design of a book of this size/length/image-count should cost?

Appreciate any wisdom you can send my way.

I just finished the first draft of "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" for my first attempt at binding a book. This book has some long lines that wrap to the next line, and there are also some unusual formatting choices. See this page from the draft.

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Sample Page from draft of OPBPC

Another book designer suggested abandoning the original formatting, splitting the long lines, then formatting in the common way for poetry, that is to center the longest line in the text frame, then left-align all lines with that longest line.

But something feels very strange about reformatting someone else's poetry. So seeing what some other book designers think about this would be very helpful.

If you have any thoughts about this point, or anything else about the layout, they would be very welcome.

Sorry for the size of the screen capture. I could not see a way to shrink the image.

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I know I have an app that can tell me how many pages are inside PDFs, but it doesn't say anything about comments.

I'd like to submit more of my work to cover design contests, but I really only hear about them through the grapevine or if a client submits my work on their own.

Specifically, are there any contests that aren't constrained by the year? I'd like to submit designs I did two or three years ago that I'm still really proud of.

Also, are there design contests for things like anthology covers? I do a design service for college seniors who bind their creative writing pieces as a final grade, and some of their covers turn out really well. But the books aren't exclusively fiction or nonfiction—they're always a mixed bag that range from short stories to technical writing and even journalism. Most of their covers end up looking very genre-fiction because that's what this group of kids really like, so it would be cool to use them in contests to build up some credentials on that front. I just don't know if they would qualify for "normal" contests.

Thanks for the advice!

I got reached out by a person on bumble bizz. She wanted educational books for children of age 4-9.

My job would be to ideate on content , weave stories around lessons. do the art and layout as well. For a book of 25 pages it would take me 18 man days i.e roughly 3.6 business weeks.

How much do should I charge? I stay in india. The client is indian and is running on a low budget not more than 4 lakhs Rs (6000 dollars ) for around 20 books. I am considering charging 80,000 rs (960 dollars) for 1 book. Let me know your thoughts

Hi guys I need help formatting my children's book in indesign. I am clueless on how to calculate the margin & bleed. It is 8.5 x 11, 35 pages color paperback. I know that KDP has a calculator or something but I can't find it. THANK YOU!