How To Get The Best Price

You Can Spend Your Time or You Can Spend Your Money

The more time you spend on preproduction, the less money you'll spend on graphic design and prepress. Here is a To-Do list of things you can do to keep layout costs down.

  1. Make sure all editing changes are made before presenting your manuscript to the designer. Extensive changes can cause text reflow. Most designers will charge extra to enter the changes and fix any reflow problems.
  2. When you key in the text for your book, use only bold or italic styling and keep all the text flush left. Don't try to make the pages look pretty with all kinds of spacing and fancy formatting, etc. The designer will have to spend more time stripping it out when she imports the pages into a page layout program. Less is more at this stage of production.
  3. If you have a preference for the design of your inside pages, make a little layout sketch and fax it to your designer. Simple show and tell props communicate better than words.
  4. Send all the elements of your book (front matter, ISBN barcode #, text files, pics, backmatter) in one complete package. This decreases the chance that something will be forgotten.
  5. If your book needs custom artwork, or photographs, make arrangements to provide these to your designer. Of course any designer will be happy to search the web for royalty free images but that would mean extra charges for image research.
  6. If you want your book to be acquired by US public libraries, you will need to obtain Cataloging In Publication data from the Library of Congress. This link will provide info on where and how to begin the process.
  7. Give your designer a list of books whose covers you really like and some you really don't like. Understanding your taste in book design is a real time saver.