Steps we cover in book layout & inside book designing

Every book which is written goes through various phases, there has to be a story to begin with. Once the story is written, you must refine it further and check for possible errors and various levels of editing may be required. After that you start to find your publisher and in case you are not able to find one, you may decide to self publish. In case you decide to self publish, you must have the illustrations. You can find a suitable illustrator who can illustrate your story. After the illustrations are complete, you need to get the book designing, in many cases, many self publishing houses will offer this service and will claim to make your journey hassle free. Although, you can let them do the job for you but you must know what is the process and how it works so that you are in a better position to negotiate or get the best service from them.

First of all the book cover designing  is done, which includes the front cover  as well as the back cover , this will have an illustration and the text or the title of the story written in a font which looks good and is legible and yet stylish. This will have the Author’s name and illustrator’s name, usually in case of Children books . The back cover includes reviews about the book as well as the barcode. It may or may not have an illustration. The text and the font are of great importance and the illustration can be one of the inside illustration or a new illustration, but it must be one of the best illustrations which speaks about the story and should be very attractive.

After the front and back cover is complete, then the next step that comes is the inside book design and this process involves the designing of pages like the Title Page ,Dedication Page , Copyright Page   (it also includes the ISBN number) and table of contents (in case of chapter books). The last page can be Credit Page  (credit to the illustrator). The inside book design also includes the text layout with illustration layout and the overall setting should be such that it looks good and not clustered or unorganized. The text and illustration layout may have various design elements like the border around the text and borders to make the margins look good. This will depend upon the size of the book, amount of text and the illustrations. You may ask yourself publisher/designer to share various design options with you.

Once the designing is complete, you will get a Pdf file or the soft copy of the final design and you will be able to see the book as it will appear in the hard copy. In case you want some changes, it can be easily implemented at this stage and the designer/self publisher should easily be able to update and send you the revised file for final review. You can review the file once more and after this phase is complete you need to decide of you want to take a print of the book or if you want to create an e-book. You can do either of the two or both, depending upon your choice.