Hello, I’m a book designer.

Writing a book can feel romantic, but once the book is out it has to sell, and readers buy what catches their eye. A reader browsing Amazon gives your book a few seconds, often looking at nothing more than a small thumbnail, before deciding whether to click, so people do judge a book by its cover.

Self-published books appear on the same pages as books from the big publishers, which have whole art departments working on their covers. Your cover has to look like it belongs among them and still stand out, and that takes specific skills, experience, and, of course, talent.

The design takes about 20 to 35 hours. I start by looking at the competing books in your category, then choose the imagery and fonts, do some sketching and scribbling, and move on to photo manipulation, color correction, and the rest of the design work.

The cover is very important, of course, but poor layout and sloppy typesetting can kill any book, no matter how good the story is. Usually no single mistake is to blame: unbalanced margins, an unsuitable font, loose justification, careless hyphenation, cramped leading, and plain chapter openings add up.

If book design isn’t your field, you don’t have to learn it, since there are people who do this for a living, me included. Don’t worry, I got you.

It starts with an email, in which you tell me about your book and what you’d like to see on the cover in terms of mood or style, and I answer any questions you have. If you’d like to talk first, we can have a short Zoom call.

We start with the front cover design after you fill out the Cover Design Questionnaire. Within a week I’ll deliver 3 front cover concepts. One of them is often accepted with minor tweaks, and 3 rounds of revisions are included just in case.

After the front cover is approved and the overall style is established, I’ll design the interior. I’ll provide 3 interior samples (up to the beginning of the first chapter), and you decide on one. We can mix and match them, of course.

Then I typeset the full manuscript and rework the graphics if needed.

I’ll provide ready-to-print files to you or directly to your printer, according to the specifications. I’ve been working with the leading print-on-demand service providers like Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, and custom printing companies.

The whole process usually takes up to a month and a half: 2 weeks for the cover, and the rest for the interior layout, typesetting, and a couple of rounds of corrections.

It goes faster when the manuscript is fully proofread before typesetting starts and you reply to each round of proofs within a day or two.

My pricing is straightforward. If you have no time and need stuff done by tomorrow morning, we’ll agree on a rush fee. I ask for a 50% deposit up front.

Small corrections after typesetting are included, up to a hundred minor edits, as long as they don’t change how the text flows from page to page. Back cover copy and endorsement quotes can be changed at any time, even at the last moment. Corrections that change the text flow significantly are charged at $50 per hour, and in the most severe cases the book has to be typeset again. Any extra fees are discussed beforehand, with a detailed estimate, so there are no hidden fees or unexpected charges.