Welcome to Book Design 101 – a handy guide covering all the basics of what you need to know when publishing your first book. In this episode, we’ll look at what you should remember about when writing an e-mail to your prospective book cover designer or typesetter – in other words, what to include in your book design brief.
Disclaimer: This is based on my experience, as a designer for indie authors and small presses. Other designers might ask you for additional information, or need less data to give you a ballpark quote.
What is a brief?
Let’s start with the basics – a design brief is a document that describes your project, contains all the relevant details and specifications, and tells your designer what you’re looking for. It can be a separate PDF or Word file, but it can also be just written out in an e-mail – whatever is more comfortable for you.
Book Cover Design Brief
Here’s what you should include if you’re looking to get a book cover design quote:
- Book title and your name (or pen name)
- Genre
- A synopsis/blur – or just a few sentences about your book
- Format – paperback, hardcover with or without a dust jacket (here: [CLICK] is a handy article about book formats)
- A few words about your expectations – are you looking for an illustrated cover with original artwork? Or maybe something minimalist? If you have any visual references, that’s always helpful – try looking at covers of other books to roughly decide on the style you’re looking for. Do you have a Pinterest moodboard? Fantastic. Do you have a sketch with stick figures? Awesome!
- Anything else that YOU consider relevant and would like your designer to know.
Book Layout / Typesetting Brief
Here’s what you should include if you’re looking to get a book layout design/typesetting quote:
- Information about your book – book title, genre, author’s name
- Word count – as well as character count with spaces – this will allow the designer to estimate how many pages your book is likely to have.
- Trim size – also important for estimating the page count.
- Illustrations – are there any illustrations, tables, or graphs in your book? If yes, how many, and what kind (for example: are those full-page illustrations, or smaller)?
- Sample chapter – always helpful!
That’s it!
I hope you found this short article useful – let me know if you think it’s lacking something, or if you have an additional question.
I’m always up for a chat – get in touch via marta@martadec.eu.
