The interior design of a book is created using page layout/desktop publishing software. We use Adobe InDesign. The individual book material files are gathered and placed into InDesign where they are laid out on properly sized pages — a decision made earlier in the process, see Book’s trim size and design specifications — that resemble the final product.
If you have a book design that you particularly like, we can duplicate it, or create a design suitable to your book and a few sample pages will be sent to you for viewing see the earlier step of Book trim size and specifications. This will be repeated until you are completely satisfied with the design.
Ultimately there will be two InDesign files produced — one for the interior, another for the cover.
The InDesign file is exported to a PDF file for the author to review, mark-up and we work together on any adjustments or corrections. As we invoice based on time, there can be as many revisions as the author deems necessary.
The material for your book can be supplied in several different formats as individual files. For larger files we recommend SMASH.
Manuscript text
Editing and proofreading should be completed prior to the final manuscript text being submitted for the book design process. Please review Editing and proofreading.
The manuscript text of the book created by the author usually in MS Word, Google Docs, etc. plain text files are small enough they can be emailed.
When your manuscript is received, it will undergo a general cleanup such as removing double and redundant spacing, check quotation marks and other punctuation formats, remove imbedded styles, etc..
The Book trim size and specifications process will already be completed. Please review Book’s trim size and design specifications.
Images and illustrations
The resolution of photo images for your book ideally should be 300 pixels per inch (ppi). For example, an image to fit across a 4” space on a page should be 1200 pixels wide (300 pixels x 4″).
The resolution of hand-drawn illustrations should ideally be 600 pixels per inch (ppi).
Images of any sort should be supplied in either .png, .jpg or .tif file format. The photo files may have been created directly by digital cameras, or by scanning original photos. If you choose to scan the photos yourself, talk to us about it before you start. Let’s make sure they are scanned at the proper resolution and in the appropriate format. Digital photo files may be further manipulated with Photoshop to produce the appropriately sized image files.
Line art illustrations drawn electronically using programs such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw produce their images or illustrations as vector images will usually maintain a very high resolution. And, should be supplied in either .png, .jpg or .tif file format.
Tables created in MS Word or spreadsheet programs such as Excel generally require some re-working in order to properly fit the pages of your book.
Captions can be placed throughout the book wherever you want. The image number and caption can be placed directly into your manuscript at the location you want it to appear (e.g. PIC027 George, looking up at the cherry tree.)
Book printers will either reject or provide a warning if images are more than 15% lower than the ideal resolution.
How to find the dimensions (in pixels) of an image:
Mac: Locate your image, right click the image and select Get Info. A pop-up window will open with the dimensions of your image displaying in the More Info section. The dimensions show the pixel height and width of your photo.
PC: Locate your image, right click the image and select Properties. View the Summary or Details tab.
Note: Photos can appear exactly as you provide them, or we can adjust them as required such as cropping, highlight/shadow adjustment, contrast/lightness, saturation, spot removal, image repair, etc. Image enhancement for your book design is among the services we offer.
High resolution .pdf for printer
Once the author has approved the final draft of the interior book design and the cover design, we create a high resolution .pdf document for the commercial printer to print the book.
E-book files are produced in a similar way.
Please ask us anything you are not sure of. A simple question might save us a lot of time, and save you money.