Book design by First Choice Books
Professional Book Design for Sales and Positive Reviews
First Choice Books can take your manuscript and transform it into a beautifully designed book. Send us your edited manuscript, and any photos or illustrations with notes on image placement and captions, and we’ll do the rest.
What is Book Design? Book design is the whole series of decisions that make the printed word look elegant and enjoyable to read on the printed page. Our book design skills will make all the difference in ensuring your writing exhibits a polished, professional look which leads to sales and good reviews. Read More about Book Design
We’ll look after every detail, including headings and footers, chapter starts, font choices, paragraph styling, formatting of the title. Also the copyright, table of contents, dedications, preface, etc., placement of images, and preparing the files for print.
What to send us:
1. Your manuscript, edited and complete.
Make sure to include all the parts you want in the final book, in the order that they are intended to appear. These can include, but are not limited to: title page, dedication, acknowledgements, preface or introduction, each chapter or section, afterword or epilogue, and end-notes. File format: .doc, .docx.
First Choice Books will add the copyright page, and build a table of contents if requested. While we do not edit your book for content or structure, we take care of common typographical errors like double spaces and inconsistent punctuation.
You don’t need to do any formatting for text appearance, besides using italics or bolding as you want. We’ll do the rest.
2. Any photos or illustrations for the book, as separate files.
Please note in the book where you would like the photos placed, reference the photos by number, and label the photos accordingly in numerical order as they appear in the book (01.jpg, 02.jpg). Time spent sorting out any photos and labeling them in order will save time and billing for layout, as it greatly speeds up our work in building your book without confusion over placement. Add notes in the document for image placement, along with any caption. For example: Place image 01.jpg here, Suzie and Assim at the beach, Maine, 1967.
- File format: JPG or TIFF
- Resolution: 300 dpi
- Colour mode: RGB or CMYK
- Use grayscale for black-only printing
3. Names for credits and copyright
Please list the exact spelling of each name as they should appear on the cover and the copyright notice. Along with the author’s name, you will want to include credits for any images, editing, or translation, as applicable.
If you have no images in the book, the manuscript can be sent by email to graphics@firstchoicebooks.ca.
If there are images in the book, send all the files using a file transfer service: wetransfer.com or Dropbox.com. More information about sending us files by dropbox.
Once we receive files we’ll do an assessment for the Graphics time needed to create your book. Book design includes PDF samples of the layout, PDF proofs of the entire book, copyright notice, ISBN and barcode, and 1 round of simple revisions. Layout usually takes about 3-5 weeks once we have all the materials for the book, depending upon the complexity of the layout and the time of year. (The fall is our busiest season. Get started in July or August if you want books by Christmas!)
Questions about the above? Please contact us right away! We can help you sort it all out.
