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budgeting for book design

One of the last, and most important steps before you can get your book printed and off to the bookstores is design and layout. Although you may have put together a concise budget for editorial, printing and marketing, you may be left wondering just how much this step is going to cost you. Many first-time authors do not leave enough in their budget for this critical step, when their readers will be picking their book up initially based on the creative cover design, before they read the stunning marketing copy on the back.

So what can you expect to pay for design and layout? Below are the standard and optional costs that you will come across as you make your decisions on cover design and interior layout.

1. Standard Costs

There are 2 basic costs that you need to budget for when you go through the book design process:

Cover design
Page layout

Cover Design
You can have a designer work on just your cover or the entire book (cover design and layout). Depending on the designer you hire, their expertise may only be as a cover designer, and your publishing house may take care of the layout of the book for you.

This component is a traditionally a flat fee and will range, depending on factors such as number of colours (4-colour vs 2-colour), project (trade book vs coffee table book), and concept (use of photo vs type only).

Budget: $750 - $1500 (2-colour type - 4-colour textbook)

Book Design
When you hire a designer to work on your entire book, both cover and interior, they will most likely quote you a Book Design cost. This cost will include a price for the cover design and a price to then design the interior pages to match the cover for continuity. If the project is complex, such as a textbook, they may split out the costs into two lines - Cover Design and Interior Design - and both may be quite close in cost.

Budget: $1000 - $2500 (2-colour type - 4-colour textbook)

Page Layout
If you work with a publishing house, many times they will take care of the layout for you, hiring a freelance designer for the cover only. If you are self-publishing, you may want to hire a designer to work on the complete book for you. Page layout involves the formatting of the pages of the whole book using a desktop publishing program as most printers and publishing houses will not accept Word files for printing.

This component is a traditionally a per page fee which is usually dependent on the complexity of the project as more time will be needed to layout more complex pages. Providing a sample manuscript to the designer will ensure the most accurate per page quote.

Budget: $8 - $15pp. (simple trade - textbook)

2. Additional Costs

As you make decisions about your book cover and interior pages, there may be additional costs that you will run into that need to be budgeted for:

Cover Image
If you cannot provide your own image for the cover (with the proper permissions) or do not want a typographic cover, you may ask your designer to find a suitable image for you. There are many websites that carry both royalty-free and rights-managed photos and illustrations for purchase.

Depending on the rights you choose, this will either be flat buy-out fee and you will be able to keep the image and re-use it on marketing materials and your website (royalty-free image), or it will be a one-time use image for just the cover for a limited time (rights-managed image).

Budget: $250 - $400 (royalty-free)
$1000+ (dependent on usage)

Cover Illustration
Some authors prefer to have a completely unique image for their cover and choose to hire an artist/illustrator to design an image for them. They can negotiate the rights with the artist in regards to reproduction - cover only, cover and interior, marketing materials, and website.

Depending on the reproduction rights that you negotiate with the artist, the cost will be a flat fee for the design and the use. Base cost will depend on artist experience, complexity, and size of artwork.

Budget: $750+

Charts & Graphs
If your book is technical in nature and you would like to include some charts or graphs, but do not have permission to reproduce them, they are not press quality (minimum 300dpi), or have not been saved in a file format that a printer can accept (only .eps - no .jpg, .bit, .xcl, or .pdf), you will need a designer to recreate your chart/diagram for you.

This cost will depend on the designer you hire as there are 2 ways to charge for this: a) hourly, or b) on a per chart basis with costs escalating based on complexity or size.

Budget: $15 - $60/chart (depending on complexity)

Getting an Accurate Design Quote

To get a better idea of your design and layout budget, try to be as accurate with your designer as possible when requesting a quote. The more information the designer has, such as number of pages for layout, cover concept, number of colours, how many charts, etc., the easier it is to provide a concise quote that will be close to the final invoice.

Unless a designer is giving you a package deal, if they're not asking you the right questions, you know they won't be accurate in their costing, and you won't be able to budget your book properly.

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