A romantic attachment to the print book, or a driving desire to see their book in bookstores can drive some authors into making poor print decisions. It’s okay to aim for these goals but be supercritical at the same time. Here’s some important information on print on demand and offset printing and a few important questions I’ll ask you when we’re collaborating.

Myths about ISBNs abound, trying to find the answer is as easy as sourcing a litre of petrol. In this simple post, here’s an FAQ, taken from queries I receive from my publishers and authors when I’m designing and project managing books. I hope it’s useful.

Page planning is a key part of any multiple page document. It’s a guide for all the people who form part of a project and a really useful overview for designers, editors and authors, saving time and money by making best use of space and printing savvy.

I was reading a post on a forum last week that asked about employing a formatter and it’s inspired these words as I felt it might be useful to untangle the language and roles. I also tested out Vellum to explore what apps offer and compared this to my bespoke skills. This post walks you though the Hello Lovely book page design process, explains what software I use, why and the stages, plus who to involve, what they do and why you may need them. The post covers print and ebook design across fiction and non-fiction.

You’ve heard the phrase ‘judge a book by its cover’, I’m sure and it’s very true when it comes to publishing, in particular, self-publishing when authors have more control of spend and choices. What to put on the cover and how to brief it, who to commission and who does what can be exhausting and overwhelming. I’m going to assume you’re an interested author. This blog post aims to give an overview of the styles of book covers, who does what and best practice. Grab a seat and a cuppa as it’s going to be a long but useful post!

How do you know which is best for the work you’re doing? In general, there are graphics formats suitable for printing which have a higher resolution and those for on-screen viewing or online publishing. Within each group, there are also formats that are better than others for the same task. Here’s the Hello Lovely run down on file types.