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• • June 16, 2011 at 7:25 am #59864
    JennaO

    Member

    Hello there,

    I'm a graphic designer who has been in the industry for 4 years, and have learned that I love to design and lay out large documents. I'm interested to learn if a job exists where this is the main task.

    In my short experience, it seems like all design and print companies have their designers do a large variety of jobs — logos, packaging, brochures, banners, etc. But are there any that specialize in books? For example, do publishing houses have in-house designers, or do the jobs get contracted out?

    As a book lover and big fan of InDesign, I'd be grateful for any insight you folks have.

  • June 16, 2011 at 8:37 am #59865
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Some people specialize just in books, but it's relatively rare. In my experience, people who specialize in books tend to be designers who have “paid their dues” in designing everything else, and finally have a good enough reputation that they can devote themselves to doing books.

  • June 16, 2011 at 10:19 am #59866
    Scott Citron

    Participant

    Hi Jenna:

    Depending on the vicisitudes of the economy, I often wonder if there is a job as Book Designer. But seriously, as a book designer myself I can testify that such a job does in fact exist. In fact, in large-scale publishing book designers tend to be divided into two camps; those who specialize in covers only and those who do interiors (the guts of the book) only. I belong to a third odd-ball category, those who mostly do both. Ultimately, book designers tend to do what it is they're hired to do.

    As David said in his post above, few designers start their careers doing only books. In my case, I spent a lot of time designing everything from flyers to posters to newsletters before I ever got a crack at doing a book. I also worked part-time for a boutique publisher in New York where I got to observe other professional designers, which was of great help. Of course, these were in the QuarkXPress days, well before InDesign took over the field.

    One only needs browse the racks of any bookstore to see that some of the best graphic design done today is by book designers. Despite the hard work and not-so-decent pay, the rewards of seeing your efforts at your local Barnes & Noble or on Amazon.com somehow make it worth the sacrifice.

    Scott

    PS: Check the June/July issue of InDesign Magazine for my cover story about the basics of book design.

  • June 16, 2011 at 9:24 pm #59868
    marcus1974

    Member

    Yeap…it's what I do.

    @David Blanter…It's not rare as you may think…Maybe in America when everything goes to India…But other parts of the world you'll find it pretty common

  • June 16, 2011 at 9:55 pm #59869
    Alan Gilbertson

    Participant

    Great to see you here, Scott! Professional Design Techniques is a favorite on my bookshelf, where it sits beside Real World InDesign, InDesign Type and Claudia McCue's marvellous Real World Print Production.

    I'd add to your and David's remarks that there's a new and growing niche for book design. Between the shrinking cost of production and the new dominance of online marketing and sales, authors new and established are finding self-publishing an attractive alternative to the conventional publishing process.

    At any given time, I almost always have at least one book project in hand that's for a private edition or intended for print-on-demand publication. Self-published works aren't a matter of vanity publishing any more, and, similar to the indie recording and movie scene, I don't see this doing anything but grow. These days, ePub versions are also needed pretty much simultaneously with a print edition, making CS 5.5 a very happy arrival on the design scene.

  • June 16, 2011 at 11:19 pm #59870
    Silkjaer

    Member

    I work at a design agency in Denmark. We do a lot of design jobs, but our main focus has always been books. In the last 5-6 years, we have specialised even further, and more than 50% of our work is Bibles.

    As a bunch of typography geeks, we always find it most interesting to do interior design, but we often do both interiors and covers. In our Bible design area, 95% of our work is for other countries.

    So there is such a job :)

  • June 16, 2011 at 11:49 pm #59871
    seddon

    Member

    Hi Jenna

    It's true that many designer's get into book design after working in other areas of design for a while, but there's no prescribed path as such. Publishing houses tend to have one or two art directors and a relatively small team of in-house designers but the bulk of design work is usually put out to freelancers. It's a bit of a myth that art directors in publishing will only give work to freelancers who have previous book design experience. If you have work in your portfolio that reflects your abilities to handle large volumes of images and text (but not a book as such) that will help, but a good art director will see any potentential regardless of the types of project. In the first instance, if you're keen to work in book design try contacting a rage of illustrated book publishers with examples of your work.

    If you do secure a project from an illustrated book publisher it's likely that it'll be a presentation (referred to as a blad in the industry) to begin with. Practically all illustrated books begin their lives in this way, particularly if they're being published as a co-edition with a US plus a UK/Australian/Translated edition. It's a good way for art directors to test the water with designers new to book publishing as it's only a commitment to a few spreads and cover concepts, rather than a complete book. If the presentation goes well it's normal (and considered polite practice) for the designer to be offered the complete book layout.

    As Scott mentioned above, it's hard and challenging work and the level of remuneration isn't as high as other areas of design, but it's incredibly rewarding. Good luck with it.

    Tony

  • June 17, 2011 at 11:22 am #59875
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    Hi Jenna!

    You should get to know Stephen Tiano, an independent book designer who writes a great blog about his field:

    https://tianobookdesign.com/index.html … I've been a fan for years.

    He recently wrote a post there that you'd love:

    Making Books: Design and Production, How I Started

    Stephen has a rich Twitter feed, too: https://twitter.com/#!/stephentiano

    AM

  • June 17, 2011 at 2:54 pm #59878
    jdwires

    Member

    JennaO,

    I actually had that job for about 4 years. Our small design company designed/laid out book for the Meredith Corporation in Des Moines, Iowa. Until about 2+ years ago when their books devision was cut they published many DIY, gardening, cooking, children's, and other types of books. We did books for brands like The Home Depot and their 1-2-3 series, Stanley Tools, Better Homes and Gardens, and others. They relied pretty heavily on outsourcing the book layout and design to freelancers and small design companies like ours.

    Even though you won't find and book design jobs at Meredith anymore, you'll probably find some possibilities with Wiley or Taunton Press. They still do quite a bit of book design and probably still don't do all of it in-house.

    Something to do, is find a type of book that you would like to work on, and try to contact/get to know the author. Don't worry, most people that are authors for how-to books that I've know are pretty down to earth (unlike many famous novelists). They might be able to help you make a contact inside one of their publishers. Then it's just a matter of making a good sales pitch/proposal/bid and then delivering on the product.

    Good luck,

    Joel

  • June 17, 2011 at 3:38 pm #59881
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I've been working as a book designer since 2006 in this area, primarily personal histories and self-published books. I agree with Alan. I think the demand for self–published, privately published, and limited distribution book design will increase, although it's harder to find those people.

    Although I had a background as a publications designer, I feel that book design is a specialized area. And, as others have pointed out, often cover designers don't want to do interior design or interior designers don't want to do covers.

    I recently wrote a post on my blog to explain book design to those outside the field:

    https://shoebox-stories.com/201…..do-anyway/

    And I am also a fan and online friend of Stephen Tiano, a most knowledgeable and generous book designer.

  • June 17, 2011 at 8:29 pm #59882
    Michela31

    Member

    Hi Jenna,

    And welcome to the world of book design! I got my first job out of college as an in-house designer with a publishing house, and have now had about 18 years in that career. I can confirm a lot of what is said above, it can be slogging work and it doesn't pay as well as other areas of design but it is definitely a legitimate speciality, just like magazine design, corporate design etc. And in my opinion book publishers can be quite accepting of designers who don't necessarily have book experience. So I would just start contacting publishers in your area with your portfolio and your dream :-) The great thing too is that if you freelance (as I do now) you can work globally. Having experience and contacts behind me, though I am based in Sydney, Aust, I work for publishers in the States and Europe. I have worked mostly on non fiction, especially cooking, craft, gardening, reference, travel etc. In this type of publishing I have almost always been exclusively responsible for the entire project, including art directing photo shoots and sometimes styling. But my small amount of experience with fiction publishing houses has been as described above – I have been brought in just to do covers and typesetters have done the internals. Not in illustrated publishing though, it's all yours. I find the industry goes in cycles, along with the economy. There'll be a few years where publishers go back to a small in house team and contract out the overflow, then you'll find in house teams are cut back and everything is going to freelancers. I would say that if you really have a passion for this area, do try for an in house position simply because you'll learn more. That doesn't have to be a full-time position, some publishers like freelancers to come and work in house for the period of a contracted project, or at least partly, and that would be a good option.

    As I said, I now freelance and have been for quite a few years now. The majority of my clients are still publishers but I have had to work hard to crack some other areas of design to cover the short fall as publishing isn't just cyclic with the state of the economy ( and this can mean a down turn because parent companies are in other countries where the economic climate is different to where you are employed, like any other industry) it is also cyclic in terms of the big Book Fairs that are held internationally each year. This is where publishers sell their wares within the industry. These can mean a flurry of concepting activity before the Fairs and either lots of work if titles are bought or a dearth if few are bought. A couple of years ago, very few Australian publishers made it to the Frankfurt Fair because of the Icelandic volcano grounding flights. This meant a real hole in the industry which was definitely felt by we designers.

    So I guess I'm saying – Yes! It's a bigger industry than you might think! Go shop around publishers, it shouldn't be hard for a competent designer to crack in. But bear in mind that unless you're in house it'll be hard to make ends meet all the time through publishing alone, so keep fingers in other pies!

    Good luck

  • June 19, 2011 at 5:29 pm #59890
    JennaO

    Member

    Wow — thanks for your input everyone! It's great to hear from people in the field.

  • July 4, 2011 at 6:36 am #59981
    Tim Hughes

    Member

    I work for a company whose main work is educational books, it's a varied and complex workload but very satisfying. Living in Oxford thats what the main game is, “Books”.

  • October 9, 2012 at 9:35 pm #63317
    stephentiano

    Member

    First off, my thanks to CJ and AnnMarie for their kind mentions of me. Funny that I never came upon this discussion until late yesterday. But that's the only reason it's taken 'til now to say something here.

    So, geez, I hope to God there's such a job as Book Designer. For that matter, why wouldn't there be? I mean, books are obviously designed–aside from the ones poured into one-size-fits-all templates issued on the bookmills' assembly lines. Seriously, however, it's a job okay–or a business, if you choose to freelance. After almost 20 years freelancing as a book designer, page composition specialist, and layout artist I'm sure of it.

    Of course, things are getting dicey in print, as more and more ebooks appear. I suspect and hope the worst of the doom and gloom predictions for print books won't come true, as there's art and romance to print books that ebooks just don't share. And I'm a technology junkie, so it's not that I have some Luddite aversion to ebooks. I just prefer the whole experience of cracking open a printed book and reading it.

    I've a lot more–and just a lot–to say about book design, the actual making of books, as well as working as a book designer getting started as one, and finding paying freelance work. My suggestion is to check out my blog, because I really have covered a lot there over the past few years. Then feel free to contact me with any further questions. The blog's at https://www.tianobookdesign.com/blog

  • October 10, 2012 at 4:42 am #63323
    stephentiano

    Member

    So, again, I must thank AnnMarie and CJ for drawing me into this thread once I belatedly found it. See, yesterday I finished and posted a piece on my blog, “Should I Self-Publish?” After spending time with this thread last night, I remembered I also blogged “What to Look for in a Book Designer” and “Why You Need a Book Designer/ Layout Artist.” (I rather wish I had blogged “Should I Hire a Book Designer?”)

    This morning I woke with the thought of stretching and completing the series from the other side of the street with, “Should I Become a Book Designer?” and “Should I Freelance?”

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