The Book Blueprint: Expert Advice for Creating Industry-Standard Print Books

Independent authors don’t just toss their works online anymore. They are increasingly learning to act as publishers when they decide how to design and print their books. And like publishers, they need to make sure their products are the best they can be.

The Book Blueprint examines each part of the book, explaining its logic and structure, which in turn influences each part of the book’s design. It brings together all the writing on this subject by blogger and book designer Joel Friedlander.

Authors who want to move past selling a couple dozen books and see that their books achieve the widest possible distribution will have to start thinking like a manufacturer. The Blueprint is designed to help authors understand how print books are put together so they can satisfy the expectations of their readers while achieving higher profits from their business.

Joel Friedlander is intimately familiar with the inner workings of books, as a designer, publisher, and prolific author. With more than 20,000 books published from his designs, Friedlander has grappled for more than three decades with all the topics involved in print book publishing. 

In The Book Blueprint readers will learn what they need to know to craft an industry-standard book, covering such subjects as:

• How to pick fonts for your book interiors and covers, with lots of free options.
• Step-by-step instructions for dealing with short-run offset book printers.
• Keys to understanding the "language of printing."
• Making the decision between print-on-demand and offset production.
• How to design details like running heads, text breaks, and indexes for your book.
• Includes almost 100 illustrations.

Whether you are publishing your own books through print on demand vendors or offset printers, The Book Blueprint will give you the guidance of an expert to make sure your book is published properly.

Joel Friedlander is an award-winning book designer, blogger, and writer. He speaks regularly at industry events and is the author of A Self-Publisher's Companion and coauthor of The Self-Publisher's Ultimate Resource Guide. The blogger behind TheBookDesigner.com, Joel is a columnist for Publishers Weekly, and was named by Writer's Digest as one of the 10 people to follow in book publishing. Joel is also the co-founder of BookDesignTemplates.com, where he provides predesigned interior book templates for Word and InDesign.