Book designers

A book designer turns a finished manuscript into pages: trim size, margins, running heads, chapter openers, the fall of type on every spread. Authors come here when the writing is done and the file still looks like a document.

Some need book interior design for a novel or memoir. Others want book formatting services for an ebook, or a book layout designer for a heavily illustrated title. The listings below work across all of it.

The tags split this category by country: United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. That split matters more than it looks. A designer who sets a 90,000 word novel for a US trade paperback works to one set of trim sizes and spine widths; a UK designer handles a different standard range, and an Australian or Canadian designer often works across both, which suits authors publishing into more than one market. Brisbane Self Publishing Service and Vivalogue Publishing sit in that second group, while 1106 Design and Print Resources work mainly to US norms.

Within a country, the listings divide by what they actually do. Some take a manuscript and return print-ready interior files: Becky's Graphic Design, Mayfly Design, Raven Book Design, Studio Wyse. Others build the whole package, cover included, as Alkira Publishing and Cave Design do. A third group works with authors who already have a cover and need the inside to match it, which is where Design for Writers and JD Smith Design come in. Choose by the stage your manuscript has reached, not by the length of a portfolio.