Your first line of defense and offense as published author is to have a professional and downright sexy book.
The better your book looks, the more attention it will attract. The more attention you can attract, the higher the potential for you to make customers, subscribers, and sales. That’s just simple marketing science.
And it doesn’t stop there. Once someone buys your book (and it delivers massive value), you become an authority to them. This creates customers for life as the process repeats.
But…long before this happens, your book first has to be noticed.
Whether it’s on a shelf in a real bookstore or the virtual shelves of Amazon, your book has to grab the reader’s attention and stop them in their tracks.
That’s the whole purpose of our ebook design process. To get you eyeballs…and lots of ’em.
“Everyone loves the ebook, and it’s already helped me to increase my signup rates tremendously. I mean, through the roof numbers, and I’ve gotten nothing but praise on how awesome and professional it looks. Thanks very much for your work.
“I will be back. Expect me.”
– Rohan Gilkes, Live Life Louder in D.C.
What is the true value of a book?
It is often a concern that spending money to design a book automatically makes it a money-losing proposition. Especially if you’re just offering a free ebook. What’s the purpose of spending money on that? Well, I’ll tell you.
I myself launched a $250,000 business on the heels of a free PDF ebook that weighed in at only 19 pages. But its message was a good one, and the design helped drive the message home. That’s a powerful combo, and soon it was being passed from person to person. And those people brought in commissions to the tune of more than $250,000.
This is not unusual for an awesome book. But it’s pretty tough to have a big success with what is essentially a Word document. Trust me, your customers do not want that.
“Charlie has designed two eBooks for me that I give away for free to people interested in Outsourcing and Virtual Lifestyle Design. The professionalism, quality of work, creativeness, as well as the speed in which the work has been completed in has, quite frankly, blown me away. In my book, he’s the LEADER in this extremely important niche market for the entrepreneur with an online interest in spreading ideas and making money!”
– Chris C. Ducker, VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com
Why do you need design?
Design is more important than you might think. Let’s talk about the bad news first.
If your book looks like a plain old Word template, you can expect:
- Less attention
- Fewer sales
- Fewer customers
- More returns
- Less engagement from those who do buy
It is a sad (but common sense) statistical fact that lousy-looking products don’t do well in the marketplace. Your customers won’t notice them. When they do notice, they’ll feel less compelled to buy. And if by some stroke of luck they make the purchase, they quite often feel cheated and want their money back.
The good news is that awesome design, all by itself, solves these problems. With nothing but a better design, you can expect:
- More attention
- More sales
- More customers
- Fewer returns
- More engagement from those who do buy
Obviously every book ever published isn’t going to be a home run. But you can start to hugely stack the odds in your favor by giving your audience the sexiest books around.
“Amazing job on my book cover design. Great work. Professional and perfectionist. I’m recommending him to everyone I know.”
– Derek Sivers, founder, Wood Egg, sivers.org
What I can help you with
Book covers
My covers are designed from scratch, to match your book, your brand, and your message.
No templates & no shortcuts.
And if your book is ultimately going to be offered on Amazon or other online stores, I’ll ensure the cover looks amazing even at Amazon’s itty-bitty thumbnail size.
Book interiors
Formatting text isn’t just about choosing fancy fonts and calling it a day. It’s about everything that affects your message getting across the way it should.
There’s a lot that goes into that, so what I do is actually more like engineering. Every chapter, section, sub-section, image, and paragraph needs to be designed so the reader knows exactly where they are, what’s happening, and which ideas you’re trying to deliver. We use every trick in the book to maximize readability, while also generating enough visual interest to keep even the pickiest readers satisfied.
We want your readers to exclaim, “I was so into your book I totally lost track of time.”
Well, that’s what this formatting stage is all about.
Kindle and Epub Books
A lot of design firms use automatic conversion software to prepare Kindle and Epub books. The expectation is that you can feed this software a Word document, push the “Convert” button, and wait for it to spit out amazing looking books.
The sad reality is, the results are usually not very good. So we go about it a bit differently.
We hand code all Kindle and Epub books. That’s right. That’s the only way to ensure your book comes out perfectly and not as a jumbled mess.
Believe me…auto-conversion software will result in your chapters being jammed together, sentences chopped, random words bolded or italicized, and even whole sections left out.
“You’re a f***ing genius! Being serious, Charlie, I have to say you’re a brilliant guy to work with and if you need any testimonial, video or written or anything else I would be extremely happy to do it, you’ve been an integral part of the step up for my small business and I won’t forget that and tell everyone about it.
“You never cease to amaze me, Charlie. Class in a glass!”
– Steven Aitchison, ChangeYourThoughts.com
The Design Process
The process usually works like this:
For book covers:
- We’ll need a copy of your amazing manuscript
- We’ll send you a very brief interview so we can learn some more about your ultimate vision
- While you’re working on that, we’ll be reading your book to get a good feel for the tone and subject of the book
- Then we start designing the cover. We’ll send samples to you and you’ll send feedback to us. Rinse and repeat until you’re 100% happy with the cover
- (Optional) If your book is going to print, we’ll repeat the above process with the back cover as well. And we will also ensure the ISBN and bar code are placed properly for the publisher.
If interior formatting is also needed:
- First, you send us your manuscript. Preferably in .doc, .pages or PDF format.
- We’ll probably do a sample chapter or two first. That way you can give us a thumbs-up on the fonts, see how images and lists are treated, etc.
- We’ll use fonts, colors, and even textural and graphical cues from the cover and use them on the interior as well. This pulls the whole book together into one cohesive piece of awesomeness with a powerful message.
- Once you’re happy with the samples, we’ll crank out the rest of the book and export it in whatever format is needed.
- (Optional) If your book is going to print somewhere, we’ll ensure everything is perfect and ready for print. Margins, page numbers, headers and footers, table of contents…the works!
For Kindle/Epub books:
Basically the process for Kindle/Epubs is the same as interior formatting just above, with one important note: the design is usually a bit more limited.
Kindle and Epub books have certain default fonts we’ll be tied to. Don’t worry…they’re not bad fonts. Just not quite as fancy as what we can do with a PDF or print book.
What formats will you get?
Basically, whatever you need…you’ll get. If you have any special requests, just let us know.
Solo book covers usually are delivered as a PNG, JPG, or PDF.
Print books (for Lulu, CreateSpace, etc.) are delivered print-ready and usually in PDF format.
Kindle and Epub books are always supplied in .mobi and .epub formats respectively.
Extra goodies: You will also get a 3D book cover in JPG or PNG format. These are perfect to use on your site and elsewhere for advertising purposes. Usually we’ll send you a version like the one to the right, but we have many different 3D options. We can do hardcovers, paperbacks…even CDs and DVDs. Just let us know what you need!
And we do these 3D versions at no charge, as a bonus to you and to help you get on your way with marketing.
“Charlie is so talented and great to work with. He brings your projects to life in such an amazingly creative and professional way that when you see the end product you wonder to yourself, ‘Wow, is that really my book?’
“I really can’t say enough good things about Charfish Design and their work. If you are looking for a company to design your eBook or do any other type of creative design project, you definitely want to use Charfish Design. You will get an amazing end product at an extremely reasonable price.”
– Sibyl Chavis, Possibility of Today
We know writing is a lot of work, and you should be proud to call yourself an author.