Writing, Self-Publishing, Book Marketing

I freakin’ love designing title pages and chapter starts.  It’s a small thing, but brings me a little bit of joy, everyday.

The best is when an author, who’s purchased Custom Typesetting, has no real preference for the design.  They don’t care about the font style, the font size, where I place the text, or my adding a glyph to dress up the page.  They tell me that I’m the professional and I know what’ll work best for their book.

So, I watermark an innocuous glyph behind the chapter title, dropping the chapter start about a third of the way down on the page.  Or I right-align the chapter title, choose a really big font, and make it 50% black.  Or find a really graphic, crazy-looking font, letting the letters in the title dress up the page.

And the book looks good.  And, mostly, the author was right to trust in me.  I’ve surprised them with what we’re capable of doing…  I’ve helped them realize their vision when they didn’t even know they had one…  I’ve made real, in black (or gray) characters on a white page, what they saw in their head but didn’t know how to tell me.  And I feel great!

But sometimes, not very often, I mess up.  I overestimate their flexibility, doing something way too modern for their tastes, and making them think I don’t know what I’m doing.  I create a design that’s the exact opposite of their vision, though they didn’t specifically tell me what their vision entails, or I wasn’t hearing right when they tried to communicate it.  Or I just go overboard, using an element from an image they’ve supplied as a repeating motif in the book — and choosing their least favorite part of the image.

Then I feel awful.  I’ve taken a risk with the design, and the author thinks I’ve intentionally ruined their book.  But I haven’t — I just got it wrong.  And it’s sad when my authors think I don’t know what I’m doing, or that I’m deliberately trying to mess with their work.

I guess the moral of the story, if there is one, is that sometimes your designer makes mistakes.  And it’s not because we don’t care, ’cause we really do — we just misjudged what was right for your book.  So, if you give us a little leeway when designing the book, and you get something back that you totally hate, chances are your book designer is going to be more than happy to work with you to perfect the design.  ‘Cause we love what we do.