What should I charge for a book re-design?

Q

Quackers

New Member
I am working on a book redesign for a publishing company. They are getting photographs from shutterstock and I am working on the illustrations and overall design of the book ready for print.

I am not so sure what I should be charging for this? It's re-design so there is already a book to look at but the design is incredibly outdated and I feel I will be changing a lot of it.

there are 26 pages Inc front and back cover with prehaps 10 small illustrations needed.

I am really greatful to anyone who can give me some advice, I understand it is difficult to put a price on something you can't see but any advice on how I should go about creating a price would be great.

Thanks so much.
 
Quackers said:
I know, when I said 26 I meant 26 pages with physical design work needed. The others are blank.
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Ha, nice one.

If that's the case, the I'd be about 15 minutes to 1 hour per 26 pages to be designed, depending on complexity involved in illustrations and layout.

You could average it to 30 minutes, or 45 minutes per page.

Then you know it will take approx 13- 16 ish hours - multiply that by your hourly rate.
 
hankscorpio said:
Because it's always in 4. It's 2 page for a leaflet. Then 4 page for a "brochure" then it keeps going up in 4's.

You could do 26 pages with a fold out, I suppose.
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Why can't I have a 26-page short book for example or a 26-page prospectus?
 
@GCarlD said:
Why can't I have a 26-page short book for example or a 26-page prospectus?
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The interior page count of saddle-stitched books has to be divisible by 4 – 1 sheet = 4 pages (2 pages per side when it's folded). If you have a page count that's not divisible by 4 then you'll end up with blank pages. Go and get some sheets of A4, fold them into a booklet and count the individual pages. It will always be a multiple of 4 because the fold gives you 4 pages to a sheet (2 leaves to a sheet).

If you're using perfect binding or a spine-glue technique that uses single leaves rather than full sheets (for example a novel) then you don't have to worry about it. It's really only if you're printing onto sheets which will be folded.
 
Yes, you can wiro bind any document page number.

But saddle stitch and perfect bound typically requires pages to be in multiples of 4.
 
Paul Murray said:
If you're using perfect binding or a spine-glue technique that uses single leaves rather than full sheets (for example a novel) then you don't have to worry about it. It's really only if you're printing onto sheets which will be folded.
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That's exactly what I was going to suggest.

But yeah sure I know the whole multiple of 4; one sheet = 4 pages, but I'm always of the mindset that if something needs to be a certain way, there's always a way of achieving the desired outcome. I was going to ask why can't I use perfect binding in that case but you hit the nail on the head.
 
Technically you could insert a 2pp leaf into say a 360 page book, making 362 pages - but it's loose leaf glued, and likely to come loose after a while.

Or you can have a document fold out in the middle of a book - perhaps a map or something of the sort.

But it's all specialist stuff.

Generally - it's best to work in 4's - and if you have 2 blank pages, best to put them to the back, and add a "Notes" or a nice image or solid colour etc.
 
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