Development Costs

Each book is different, so we do not have any set prices or packages. But given enough information about the book we can usually get a good estimate of the amount of time it’s going to take to get it over the finish line. To get that figured out we will send a checklist of things to let us know what all is involved. Our work is charged on an hourly basis at $45.00 per hour. Depending on the specifics of your book, we will provide an estimate prior to doing anything allowing you the time to consider and compare with other designers.

Submitting Your Manuscript

One of the things that can save us time, and you money, is having the manuscript fully edited prior to submitting it to us. We can, and usually do, make minor corrections we see along the way, but we are not developmental or copy editors. If we are reviewing the text and see many things in need of attention that will add time to the process, we will alert you to what we see, giving you a chance to correct things prior to us spending the time doing so. Corrections after layout are common since the manuscript will be presented afterward in a different format than what you have been used to seeing. Some corrections here and there generally do not affect the estimated cost, but pages of corrections that should have been taken care of beforehand could.

Covers

Making a great looking cover can be a time-consuming process if there are not any guidelines as to what you might like to see. However, keep in mind what you might like may not necessarily be something others will gravitate to. So some ideas, artwork or photography can be extremely helpful in getting the cover done in a reasonable amount of time. Check HERE for a few examples of cover we have made.

eBooks

Most books will end up as an eBook as well as in print. When developing the layout, attention is given to developing styles that will readily translate to the eBook formats. This usually allows for a fairly simple conversion from one format to the other. The length of the book will somewhat dictate how long it will take to do the conversion and validate the results.

Commercial Book Printers

Commercial book printers generally print longer runs from a few hundred to many thousands. After 25 years in the print industry we understand how they operate, what they want, and how they want it. We have successfully prepared books for onshore and overseas providers. The text and cover file preparation for a successful production run is key to making sure you end up with what you wanted and avoid excess set up and other fees that may occur.

POD Providers

Preparation and upload to online POD providers usually takes about an hour or so to complete per provider. Optionally you can do that, but our experience over 20 years of doing so means we know exactly how to go about it and can get it done quickly and with few problems.

Development Cost Examples

The following examples are not far departed from many books that we have developed.

• In one case we worked on a 66,000-word novel. By the time everything was done, eBook conversion complete, and files loaded up and configured for Amazon/KDP, it ended up at $495.00. The final book in a 6 X 9 soft cover trade format was right around 200 pages. The layout time was about 7 hours, cover design was about 1.5 hours, eBook conversion was about 1.5 hours, preparation for and upload to KDP ended up at 1 hour.
  
  
• Another case was a 90,500-word non-fiction book with numerous charts, side bars, footnotes, and index. This took collectively 25 hours and ran the author $1,125.00. The layout was not particularly difficult, just time consuming, and ended up at 320 pages in a 6 X 9 soft cover trade format. Fortunately, the author had correctly set up his footnotes in his Word file so other than specific formatting they pretty much worked as intended. Layout time was 12 hours to set the text and accommodate the side bars and other illustrations. The cover design took under 2 hours since he already knew exactly what he wanted, what his market was, and had his photography available. The indexing from a list of words and terms he wanted took almost 6 hours to complete and edit the result. The eBook conversion took 3 hours due to the length of the book and the time needed to reset the sidebars into centered and separated quotes. Preparation and upload to Ingram/Spark for soft cover, hard cover, and eBook took about 2 hours.
  
  
• We do a lot of work for literary and poetry publishers so have a good handle on what that market wants and expects. Most end up around 80-100 pages and most end up $300.00 when complete. That includes text layout, cover from supplied artwork (in most cases), conversion to eBook, and upload to their provider. As the book gets longer additional layout time may extend the cost upward, but rarely is it over $400.00 for most poetry collections.

Estimate Checklist

For us to be able to give you a good estimate of the time it will take to get your manuscript ready and finalized we need to have as much information about it as possible.

Click HERE to get a copy of our checklist, fill it out, download it to your computer or device, and then send it back to us at BravoBookDesign@gmail.com

For more information or to inquire about your book project with Bravo Book Design use our Contact Form, or email us at BravoBookDesign@gmail.com or call 509-953-8680 9am to 4pm Pacific.