Book Production and Making Books Design Appealing to People - Report Example

BOOK PRODUCTION Name: Affiliate Institution: BOOK PRODUCTION Introduction Books are necessary tools for transferring knowledge from the writers to the readers. One who has read many books is regarded more knowledgeable as compared to the one who has not. However, one must understand the procedures of putting down what he or she is endowed with on paper. Book production seems easy but it is a long process that ranges from putting together ideas, to designing the book’s cover and finally coming up with strategies that would let the book be bought like a hot cake in the book market (Sandhaus, Thieme & Boll, 2008). This report gives an analysis of how a book can be written, designing of the cover of the book and its pages, making the design of the book appealing to people, and how a book can act as a better reference as compared to other sources of information. How to write a book Writing a book needs one to strategize on the way to go. You need a great deal of commitment and determination to pull out a book that would be among the bestsellers. An excellent book markets itself as compared to a poorly written one. Anyone can write a book but it depends on how captivating and appealing the book is for it to be bought by various readers of all walks of life (Connolly, 1998). The following are necessary steps to writing a lovely book; Summarization of your ideas. This is the first and the most crucial step that one should take heed to come up with a good book. It is important for you to take the central idea that brings inspiration to you than taking your time to summarize the same into two to three sentences. Doing this would be a good indication that you are in full control of the book’s content and can be able to elaborate it to anybody at any given time. This step also entails having a defined kind of focus for the whole book that would be an excellent ingredient for the success of a book. If there is no discussion whatsoever, readers will be alienated hence making book production a mess as far as sales and ratings are concerned. You should decide how you would like your book to be marketable hence giving you enough income (Baten & Van, 2008). Synopsis writing This is another crucial step that aids one to develop a good story after summarizing the given ideas. This action means expanding the story and ideas in the book to increase the wording and number of characters. An appropriate kind of synopsis must contain accurate information about what will be discussed in the book. This entails the main elements that are related to the entire plot from the word go. An excellent synopsis should not be lengthy because it might bring on a poor impression about the book while it discourages the reader from digging deep to the main contents of the book. This is because the synopsis is like painting a general picture about the whole book although in a shallow manner (Sandhaus, Thieme & Boll, 2008). A recommended length of a synopsis for a novel or a story book would be 3-5 pages. This limit should not be exceeded for better performance of the book in the book market. Synopsis would help one capture at a glance what will be put across in the book. Outlining the story According to Terry Books, outlining is one of the valuable steps that should be taken heed while writing an excellent book. Come up with an outline might take you quite a long period because it is essential. It needs one to think hard on the way forward while brainstorming with colleagues. You are in a position to write your manuscript at a faster speed than without an outline. Working out your outline in advance would save your amble time that would be used in improving the creativity and imagination that the book deserves for its success (Connolly, 1998). Actual writing After building on a sound foundation of your story, it is time to put it in the actual writing that would finally be published. It is a lengthy procedure in the entire process of coming up with a book. It is good to set a target, specifically weekly that would guide you in writing step by step. Using the outline that had been obtained earlier, you come up with wording that would satisfy your scene by scene writing of the story (Baten & Van, 2008). If you are working, you can set part of your time to accommodate your book writing. You can also decide to write a specific number of pages per day to save time. It is also important to avoid concentrating on correcting messes but writing fast to achieve the set target. A time can be adjusted that would be solely for editing the text. If you concentrate at killing two birds with one stone, you might not be successful in your book production process (Meale, 1989). Revising your writing Pankhurst (1962) advices that after finishing writing your manuscript, you can now go back to it with an aim of revising and editing it. Revision of books makes them the best compared to the ones that have not been revised. When revising, you are in a position to see some parts that do not sound well, and you can paraphrase them to fit your specifications. A good book does not have grammatical issues. It would be more appealing to the reader when it has got no flaws. The revision would also entail reviewing the cover design to decide whether it would be attractive to the users or not (Connolly, 1998). Decision of design of book is cover and pages For a book to captivate the reader, the cover and pages design should be at the forefront in attracting the reader’s attention. Many books are up in the market fighting for the same attention that your paper is fighting for. Competitiveness should be dealt with in a manner that would bring success. Capitalizing on sales starts from a good cover design and attractive pages. For a long period, cover designs were handled by the publisher himself. With time, the writers have taken it their responsibility to develop their books depending on their specifications. Design includes the colors that are used in the book, and images to be added. Each choice makes a great impact on determining whether the book will be marketable or not. The following are important points that one needs to take into considerations for a good design of a book’s cover and pages (Sandhaus, Thieme & Boll, 2008). Specificity of genre It is advisable to take some moments reading the books that are best-selling in your particular type. This can be done in a bookstore that stocks the best books in the particular area. A good understanding of your target market is a real step towards the success of you book production. Marketing books vary from one genre to another. If you are writing a romance novel, it is important to choose attractive photos of handsome men and beautiful women (Griffiths & Pearsall, 1989). In this case, the more the exposure of the skin of the women the most attractive as compared to the ones that apply different images. This applies majorly to cover design. On the other hand, pages need to be developed about the theme of the book. This should be in line with the demand that exists in the market. For instance, love story books would feature pink pages with decorations that portray romance or love. This would enhance the attractiveness of the book to the readers. You would be drawn into reading such kind of a book more than a poorly designed one (Meale, 1989). Uphold professionalism This kind of decision would give you an upper hand in the book market. You should put in mind that you are in a tough competition with traditional publishers who are doing their very best in marketing their products. Design placement of both the pages and covers matter a lot just as the font choice do. It is important to apply reasonable size of fonts in pages while using larger and attractive sizes on the cover designs. The name of the book should be encrypted in a more interesting fonts with eye-catching font colors depending on the theme of the book. You can also consult some self-publishing services that can direct you such as Lightning Source, CreateSpace, and finally Lulu. You will be offered various design guidance that you would not get from other sources. Do a thorough research to understand which services are availed via your famous publisher. People would take your book seriously when they find out that you practiced a high level of professionalism (Sandhaus, Thieme & Boll, 2008). Make your designs attractive The cover of your book and pages are meant to draw the attention of the reader. The cover mostly has quite a limited time of attracting the reader hence you need to work extra hard to ensure it is the best as compared to others in the same field. Simplicity is core to ensuring it pops well. In the same case, color usage should be thought out well to avoid too much and way low colorations. You must be sure of what your readers would like to see relating to the book’s theme. Some books’ covers allude symbolism through the photos and paintings that are put in it. Books that are in a particular series ensure that they use same kinds of themes to drive the same point home. When the reader decides to write such books, he or she can relate to the whole lot of series hence getting motivated to read all through (Bellanca, 1992). Well-thought considerations When deciding on which photograph to place on the cover, you should be cautious. Some internet photographs may not be appealing to the reader’s eye hence will fail your book terribly. You might also require getting consent for using a particular picture. Failure to follow certain procedures and considerations would put you at risk of copyright infringement. Pages, alternatively, do not require photographs to be appealing. You can just put some paintings on their margins and some artwork. However, each page should be appealing to the eye to win the attention of readers (Barker, 1992). Making book’s design appealing to people An imperative step it to get your book an upper hand in the marketplace. This can be achieved by striking a good deal of the design. A good kind of book design requires that work be very productive. A poorly designed book would not draw reader’s attention to it will other people decide to go for more appealing books (Sandhaus, Thieme & Boll, 2008). The chapter start should be well planned in three major areas. These include the decorated chapter number with sans serif font, the small font for the title of the chapter, and a well-designed line that separates the two parts. Secondly, the lead paragraph should not be indented in a bid to make it more appealing and unique. Adding a dropped capital letter to the paragraph which directly matches the font will enhance its attractiveness to the eye of the reader (Bellanca, 1992). The line spacing should be put into consideration to make the design more appealing to the reader. Good books are single-spaced. Various designers of many books ensure that they take enough control over the leading hence ensuring that they measure points in a satisfactory manner. Wider leading has the upper hand because it enhances ease of readability of the book. There is nothing more appealing than enjoying to read a book because of how well it was designed. You do not get stressed with the sight of the book but instead want to get more and more of the same. In the same case, you can make the words per page fewer while increasing the number of pages. A reader will be attracted to such kind of pages because they do not seem tedious as compared to the ones that have many words (Beach, 2004). You can ensure that the line length is constant; for instance around 8 to 9 words per line. The disadvantage of long lines is that the reader can quickly be lost it, and he can also get discouraged by seeing such long lines. Eyes are usually lazy; they require something to would encourage them to keep going because the only way to obtain knowledge from a book is by reading it entirely (Barker, 1992). Apply serif sans fonts because they are readable per each page. You should also factor in the age bracket of your target readers. For instance, older readers may require larger fonts as compared to a younger audience. However, a font size of either 11 or 12 will be a good deal for readability hence makes the book appealing to the readers. Use of smaller indents would also make the book more appealing. The sound design of a book is the one that keeps paragraphs separated in a visual manner without any interruption of the flow of each page. If there are many dialogs in your book, there is a need to apply smaller indents as it would be more appealing to the reader’s eyes (Beach, 2004). Use of minimum margins is also important for a book. It should measure around six inches by nine inches while it has well put outside margins of half inches. On the other hand, the inside margins would be appropriately placed at a three-quarter of an inch. When the book is bound, it would appear smaller while the inside margin would stand at a quarter of an inch. Headers are also essential elements of a book design. An appropriate book design advocates for a combination of both page numbers and title on top of the book. Headers give a good impression of book’s title and the name of the author. You can also choose to encrypt the name belonging to each section or chapter on the header (Rouse & Rouse, 2000). A book as better reference material compared to other sources of information A book is quite a valuable reference material. Many scholars cite books as they do their research projects and writings. It is easier to draw information from a book like compared to interviewing a person or relying on your memories. Memories can lie because some things might happen which would distort that information. Books’ content can never be changed even though new editions and versions might be produced at any given time (Smith, 2012). Books have a varied range of information that one would require in one’s day to day work especially class work. However, being a concrete or tangible source, it will be easier for tutors and professors to find out if the information extracted from them is really right or just a make-over story that is designed at earning fast marks (Weedon, 2003). For instance, if the writer cites page 25 of an individual book, the tutor will quickly pinpoint it while he tries to find out the exactness of the information. In this case, he can be in a position to award marks to the writer or refer the work to him or her for further elaboration and additional information. Nowadays, the existence of eBooks has made the job easier since one can quickly access certain books that are more straightforward to extract required information from them (Darnton, 2002). Reading of books is also recommended by many institutions while libraries filled with reference books are set up. Many people enjoy reading books as compared to other infamous sources of information. Also, books are leading sources of information from time immemorial hence almost acting as a standard unit of reference. They are also accessible to many people from all walks of lives. You can buy a book recommended by your tutor in your nearest bookstore (Rouse & Rouse, 2000). Smith (2012) says, another importance of books is the standard language that is used in writing them. Proper personnel has approved them hence its credibility in the market is well-taken care off. It is very rare to get a book that has numerous errors and omissions because the writer took enough time to edit and revise it. Compared to other sources such as audio, it is difficult for one to misquote a book because it is what is seen directly from the word go. Internet sources such as Wikipedia might have varied content that would swindle the reader (Norcliffe & Rendace, 2003). However, not everything can be found from such sources of information. A book may be well elaborate with deeper content while internet sources stress on the main points that might not help the reader well. Books can give you relevant content as far as the set questions are concerned. When you cite such kind of books, chances are higher that you would score higher points as compared to using internet sources (Darnton, 2002). Conclusion Book production is necessary because human beings depend on books for research and additional information. It is important to come up with a criterion of writing a book starting from summarizing the ideas, synopsis writing and coming up with an elaborate outline. The actual writing would follow after putting together your ideas in a real order that can be easily followed by the reader. However, you also need to revise your work to ensure there is no mistake at all mainly grammatical and semantic ones. Readers can be easily turned off by the poorly written book. Also, you should be in the forefront in deciding which kind of design of book’s pages and covers is suitable for your audience. This should be impressive hence drawing the attention of the people. The design of the pages should enhance eligibility for any particular instance. The Older audience might need pages written with larger fonts because of their eyesight. Finally, books are valuable reference materials as compared to other sources of information because of their convenient content and depth of information. Scholars and other writers are recommended to cite material from books. Nowadays, books have gone digital with incorporation of eBooks in many fields of study. References Baten, J., & Van Zanden, J. L. (2008). Book production and the onset of modern economic growth. Journal of Economic Growth, 13(3), 217-235. Bellanca, J. V. (1992). U.S. Patent No. 5,108,244. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Barker, P. (1992). Design guidelines for electronic book production. InMultimedia interface design in education (pp. 83-96). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Beach, A. I. (2004). Women as Scribes: Book Production and Monastic Reform in Twelfth- Century Bavaria (Vol. 10). Cambridge University Press. Connolly, M. (1998). John Shirley: book production and the noble household in fifteenth-century England. Ashgate Publishing. Darnton, R. (2002). Book Production in British India, 1850-1900. Book History,5(1), 239-262. Smith, H. (2012). 'Grossly Material Things': Women and Book Production in Early Modern England. Oxford University Press. Griffiths, J., & Pearsall, D. (1989). Book production and publishing in Britain 1375-1475. Cambridge University Press. Meale, C. (1989). Patrons, buyers and owners: book production and social status. na. Norcliffe, G., & Rendace, O. (2003). New geographies of comic book production in North America: the new artisan, distancing, and the periodic social economy. Economic Geography, 79(3), 241-263. Pankhurst, R. (1962). The foundations of education, printing, newspapers, book production, libraries and literacy in Ethiopia. Ethiopia Observer, 6(3), 241-290. Rouse, R. H., & Rouse, M. A. (2000). Manuscripts and their makers: commercial book producers in medieval Paris, 1200-1500 (Vol. 1). Harvey Miller. Sandhaus, P., Thieme, S., & Boll, S. (2008). Processes of photo book production. Multimedia Systems, 14(6), 351-357. Weedon, A. (2003). Victorian Publishing: The Economics of Book Production for a Mass Market, 1836-1916 (p. 161). Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Read More