Becky Bayne Talks Brand Book Design
Jessica Andersen
May 5, 2025
Book designer Becky Bayne and I connected a couple of weeks ago for a coffee chat, and the conversation that we had really blew my mind. Pretty much every minute of it, I kept saying to myself, We need to somehow record what we're saying to each other so that our audiences can benefit from the gems that we’re dropping. As veterans in the self-publishing industry, we have so much knowledge that we want you to know before you embark on the journey of publishing your book.
Becky Bayne is a graphic designer, a published illustrator, an award-winning book designer, and now an author—she has a book coming out on May 6th. Her creative design career began in the mid 1980s using hand lettering and layout skills to prepare grocery ads for weekly newspapers. In the early 1990s, she decided to invest in a desktop computer and began to build a business that adjusted to technological changes along the way. Today, Becky's Graphic Design focuses on self-publishing, specializing in cover design and interior formatting services for authors.
Jessica Andersen
Becky, I'm so grateful that you decided to sit down with me again and try to recreate the conversation we had a few weeks ago. I want to start super basic with cover design and interior formatting: what do those two terms mean for our authors?
Becky Bayne
Well, everybody judges a book by its cover, and that's why it's so important. Cover design has to be looked at as a thumbnail sketch, that tiny little piece you see on Amazon. It's got to be able to be understood. It's got to be able to grab the attention of your audience. You cannot have so much stuff on the cover that they can't distinguish what this book is about. If I do a business book, and I make it look more like a historical romance, I'm not going to grab my audience. That's why cover design is so important.
And I don't know if people understand the significance of their title and subtitle as much as they should. Everything has to scream THIS IS WHAT MY BOOK IS ABOUT so that when you put it up on Amazon, it gets seen. Those pieces are absolutely the most important. I mean, your book might be amazing, but if people can't find it because they're not interested in what has been done for the cover, you're not going to sell your book, and that's just disappointing.
The interior formatting needs to encourage you to read through, just as the cover had brought you in to buy that book to begin with. If you want to have a nonfiction business book that has lots of sections, you've got to be able to grab their attention and keep it with a level of organization, that they can see that this all comes together, that they can see it's branded with your business as well. It should have the same colors, the same logos. The interior formatting is a critical step, but it comes after the cover design.
Jessica
Just to make it even more basic: the cover design is what you see on the outside of the book, and the interior formatting is everything you see on the inside of the book, what each page looks like.
Becky
And one important point about the cover design: when you're hiring a cover designer, make sure they're not going to do just the front cover. They need to be able to do the spine and the back cover as well, and it all has to be in a spread that is separate from your interiors. These are two completely different files. If you're just doing a Kindle book or an ebook, then you only need the front cover. But every other print format needs to have the whole thing put together as a spread: back, spine, front. And then you need the interior formatting file totally separate.
Jessica
Right, and just because you're self-publishing doesn't mean you're doing everything by yourself. Even if you just plan on releasing an ebook, you’re not going into Canva and trying to play around in there and design it by yourself because there are design principles you should follow. Like you said, everyone says don't judge a book by its cover, but everyone totally does that.
You mentioned the Amazon storefront. This is actually part of the work I do upfront with my clients in the very beginning stages. Now, I'm not a designer, but what I do when a client comes to me with a new book—or a new concept of a book—is I go and type in some keywords that are relative to that topic into Amazon, and I start looking already at all the books that come up. The point of doing that is to say to the author, “Look at the books in this category and look at the covers. How do you see your book either blend in, or hopefully stand out, when you go to the design stage?”
And the back cover is just as important. You might not see that artwork on the Amazon listing. But when someone’s in a physical store, picking up a book, the first thing they look at is the front cover. They flip it over because the front cover has caught their eye, and they want to know “What's this about?” So your editor can help you write the copy, but your designer is making it look good because people will read that back cover. The back cover is the mini sales pitch for your book.
Becky
And the back cover copy is usually very similar to what you put in the description of your Amazon listing. I often ask my clients when they first give me the title of their book, “Please go search for it online, and not just on Amazon—do it on Google.” And remember, you can’t trademark your title. Ask yourself if you want your book to have the same title as 25 other books. It's important to understand what's already out there. If you’re so in love with your title that you won’t consider changing it, and it already has a lot of competition, then just make sure the subtitle is able to tell potential readers on exactly what differentiates your book from the others.
Jessica
Do book designers like yourself always offer cover design and interior layout? Should clients come to you asking that question, or is it assumed…?
Becky
It's a good question to ask! There are cover designers that do just that and nothing else. Sometimes we bring them on if we need an extra hand.
The interior formatting is called lots of different things: book design, book format, layout design…. The important thing is that a book designer understands the structure of how to build a book: making sure they have the margins in the right place, knowing about gutters and how much room you need (if you have a 250-page book, you need more gutter than if you only had a 120-page book), knowing how to do a running header and footer, how to make the first page of the book open on the right, making sure that first section of the book is in lowercase Roman numerals and that the rest of the page numbering flows from there, where the Table of Contents goes, where the Index goes.
Some of these things can be played around with—and yes, it's your book—but do you want to stand out as someone that's not quite got it all together? Unless you're doing that on purpose… It's important to make sure you understand the basics of how a book should be done.
We use InDesign because it's the best program out there for it. There’s a lot of moving pieces to designing a book, and if you add illustrations or images into that formatting, that's a whole ’nother beast, especially if you're going to make it into an ebook.
Jessica
The program you use for designing your book makes a big difference. Canva is fine if you're creating a promotional image for your business, i.e., on social media, but often not fine if you're using it for something commercial that you're selling.
Becky
Yes. And for the cover itself, I do the artwork in other places, like Photoshop Illustrator, and bring it all into InDesign. But as for the interior formatting, there really isn't a substitute for InDesign.
Jessica
Even Microsoft Word can only take you so far when it comes to how to lay out your book, and you're better off working with a professional on that rather than trying to figure it out on your own. In fact, I think a lot of people confuse self-publishing with “I can do it all myself.”
Becky
Yes, there’s DIY publishing and then there’s self-publishing. And DIY is fine if you've got lots of time and you have the patience to do deep research. But there are good reasons to bring in service providers like ourselves. A lot of it is just having someone else there to work through the whole process with you and use their skills in a way that you aren't able to do or just don't have the time to do.
Jessica
Speaking of which, let’s talk about your Brand Book coming out on May 6th. You’re a pro in the book design industry—tell us about what pitfalls you encountered, and what made you take a step back and really think, Wow, this is a lot harder than I thought, and now I have so much more empathy for authors going through this.
Becky
The reason I wrote this book is because I have a lot of picture book authors come to me wanting to publish their book, and they have lots of wonderful ideas, along with big expectations. “It's only 32 pages, it's not going to take a lot of time, I've already got my story written, I just need to find an illustrator, and we can get this done quick.” When I hear that, I go, “Hold on, what exactly is your plan?”
You know, self-publishing with Amazon KDP or IngramSpark has its limitations, especially for picture books. Their specialty is more nonfiction and fiction books that are regular-size books like 8.5x8.5. They do other sizes, but they're very limited. But picture books are all different dimensions. The only one KDP offers in hardcover is 8.5x11, so it's important for you to understand what the specifications are to begin with. And that's part of my Brand Book: the first chapter is, “Before you even start, here's what you need to know.”
And the other part of it is about working with illustrators. It’s challenging to find an illustrator who’s going to be able to give you what you need if they've never published a book before. The best way to explain that is: if you have someone who can draw an image of a person or a character in the book, can they draw that character in five different emotions? From five different angles? Can they look happy? Can that same character look sad? Surprised? Can they have that person or character standing up straight? Can they have them sitting down? Those are challenging for anyone who's not illustrated on a large scale. They might be very good at art, but they might not have done that systematic character-building imagery needed for a childrens book.
We've run in to that problem many times—we’ll get started on a project, and the illustrator is either taking too long or they give up because they don't have experience. So we spend a lot of time talking through all those things upfront: this is what you need to look for in an illustrator, this is what you need to understand about the work of an illustrator; this is how you prepare the artwork. There are so many tools out there these days, digital as well as for drawings done by hand. People aren't aware of the specifications I need as the designer to put it into the book and so that it goes through the print process correctly.
My book tells you all the things you didn't even know you didn't know and which you need to understand before you start your book. Then you're going to have a much better experience in publishing. My book is only 92 pages, but it's got a ton of information in there for DIY publishers, like how to format your book and what you need to know to start using InDesign. We’ve got videos as well for you to find the exact thing we're talking about. They are available on our website to go along with the book as an added value. We also have templates available for purchase so you can get started on the cover or the interior. With our templates, you can just use our file and put your content into it. All those things are in addition to the printed book which is full of great information.
Jessica
It is! I read it last night, so I can vouch for it. I learned a ton about designing books.
This conversation feels very meta because as you know, I teach Brand Books. Now, I didn’t have any hand in your book coming out, but it's really similar to what my clients come to me for. They sometimes want to write a Brand Book to explain to potential clients what they need to know before they start working together. Even for me, as a book coach and editor, there are always things I want my clients to know before they start working with me. Right now, all that information is in my signature course, the Profitable Brand Book Program. But a Brand Book is a wonderful tool and at such an accessible price point to be able to hand to your clients and say, “This is going to set you up for success before we start working together.” I would love for everyone to think about their Brand Books from that angle.
Becky
To me, it was going to save me time. As I said, I spend a ton of time educating upfront. If I could say to potential clients, “Before you talk to us, please get a copy of my book, and then we'll be all set,” to actually begin the conversation already prepared.
Jessica
Instead of answering the same 50 questions with each prospect.
Becky
Yes! It's frustrating because the same things come up over and over again. I wondered what a better way was to explain that, to give them that detail. You know, everybody comes from a different angle with it too. Everyone has their own misconceptions about book design and self-publishing that I could clarify for them in my book. I'm hoping it's going to be a very valuable tool for many people.
Jessica
I'm sure! I would love for you to recount some of your stories about AI in your work because we talked about the ever-changing landscape that is AI a couple of weeks ago. What cautionary tales would you like to share?
Becky
I have a case study about this in my book. Last fall, we had a client who came to us with a very short timeline to get their book done. I was like, this can’t be done. I asked her how the illustrations were coming along, and she said they were almost done. So that was a relief until I asked her what size they were. She told me, and it was this landscape size. I said, “We can't use that on KDP. You're not going to be able to sell that directly from KDP. We can maybe get it on IngramSpark, but you're going to have to adjust it because your size isn't what they offer either.”
She said, “No problem, I'll just have my illustrator adjust the perspective.” That was a red flag. I said, “Wait a minute, how many illustrations do you have?” She said 23. I said, “How long has the illustrator been working on them?” She said maybe 3 weeks. I was like, “Okay, how much did you pay for these illustrations?!” She said under $500. I stopped her right there. I said, “How is your illustrator doing these images?” and she said, “Umm, I don't know. I just assumed she was drawing them with, you know, digital assets.” There’s no way an illustrator could do 23 drawings—unless she's superwoman—to get them done in that time frame, and then to change them if we need to. I said, “Is she using AI?” and the client had no idea.
Well that's what it turned out to be! We asked her to send us some of these illustrations so we could take a closer look. She did so, and we were quite surprised. We quickly saw Nemo, a dolphin with 7 fins, and a bird flying underwater. And the resolution was not what it needed to be. We had a quick discussion with the author, and she went to her designer. The biggest part of this—not to mention all the copyright issues—was that she wanted to make a specific character into a stuffed animal to trademark and sell. But there’s no way that would be allowed with AI.
She still needed to meet this deadline, so to make it all come together, we had the illustrator draw this character. She did a great job. It was sad because she had the capabilities, but she wasn't using them the way she should have been. We got that part of it for the client, but for the rest, we had to stick with the AI. We made the illustrator fix all the issues, like the dolphin. But it was still AI, which meant it had been pulling artwork from other people, and the client is not able to copyright that.
Jessica
I think that's important. Do people realize where AI images are generated from? They’re an amalgamation of other images that are available on the Internet for AI to pull from. It’s plagiarism!
Becky
They’re generated from images of printed or digital work that other people have done and paid for and been paid for. They’re stealing when it comes down it. Even if it's a conglomeration of a ton of different things, it's still not original artwork, and that's important if you're going to copyright a book: it has to be original artwork. Now, the client was able to copyright the story itself because that was original, but the artwork and the published book could not be copyrighted. I looked at the copyright laws here in the United States to make sure that this was accurate, and a ton of things are still up in the air about AI-generated works.
My client was very upset that this had been going on. The lesson learned is: when you hire an illustrator, ask how they will be producing the artwork for your book. Again, there are so many things we need to understand when working with illustrators, but that especially. I love AI for correcting my grammar, but there's a point where you have to say no.
Jessica
The other lesson I hear in this story is “you get what you pay for.” I shared with you my experience getting the cover designed for my first Brand Book. I made the same mistake as your client. Now, it wasn't anything to do with AI, but I didn't ask enough questions, and the person I went through didn't communicate what they should have. They wound up subcontracting out to an individual on Fiverr which would have been fine if she had been upfront and clear with me about that, but the impression I got was that her profit margin was probably quite high because she was charging me for an amount and probably not paying the other person as much.
Buyer beware! Please know that you get what you pay for, and even when you are self-publishing, the initial upfront costs of producing your book are going to be high. That's on you to make the investment when you are undertaking this. We talked about my services as a book coach and editor; they’re 4 figures at least. Becky, yours are as well. If you know that upfront, you have less sticker shock when you talk to the professionals in the self-publishing industry who are going to help you get your book out.
Becky
And we're here to help prevent some of these things that we've been dealing with! We've gone through enough books, we've gone through enough experiences. We’re aware of the red flags. We can keep you from getting into the same situations.
That's one of the things about my book—I'm sharing what I've learned since I started calligraphy. I started my career going into this computer age which was amazingly challenging, but everybody was going through it at the same time, so everybody was very helpful to each other. I just can't express that enough: the benefits of having others to help you.
I remember having long conversations with my printer because we couldn't get all the artwork onto a simple little disk because there wasn't any way to send it over the Internet. I had to literally drive my file disk to the printer. It was just so chaotic. But we all work together, and that's what I'm giving in my book: my experiences over the last 30–40 years of working with clients in book design specifically. There’s a lot of things you learn just because you've gone through it, and that's what I want to share with my readers. Let me give you the benefit of lessons I've learned and the things I've gone through.
And things change all the time—that's why I put “2025 Edition” on the cover because by 2026, I'm sure there'll be stuff that we want to add or update. That’s the other advantage of self-publishing—I control the files, I can make changes anytime. That mistake I found after reading it 1000 times, I can fix it and upload the corrected version anytime!
Jessica
Absolutely! I didn't find any mistakes in the book as a matter of fact. Your editor did a great job!
Tell us where to find you online, and share more details about your book title and its upcoming release.
Becky
I’m Becky Bayne of Becky’s Graphic Design. My website is beckysgraphicdesign.com. You'll see a page on there about my book coming out on May 6th. I am super excited to get it out there! It's in the hands of my Advanced Reader Team. I cannot tell you how important that is because the point of having an ART is to look at your book with different eyes as well as start writing reviews. You can have reviews up before your book is actually launched. I am super excited to be able to say that I am going to be a published author as of next week.
This is the first book the Less Stress Book Design Series because that's what people come to me with—they're all stressed out, and it's like, let me help you reduce your stress and hold your hand while you go through this process, whether it's a picture book or a nonfiction, whether it's a business book or a novel. We do a lot of memoirs too, so we help people with all different types of books.
Jessica
Very smart. Let that be a lesson to anyone thinking about writing their Brand Book: how can you help your clients before they start working with you?
One last question: when should authors contact you about book design? At what stage in their book journey?
Becky
Great question. I usually recommend that once they hand the manuscript off to the editor, they get ahold of me.
Jessica
That’s what I tell them too!
Becky
There we go! Perfect timing! I need to know the total word count, the title, and the genre. I have learned that it's super important to have the editor and/or book coach help you get that outline done so you know what you're talking about to begin with. By the time you're handing it off to the editor, you have spent blood, sweat, and tears writing the book. Then you really have a better idea of what the title is. So along with the title and the categories, we are going to design the cover.
You know, it can go in lots of different directions from the very first thought of the book until finishing it with the editor, so contacting me then is a great time. At that point, we can just have a conversation about what the design process is. I can give you a proposal, and you can review it and prepare for design. Once again, if your manuscript is with the editor, it's almost time for me to start working on the cover, so we can do that while you're going back and forth with your editor. Sometimes we only need one or two drafts of the cover, sometimes three or four.
Jessica
Right—you're not waiting until editing is finished before you contact the designer, especially because someone like yourself probably has a little bit of lead time. By the time an author first contacts you, you probably need to finish up with current clients before you can take on any new projects.
Becky
Yeah, we're working on books now that are going to start in June, and we're taking proposals for later in the fall. We’ve got four or five books about ready to publish right now. It's a constant flow. So yes, it's important to get on our calendar.
Jessica
Bonus follow-up question: who do people go to after they're done working with you?
Becky
I do the cover design and interior formatting. I also help you upload the book, so that's another piece. I upload to Amazon as well as IngramSpark, which are the two I recommend. I work with you to figure out keywords and metadata, all that kind of stuff.
And that’s something unique that I do—a lot of book designers and formatters would just send it off to someone else at that point. But I manage that for authors, so we get it all the way over the finish line. I'm in control; I can see if the book is going to pass through the validations.
Let's make sure we have the ebook done correctly, then we help put together your Advanced Reader Team. We put a landing page on BookFunnel. I give you a swipe file of information to send to your readers. (It's much improved now that I've gone through it!) And we work with you so that launch date is successful. We promote it as well on our channels.
Just like getting to me before the editor's finished, you need to be talking to somebody about marketing that book. It is super important, I can't even tell you. That's where I’m at right now—I've got to get my Brand Book marketed so people know about it. You do all this work, and then if you don't tell anybody about it, what was the point?
Jessica
I know people put a lot of emphasis on the initial launch of the book. Well, that launch naturally fizzles out. It’s not going to sell itself after that. You simply continue to promote it, and it's always ongoing. If you're writing a book to promote your business, you likely already know that about the launch cycle because you're marketing your other offers all the time. But it's the same thing for your book.
And if you write the book the way I teach it, your book is going to sell your other offers too. It's much easier, in a way, to market and sell a $9 book and invite people into your world with that accessible entry point than it is sometimes to sell a 3-, 4-, 5-figure offer. Marketing your book constantly is always smart, and it's always going to feed into your other offers.
Becky
There are so many different ways to go about it. You can get a PR coach, you can get a marketing person, you can get someone to help you get the content written and then you can take it from there. I have a whole page of resources on my website, and some of them are marketing people. That’s the next place to go to find the person who’s going to help you with the marketing piece. You have to figure out what you're willing to do vs. what you want someone to do for you, and you know, it's worth the money to pay someone to help you at least get started with it and get you on the right course.
Jessica
I love that! I think that's perfect advice to conclude this discussion about working with an editor and a designer, and a book marketer! Thanks a lot, Becky.
You can find Becky at beckysgraphicdesign.com. Get your copy of her Brand Book, How to Format a Children's Book for Self-Publishing, plus bonus resources at: https://beckysgraphicdesign.com/our-books.