On Book Design and Tacos

In this morning’s Arizona Republic, I happened across the obituary of Glen W. Bell, Jr., the founder of Taco Bell. Referenced in the article were three of Bell’s 60 “recipes for success” that were developed over decades:

(1) You build a business one customer at a time;

(2) Find the right product, then find a way to mass-produce it;

(3) An innovative product will set you apart.

It occurred to me that these three statements perfectly illustrate everything that’s right about working with an individual book designer, and everything that’s wrong with working with a “POD publisher.”

All good graphic design, including book design, involves a surprising amount of collaboration between the designer and the client.  On book covers, there’s just no substitute for offering concepts, receiving client feedback, and adjusting those concepts, sometimes many times, to arrive at exactly the right solution for the job. And when it comes to book interiors, there’s just no substitute for the fine typesetting produced by professional page layout software in the hands of an experienced designer who knows how to finesse the settings for beautiful results. And no substitute for the professional proofreading that follows.

To say that book designers work hard to build their businesses one client at a time, while offering innovative products that will set their client’s product apart, is an understatement.

Which brings me to the Bell’s second “recipe” for success above, “Find the right product, then find a way to mass-produce it.”

POD publishers are mass-producers of books. They are very successful, and that’s the problem. THEY are very successful…their authors are not. By their own reported numbers, the average author who works with one of these firms sells 50 copies of their book. Why?

Because good books can’t be mass-produced, even when very big companies offer the tools to do so to unwitting authors who have not educated themselves about the proper way to go about it. Cover design software and Word templates will never produce the same results as an experienced designer, no matter how fervently the author may wish it to be so.

Bell succeeded beyond his wildest dreams mass-producing tacos. But I live in Phoenix and I can tell you that a Taco Bell taco bears no resemblance whatever to a REAL taco. And subsidy-published books designed and formatted by inexperienced authors are no better than than low-grade ground beef compared to a carefully edited, designed, typeset, and proofread book.

With books, as with tacos, progress isn’t always real, and it isn’t always good.

What do you want to know? What topics should we explore together? How can we help you along your publishing journey? Everyone here at 1106 Design wants to help. Post your comment here or email us at office@1106design.com

Michele DeFilippo, owner, 1106 Design