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Book Cover Design
Cover design projects for authors preparing books for publication.
Design Cents: Publication Design & Marketing
Publication graphic design and marketing services for indie authors and small presses, provided by Richard Sutton.
Design support
Publication work with an author’s eye
Design Cents supports independent authors and small presses with thoughtful visual and promotional resources.
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Publication Graphics
Graphic design support for publications, including the visual elements that help a book stand out.
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Marketing Advice
Practical marketing guidance for indie authors and small presses.
Project materials
Plan before you publish
Resources are available to help authors clarify the scope, format, and practical needs of a design project.
- Design QuestionnaireShare the goals and background of the publication.
- Evaluation FormReview project considerations in a structured format.
- Pricing ConsiderationsConsider scope and project factors when discussing a proposal.
- Project DiscussionContact Richard Sutton to talk through the next steps.
Start a conversation
Have a book or publication in mind?
Richard Sutton provides publication graphic design and marketing services through Design Cents. Contact Saille Tales Books with details about your project to discuss what support may be appropriate.
Design Cents is a companion imprint to the Saille Tales blog, a place where the craft of making a book visible is treated as its own kind of storytelling. Where the fiction pages hold characters, rivers, roads and long winter nights, this side of the site holds covers, layouts and the quiet decisions behind a finished volume. The work is aimed at independent authors and small presses who want their books to look and read as though someone cared, and who may not have had a design department at hand.
A cover is the first conversation a book has with a reader, and Design Cents approaches that meeting with an author's eye rather than a salesman's. Typography, color, hierarchy and the choice between a photograph and a drawn mark all carry meaning, whether the words belong to a historical novel or a piece of folk memory. The deep purple and warm gold that define this site are only choices; the point is that every visual decision should be deliberate, legible and true to the tone of the writing it wraps.
Beyond the cover itself, publication graphics give a book the supporting materials it needs once it leaves the desk: interior pages, chapter openings, promotional pieces and the accumulated visual language that lets a title keep its shape across a series. Marketing advice sits alongside that work, because design and promotion are really the same conversation continued. Readers of the main blog often arrive curious about how publishing actually happens, and this is where those questions are answered plainly and without jargon.
The wider aim of Saille Tales Books is to treat writing and book-making as one connected practice. A blog and news feed share space with excerpts, commentary and design work, so an author can follow the whole path of a manuscript from first idea to printed object. The best small-press work tends to be generous and unhurried, and that is the spirit here: careful craft, plain language, and an interest in the people who read, write, publish and remember.