The Publishing Performance Show

Michele DeFilippo - The Art of Professional Book Production: Inside 1106 Design

• Teddy Smith • Episode 52

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Michele DeFilippo is the owner of 1106 Design, providing comprehensive book publishing services for indie authors since 2001. With over 52 years in the publishing industry, she brings extensive expertise in book design, typesetting, and project management.

In this episode:

  • Journey from Crown Publishers to founding 1106 Design
  • Evolution of book formatting from manual typesetting to digital
  • Common mistakes authors make in self-publishing
  • Importance of professional book design and formatting
  • Working with print-on-demand platforms
  • Project management essentials for authors


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[00:00:00] Teddy: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Publishing Performance Show. I'm here with Michelle DeFilippo, who is the owner of 1106 Designs, which is a project management and cover design and lots of services tool for authors and self published authors. So thank you for joining me, Michelle. 

[00:00:21] Michelle: Thank you so much, Teddy. It's great.

[00:00:22] Michelle: It's great to be here with you. 

[00:00:24] Teddy: Oh, thank you. So why don't you tell me first a little bit about your background and what got you started in working with authors in the first place? 

[00:00:32] Michelle: Well, I've been in the publishing industry for 52 years now, somehow. I don't know where all that time went, but I started in 1972.

[00:00:41] Michelle: My first job was with Crown Publishers in New York City, where I grew up. And that was my first introduction to publishing. And then, through the years I've done a bunch of different things. I owned a typesetting business for 13 years from 1980 to 1993. And that was actually, along with every other typesetting business in the world, it was put out of business by Steve Jobs when the Macintosh computer came along.

[00:01:07] Michelle: and then I've done freelancing and now, uh, since 2001 I own 1106 Design, which, which specializes in serving authors and helping them with all the services they need to produce a great book. 

[00:01:20] Teddy: Right, wow. So what's typesetting? What does that mean? 

[00:01:23] Michelle: I see. Nobody knows what it is. Very strange.

[00:01:27] Michelle: Well, when you pick up a book and you read the pages, someone had to typeset it. Now, today it's called formatting, but believe it or not, there's dozens and dozens of rules that are followed when you You make book pages so that the text is easy to read and it doesn't distract the reader. Instead, let's them focus on your message.

[00:01:47] Michelle: And so we attend to a whole bunch of different issues that are literally invisible after we're done. But it facilitates reading comprehension. And that's the way a major publisher will produce the book. And that's the way we still do it, even when we're working for indie publishers who may not necessarily understand what we're doing.

[00:02:09] Teddy: Yeah. Wow. So you really have gone from. Right back before there was any sort of digital use of printing all the way to now. So you are really the expert on formatting and how to create a really good looking book. 

[00:02:22] Michelle: That's right. In fact, it's funny. Just yesterday, my son and I were talking and I was explaining how we used to do the job before, before computers.

[00:02:31] Michelle: And, and I'll get, I'll just give you one example. If, if you wanted to put text on a page in a box, You literally had to draw that box with pen and ink and make it perfectly square. So I don't, I don't know how we got anything done. It was much more, but we did. And it was much more labor intensive than it is now.

[00:02:51] Michelle: That's for sure. 

[00:02:52] Teddy: Yeah. Well, it's actually one thing I noticed the other day. I was looking at, I've got a small child and I read her books. I look at the back page of the book. I noticed the price is kind of like. The same 20 year old books from when I was younger as it is now, I'm guessing just because a lot of it is less labor intensive to put these books together is must be a big part of it.

[00:03:11] Michelle: Well, the production of a book that what we do is not really a big part of of the expenses that a publisher or even an indie publisher might face the larger expenses, the retail sales commission, a lot of people don't know when a book is listed on Amazon that Amazon takes 40 percent of the cover price.

[00:03:30] Michelle: And then. Then printing has to be paid for and we explain, try to explain to authors that, that there are more economical ways to go about it than they might typically find if they search Google for information on how to proceed. 

[00:03:45] Teddy: Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, Amazon does take a lot. it's just so convenient.

[00:03:49] Teddy: It's difficult to not use them, isn't it? 

[00:03:51] Michelle: Oh, yeah, you have to be there. Every once in a while we'll run into an author who says I don't want to put my book on Amazon and I, I tried to tell him you have to. There's no way. 

[00:04:02] Teddy: Yeah, definitely. It's like a video maker saying they don't want to put their videos on YouTube.

[00:04:05] Teddy: It's like, well, that's where we are now. Yeah. so talking about the, these designs and how the books are formatted. One of the main things you do now is project management for books and for authors so they can get their book from that. Beginning, stages where there's maybe an idea or it's not formatted yet all the way to getting it live, which is quite unusual to have that whole process like end to end for a company, which I think is great.

[00:04:29] Teddy: So why don't you just walk us through what that, working review would look like from the beginning. 

[00:04:33] Michelle: Well, a lot of, if you, you can see the messages yourself online, a lot of authors are overwhelmed with, with what do I do? You know, there's, there's almost too much information online and, and from our perspective, a lot of the information is wrong.

[00:04:47] Michelle: And authors get into a lot of trouble by hiring the wrong people or, and then just the, the sheer work of having to manage the project and manage all of the people that are needed to produce a book Can be overwhelming. So that's, that's where we come in. I have a team of 20 people.

[00:05:02] Michelle: We, we help with everything from editing to cover design, interior typesetting. We proofread the book. We make an ebook. We help the, but most importantly of all. We help the author upload the book to their print on demand accounts to feed the retailers so that when a book is sold, they're not sharing their revenue with anyone else.

[00:05:23] Michelle: They're getting all of the revenue possible in the book publishing world in their bank account directly. They're not, no, there's no middleman in there, putting their hand in the author's pocket, so to speak. 

[00:05:35] Teddy: Yeah, yeah, no, of course. So what, what are some of the mistakes that you see writers making at moments?

[00:05:42] Michelle: Oh, I love my authors. They're, they're great. They, they've worked so hard on their book and they're, they've put their heart and soul in it sometimes for years. We're working on a book right now from an author who has been writing his book for 40 years. Right. It's, it's a book of poetry. It's going to be 500 pages.

[00:05:59] Michelle: He picked all the saints from the Bible and he wrote a poem about each one of them, 144 saints. 

[00:06:06] Teddy: Wow. Okay. 

[00:06:07] Michelle: And he's an older gentleman. He's a lovely, lovely man. And, and we are now in the process of formatting the pages of his book. The cover is done. And, yeah, it's a great experience to work for authors.

[00:06:18] Michelle: Sometimes authors, Follow advice from other authors online, you know, go to Fiverr and hire a book cover designer, format the book yourself in Microsoft Word or Vellum or whatever other software is around now. And as you might expect, they don't have the training or the experience that, that we have and others like, like we have, and so they don't get the, the results may look good to them, but they don't get the same results as they should, which, which is necessary in order to make the book stand out well online.

[00:06:54] Teddy: Yeah. Yeah, no, I do see that a lot. You, sometimes you do get some great covers with, from Fiverr, but it really just does depend on the, the person you're working with and the type of book you want. And I think it can be a bit random, so you don't have that, uh, consistency across all the different books you're making, I think.

[00:07:10] Michelle: Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I, what I recommend authors do is instead of just focusing on their book or their design or their type setting is that they go to a major publisher website and look at the covers there. And make sure that their designer is working at that level. They will, you will see a day and night difference usually between the typical self published book cover and the kind of book covers that a major publisher produces.

[00:07:35] Michelle: And that's the level that we work at. 

[00:07:39] Teddy: So who are the sorts of people that you generally work with? Is it people who are maybe doing their first book or is it more people who are, have already got some books out and they want to professionalize their services? Who 

[00:07:50] Michelle: Oh, everything. Everything you can manage from the, most of our, our authors, I would say, are first time authors doing their first book.

[00:07:57] Michelle: But we also work for, for many people who have come back over and over again over the years. We've done five Western novels for a local attorney here in Phoenix. we, we've done business books for people who come back again and again for another book to promote their business or their consulting practice.

[00:08:14] Michelle: Uh, everything you can think of. We just finished a, a biography of Winston Churchill, which was 850 pages with 6, 000 footnotes. So we've seen everything here 

[00:08:27] Teddy: that must've taken a long time to, 

[00:08:29] Michelle: it did 

[00:08:30] Teddy: to, to format that one. Yeah, 

[00:08:31] Michelle: it did. it was a year long project because we started with the editing and then, and then all of the usual typical services that an author needs.

[00:08:38] Michelle: It did take a while, but it was, it was just wonderful to do. 

[00:08:43] Teddy: Yeah. So before we had the show, when we were chatting at the beginning, we were talking about project management for authors and why that is so important. So why don't you tell me a bit about project management for authors? So, because I think a lot of people, they just want to do their writing.

[00:08:59] Teddy: They don't want to focus on those other parts. So which of the, which of the parts that people that are authors missing, do you think that really helps with? 

[00:09:08] Michelle: Yeah. Well, like I said, it's experience. So many, many of them are entering the publishing business for the first time. So you know, if it, whatever you do for a living, if you look back at your first job, chances are your work is better today than it was then.

[00:09:22] Michelle: So the same is true for authors. Because we. We will start with the manuscript. That's all the author needs, is a completed manuscript. And the first step is generally copy editing, or sometimes substantive editing, depending on what the manuscript needs. We'll start, usually, with an editorial evaluation, so that we know, and the author knows, just how much work the, the text needs, and then we'll proceed on that basis.

[00:09:48] Michelle: And while the editing is going on, we'll just, we'll start designing the cover. And once the editing is done, then we'll go into the interior design. People don't know pages need to be designed and then formatted. So, we'll design the pages first, walk back and forth, work back and forth with the author on just how the pages are going to look.

[00:10:10] Michelle: And then go ahead and do the typesetting. Then, our almost, uh, final step is to proofread those typeset pages. At that point, we're looking for typos that everybody missed along the way, and we're also looking for quality typesetting issues. Tight and loose lines, making sure the book pages actually look like book pages, according to the conventions in the industry.

[00:10:33] Michelle: And then we will make the e book, when all of the corrections are done. So, and then, most importantly, like I said, we will upload the book to the author's print on demand accounts. So that they never lose control of their book and they always will get the revenue directly to their bank account Instead of to a publisher's bank account first and you can hear you can find the stories about that online, too 

[00:10:59] Teddy: Yeah, no publishers do take quite a lot with them Are there particular types of books that you work with or do you are you happy to work with any type of author?

[00:11:09] Michelle: Oh gosh, we do everything. We, we do everything from children's books to memoirs, biographies, fiction, nonfiction, textbooks. We, a few years back, we did a textbook for a dentist that had something like 150 charts. It was all about the mineralization of teeth. Um, you just never, you just never know what's going to come in the door.

[00:11:31] Teddy: Yeah, and I can see you also have a lot, you do audio book narration. So are those people that you work with, are they in house to your agency or is it, do you work with other narrators? 

[00:11:45] Michelle: Well, for, for audio books, that's really a specialized field. We do work with an audio producer who knows all about sound and recording and breathing and all of that.

[00:11:53] Michelle: And, and he provides a selection of narrators and we'll share those samples with the author so that. They can find a voice that they think is appropriate for their book. And then, again, when all the corrections are done to the print book, that's when we'll start the audio book. 

[00:12:09] Teddy: Yeah. Cause I think audio books, I think it's going to be the next thing on Amazon where, cause it's, it is still a bit under represented compared to the books.

[00:12:19] Teddy: I think a lot of books, which could be great audio books, aren't on there yet, and especially of audible and the amount that you can get with the, the free audio books now. Um, So is that a lot? Do you do a lot of working with the authors on those audio books? 

[00:12:32] Michelle: Yeah, audio books are selling like hotcakes now, and I think we've only seen the beginning of that.

[00:12:39] Michelle: But the actual, you know, people, when ebooks first came out, everyone predicted the demise of the print books. That hasn't happened. Print books are actually still outselling ebooks and audio books, but all three formats are selling well. So, You know, it just depends on what format people like. So as a, as the author publisher, it makes sense to produce the book in as many formats as you can afford to do, definitely print book and ebook to start and then, hopefully an audio book soon thereafter so that you don't lose any sales because people decide, Oh, that book is not in the format that I prefer.

[00:13:18] Teddy: Yeah, yeah, of course. You mentioned before uploading the books to the print on demand platform, so obviously there's the main ones like Amazon KDP, but do you work with the other platforms as well? And have you seen, and what are they like to work with compared to the Amazon platform? 

[00:13:34] Michelle: Amazon, Amazon is the, is the gorilla.

[00:13:36] Michelle: The big gorilla in the room, of course, 80 percent of your books are going to be sold at Amazon. So we recommend that authors, open up a KDP account and also lesser known, but almost as important is IngramSpark. com. And Ingram is the largest Hooks book wholesaler in the world. It's a hundred year old company.

[00:13:56] Michelle: They will feed all of the outlets other than Amazon. Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, they feed libraries, they feed other distributors, and so they fill in the gap there. And that's going to be probably 20 percent of your sales. Ingram is a better choice for the international market in some countries.

[00:14:15] Michelle: So the way, the way the economics of publishing work, Ingram takes a 55 percent wholesale discount off the cover price. They also feed physical bookstores. So, and then KDP, Amazon, takes 40 percent of the cover price. So, by using both of those platforms together, the author can get the widest worldwide distribution at the lowest possible price.

[00:14:41] Teddy: Yeah. What, what differences have you noticed between Amazon KDP and IngramSpark? 

[00:14:46] Michelle: IngramSpark's printing is better and more consistent in our experience. And they're also better if, if an error should occur, which happens at every printer, you know, these high speed machines can sometimes make mistakes and do things crooked or wrong.

[00:15:02] Michelle: IngramSpark is great as far as customer service goes, instant satisfaction for the author. KDP is a bigger company. authors are not always, but sometimes likely to get the run around and, and no satisfaction when a problem occurs. 

[00:15:19] Teddy: Yeah, definitely. I, I've noticed the printing quality with IngramSpark is definitely higher with my books that are in both.

[00:15:26] Teddy: but you're right. It's impossible to not. Focused on how many sales you can get from Amazon compared to, compared to IngramSpark and it's much easier for beginners, I think, uh, getting onto KDP. 

[00:15:37] Michelle: Yeah, we'll, we'll see the difference, you know, if we pick up, we take a book that's printed at KDP and a book that's printed at IngramSpark.

[00:15:45] Michelle: from the same file side by side, the color will be different. it's just the nature of the beast because both companies have printing facilities all over the world and they print the book closest to the point of delivery. So the, the variations are unavoidable. 

[00:16:01] Teddy: Yeah, no, of course.

[00:16:03] Teddy: Now, in the packages that you have for authors, where it basically goes from the beginning right until the end, do you work with someone on a one on one basis through that? Is that, do you have a project manager helping you through that whole publishing process? 

[00:16:17] Michelle: Yes, I have two project managers, actually, and then I'm also involved for questions that they can't handle.

[00:16:24] Michelle: And so, yes, the author does have real human collaboration. We don't put them on an assembly line. Uh, or, you know, my personal beef is when someone sends me a list of 20 FAQs to read to get the answer to a question. We don't do that. we will just answer the questions when they come up and,

[00:16:44] Michelle: sometimes we need a little bit more time to answer. The reply may not be instant, but when you do get an answer from us, you're going to understand that we read the question and we're going to give you a complete answer. 

[00:16:59] Teddy: And for people who want to work with you and have all those services, what level do they need to have their book at?

[00:17:05] Teddy: Where do they need their manuscript to be? 

[00:17:07] Michelle: It's, it's ideal if the manuscript is finished and you have made, and the author has made the book as good as they know how to make it. And then we will take over from there and polish it up to what it needs to be to, to go to market. 

[00:17:19] Teddy: Yeah, because I think that editing parts that you, that's one of your main services.

[00:17:24] Teddy: I think that, that, that is, that's probably one of the most difficult parts, especially for fiction authors where you've got these different storylines happening and you've got to link them together. is that something that you've noticed? is a lot of work when you're working with the new authors.

[00:17:39] Michelle: Fiction, yes, definitely fiction is more work. And we have one of our editors is, was, employed at Random House for many years. Yeah. And so she, she just dives in and, and really does an unbelievably thorough job. And sometimes it takes more than one round of on fiction. Not so much on, on nonfiction, but fiction.

[00:18:00] Michelle: Yeah, it's a lot more work, a lot more involved, but the result is usually worth it. 

[00:18:06] Teddy: Yes, definitely. and so what's the difference in the package when you've got a fiction writer, a nonfiction writer, how's the, what's the, what would the difference look like between those two things? 

[00:18:15] Michelle: I don't charge a different rate.

[00:18:17] Michelle: I just it just balances out as far as I'm concerned. So we charge the same the same rate for fiction is not and nonfiction. 

[00:18:26] Teddy: Great. Now, for people who are new authors as well, you also have coaching and support. So what does that look like? Because I, Sometimes you just need someone who you can message and just be like, Oh, what is, what, what do I do about this question or how do I, what's the best way to market this book?

[00:18:44] Teddy: So I think that is a really, really good service that you offer. Could you tell me a bit about how that works? 

[00:18:49] Michelle: Oh, it's necessary, right? Because again, authors are coming into the field for the first time. I don't make a, make a big structure out of it or a class or a course. We just answer the questions as they come up.

[00:19:02] Michelle: And typically we'll, we'll exchange 200 or 300, sometimes more messages with the client in the course of doing the project. So that's actually in terms of time spent, the, the interaction, the collaboration is probably a bigger piece of the job than almost anything else we do. 

[00:19:20] Teddy: Yeah. Great. I mean, it's a, I think it's a really good service that, because sometimes people just have a little question.

[00:19:26] Teddy: They don't really know where the best place to turn to and like who the best place to speak to is. Yeah. 

[00:19:30] Michelle: Yeah, and I believe we have a responsibility to do that, right? And that's really why i've been doing these podcasts because authors are not always getting that and I and I that makes me feel Bad because book publishing is an art and good books have always been wonderful, you know Entry into into the wider world for everyone and so I hate to see that die and in some cases it is dying 

[00:19:55] Teddy: for for people who've maybe got their first book and they You What are the things that the most common mistakes you see first authors make that they could maybe fix before coming to speak to you?

[00:20:06] Michelle: we get a lot of calls from authors at least once a week who hired somebody on their own and they find that the, the, either the, the cover designer doesn't know how to complete the cover. you know, sometimes you'll, and that's kind of a problem on Fiverr, they'll hire a cover designer who does just the front cover.

[00:20:25] Michelle: And then when it comes time to do the spine and the back cover and the barcode, the designer may not have enough experience to understand how to do that or how to make the, the printers are very particular about how the digital file has to be created. And so that's sometimes where the authors run into trouble and they'll come to us and they'll say, can you fix my cover?

[00:20:45] Michelle: And, and sometimes the answer is no, if the designer used low resolution files, or, you know, there's also an issue that some of the designers may not understand the legalities of using images. You can't just pick an image off the Internet and use it. You have to have permission to use it. You need to buy royalty for your licensed images.

[00:21:06] Michelle: for a book cover. So, like I said, that that's one of the things that you might not realize when you're publishing a book for the first time. And that's where we can come in because we, we've been in the business. I've been in the business 52 years, 21 years as 1106 design. we can help you avoid mistakes like that.

[00:21:25] Teddy: Yeah, that's, it's a hundred percent right. I mean, you're right. You can get some good deals sometimes working Fiverr or like Upwork or some of this, but there's mistakes that can get made that are often unfixable. if you get in trouble, once your book's published, then that can be a black mark with Amazon.

[00:21:41] Teddy: You know, you can get your account bans. It's, it can be not good if you get in trouble with Amazon. They could put a black mark on your accounts and it's, I've seen people lose their KDP accounts before for making mistakes, such as using the wrong images. And so you do have to be careful. Yeah, 100%. Well, great.

[00:21:58] Teddy: I mean, this has been really helpful to talk through the whole process, like the whole from beginning to end and how people can get in touch with services. So. Uh, if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that? 

[00:22:09] Michelle: The best way they can get in touch with me is to go to 1106design. com.

[00:22:14] Michelle: And at the very top of the website, I give away my free booklet, which is called Publish Like the Pros. And, uh, all they need to do is plug in an email address that will subscribe you to our newsletter. And you can download the book and you can unsubscribe in the next five minutes if you feel like it.

[00:22:29] Michelle: That's okay. I want everybody to have this book so that they have the steps necessary to, to publish the right way, whether they work with us or not. 

[00:22:38] Teddy: Brilliant. Well, thank you very much. That's, uh, that's been really helpful. And I think people have learned a lot about the whole publishing process there. So thanks for joining us.

[00:22:45] Michelle: Well, Teddy. I appreciate it. 

[00:22:48] Teddy: Thank you so much for tuning into the Publishing Performance Podcast. I really hope you found today's episode inspiring. I love chatting to authors, writers and people in the publishing world. Now, just before we wrap up, let me tell you about Publishing Performance, the number one platform for authors who want to increase Amazon book sales by But I'm not really sure where to start.

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