In this podcast episode, you will hear from Jaz Welch, creative director and owner of fleck creative studio, about The Book Design Collective, a community-driven initiative open to new and established book designers. Discover their latest research project, the Book Designer Pricing survey, and learn why collecting this data matters to them.
(Scroll down for the transcript.)
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Further reading/listening
- Follow The Book Design Collective on Substack
- Take the Book Designer Pricing survey
- Get in touch with Jaz
- Check out The Book Design Collective’s open access resource hub where you can also find a directory of their members
- Publishers and authors looking for book designers in the collective can reach out to Jaz, use the directory mentioned above, or submit a job posting through this form
Transcript
Nataly Alarcón: Hello, everyone. And welcome to the BookNet Canada Podcast. I am Nataly Alarcón, your host for this episode. This month, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jaz Welch, creative director and owner of fleck creative studio. In our conversation, we talked about The Book Design Collective as well as an important survey that the collective is fielding. Let’s hear the interview.
Hi, Jaz. Welcome to the BookNet Canada Podcast. How are you doing today?
Jaz Welch: I’m good. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Nataly: Yeah. We are very excited to talk to you. So, let’s just get to the questions. The first thing is, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your book design journey?
Jaz: For sure. So, I’ve always been an artist and a creative, and I wasn’t really sure where would take me, but I took a communication design course in my undergrad. And that’s really where I fell in love with typography. And it’s the first time I was really working in computer design software. And I really fell in love with publication design, but didn’t really know how it would turn into a career. So, it eventually led me to book design, even if it meant meandering through marketing, project management, account management, photography, all of my way here. And I’ve always loved books and reading, paper, just the feel of paper, the smell of a new book. So, it just married so many of my loves.
So, when I started my design studio, fleck creative studio, back in 2017, I knew that I wanted to work on books, but wasn’t really sure how. So, as I was working on every design project under the sun to pay my bills, I would just kind of focus more on books over the course of every year and focus more and more until I could do them full time. And that’s basically where I am today, working full time on books. And I love it.
Nataly: That’s amazing. I’ve seen a couple of your covers that you share on Instagram. They are wonderful. And you also work with independent publishers and authors for doing the work on their own. Is that correct?
Jaz: Yeah. I work with a range of folks, indie presses, as well as a few kind of self-published companies that then work with the authors, as well as individual authors themselves who have a project idea and want it brought to life.
Nataly: I love that. So, today, we are here to talk about a very cool initiative, The Book Design Collective. Can you please share with our listeners what The Book Design Collective is and who is behind it?
Jaz: For sure. So, it started back in 2023 with a colleague of mine, Kristy Twellmann Hill of Umbrella Squared Design Group. That’s her studio. We worked on a number of projects together, and we would kind of Zoom chat and discuss things, and ideate together and get feedback on our work. And what we realised is that we were really missing out on that when we worked on other projects where the two of us weren’t involved.
So, that’s kind of the birth of The Book Design Collective. It’s a collective of book designers, and it really is meant to be a community. So, the community grows and gets better with the more participation that happens within the community. So, I really … now that I’m running it on my own, I really feel my role is more of a facilitator. And I’m just always looking out for what the needs are of the community and how I can help support and mentor folks as needed. But again, because it is a community, it’s always great when I pop into Slack and see everybody chiming in with their own advice and experience on various questions. So, it’s really about the membership that helps grow a nourished space.
Nataly: I love that. I feel like it’s so needed these days, especially with a lot of people working from home or being freelancers, there’s not a lot of opportunity to interact with others. So, I think it’s very needed. But actually, I am very curious about what inspired you beyond those things that you’ve mentioned. Is there anything else? Or do you think that there was, for example, a gap or a need in the book design community that you were hoping to address here?
Jaz: Yeah. I definitely think it’s primarily the fact that we often work alone and siloed, even if you are in-house. If you happen to get an in-house role and you feel more connected to the publishing industry, that’s great, but you still might be working on your own. So, you might have questions about the book design world that your colleagues might not even be able to answer. Like the publisher, the editor, whoever it may be, might not have that book design expertise.
And that’s how I felt working in-house at a small process. There was no one really to mentor me in that position. So, you end up with all sorts of questions. And then you don’t have peers, you’re just on your own. And a lot of other graphic design fields have some related information, but book design is a very different craft. It’s very technical. There’s a lot of very specific elements that are kind of industry-specific. So, it felt like we were missing a space to just discuss these things, ask questions.
So, Kristy and I really felt like we needed to build a community for folks to come together, and also just a place to chat and vent about projects going awry that maybe other folks don’t understand why we’re in such a pickle or how the industry works and problems that we’re facing. So, it really came out of a need that we both had, but then we figured a lot of folks probably felt the same.
And that’s what we’ve really … the biggest feedback we’ve had from our members after we have our meetings is how they just love the connection, getting to chat with people that actually understand what they’re up to all day. Even their friends don’t really understand what they’re doing. And sometimes when I tell people I’m a book designer, which I’ve heard from other book designers, people are like, there’s a person that designs the cover? And you’re like, of course, there is. So, we really need a space to be able to chat with people that understand us.
Nataly: Oh, my God. And I cannot even imagine what those conversations may be like these days with AI.
Jaz: Yeah. That’s a big discussion within the membership as well.
Nataly: Mm-hmm. I bet. Yeah. Wow. I love that. I feel like we all need … we all need a space like that, you know, for work things, for non-work things. So, what do you hope this collective can do for designers who, for example, are new to the industry? You were mentioning your own experience. So, what are you hoping they get when they join?
Jaz: Yeah. That’s a great question. Especially, I think, in the context of the rise of AI, what I’ve been hearing is more established designers, we feel a little bit safer than new designers because we’ve got our established networks and people that know us and want to work with us. But when you’re just kind of coming up, I think you feel so much more pressure to compete directly with AI, and you don’t know how to deal with that or if it’s driving down the cost of your work and how you’re being valued.
So, I think having connection with active designers who are established is a huge benefit. Aside from the obvious things, like you can be in contact with established designers for getting jobs, having connections, advice, people can post covers that they want feedback on. We have a job board, which many of our designers will apply for jobs through that. And that’s not a typical job application. It’s simply there’s an author who needs a cover designer and will … anyone in the collective can post work within that job board.
So, if you’re new to design, that’s a great way to kind of land some of your first gigs as well in a way that’s not kind of jumping straight to those other platforms, such as Upwork and Fiverr, where you’re going to definitely have to compete on price, which can be really hard to pay your bills and all of that, which leads to other questions inside the collective that folks can post is how to price a job, how to deal with client feedback.
There’s all sorts of things that I think are extremely valuable for junior designers to see, even if … I think, in a lot of cases, folks who are new to the world don’t know what questions they even need to ask new to the publishing world. So, they can kind of peer in and see what people are talking about, which I also think is valuable.
Before established designers, I think the biggest thing is the community piece, camaraderie, connection, and also being able to vent, as I mentioned, if they’re just having a tough day or you want to celebrate your wins. That’s something that I always encourage folks to do and check in and see how they’re doing. But does anybody have something they’re particularly proud of this week? Because, again, your peers outside of the design world might not realise how cool of a design you just did or how exciting this media hit or award was. So, sharing it with people that really get it can be lovely.
And also people have worked with each other inside the collective. I’ve hired many people. We’ve got a great ebook expert who joined the collective. So, I’ve sent clients her way. I always just hear anecdotally that someone is working with so-and-so within the collective. So, it’s just a great space to kind of build your network for, I think, all stages of career.
Nataly: Now, shifting gears a little bit. So, I’m sure our publisher listeners are wondering if they can connect with freelance designers through the collective. So, you’ve mentioned some examples of this type of way that people can link up. So, is that like a formal option through the collective, or is it something that you have considered implementing?
Jaz: Yeah. We do have a job board. It’s not … so, in a job form that folks can submit to. It’s not formally posted anywhere. But after hearing this question, I think it should get posted somewhere. So, basically, whenever an author reaches out to me or anyone within the collective, they have the link to our form that they can then share for the author or publisher to fill in, which then gets sent to me, and I post it into our job board.
So, it’s been happening more so as within the collective practice. But if any publishers are interested in checking out our freelance roster or getting in touch with designers, we do have an open resource Notion database that has most of our members listed, as well as they can reach out anytime to me, and I can send them the form. I will post it somewhere now that we’re talking about it, but we should probably go up on the Substack where all of our content is hosted. But if anybody does want to get in touch with me, I can then send them a link as well as to that roster.
Nataly: That’s great. So, it sounds that this initiative was born from something that was very close to you. And I’m wondering how it has impacted you as a professional. So, has it, for example, changed the way you approach your work or the way you connect with others in the industry?
Jaz: Yeah. Well, just from a kind of job perspective, I’ve definitely learned a lot from within the group, from specific tutorials that members have done and things that I’ve read just in the chats, different hacks for InDesign, really interesting process videos that have been shared about how to use iPad art and then transitioning into cover art. So, it has kind of very physically impacted my career in that way.
And then I think, just adding more joy to the practice as well. Like today, I just ran a creative session with some members where we collaged and worked on our skills with our kind of graphic elements and principles of design to pull those out into a composition. And we just got to chat and hang out with each other for an hour. And I would just really appreciate that time that we get together. So, yeah, just not being alone, being able to share, those are huge for me. So, I think that’s probably one of the biggest things.
But also, I get a lot of enjoyment about seeing people exceed in their book design field, because I feel like I’ve been very lucky to get to where I am today. So, when I see a student that I may have interned at one point or mentored or brought into the collective and someone who maybe came very junior and then they release a new portfolio website that I just … that’s an example I saw this week. And I was just blown away by how many book projects were on there and how great it was looking. So, to see someone kind of start from the very beginning and then start to get a lot of jobs through the collective and really kind of their work taking off, that means a lot to me. It feels like I was able to contribute something back to the industry that I love so much. So, it’s been really rewarding that way, for sure.
Nataly: I love that. And I’m sure that those who you have mentored or have been mentored by others in the collective are probably super grateful because sometimes it’s not easy to create those connections where someone can take the time to mentor. A lot of people in the industry don’t have a lot of time. But for those who make the time to take another person under their wing and really help them navigate things, even if it’s just like a one-hour session, like it doesn’t have to be an ongoing thing, it’s so helpful and so good.
Jaz: And I do think … What I do really appreciate about the collective, too, is that a lot of people are generous with their time within the collective. There’s some really core engaged folks in there. So, the mentorship isn’t just coming from one place, it’s coming from all over. And like I mentioned, when I pop into Slack and I see this amazing conversation happening about pricing, everybody’s giving their own expertise and weighing in on things. And I think that’s … it’s just really lovely to see people trying to share because people love to talk about the industry that they love and the stuff they love working on.
So, I think, kind of like any community, you get what you put in. So, folks that are kind of on the periphery are probably not getting as much out of it as those who are engaging directly with it, and asking questions and being in the chat. So, anyone who’s new, I always just encourage them. I try to welcome them in, get them engaged as much as possible because I think they’ll just get a lot more out of it, even though I know it can be scary to kind of put yourself into a new space and kind of feel like you’re in that mentee situation. But people are just so friendly and so on board to jump on questions and helping with literally anything that might come up. So, I’m just trying to get … encouraging people to engage as much as possible because it’ll only enhance their career and their experience and their book design journey.
Nataly: I love that you have created such a wonderful, and positive, and nurturing community. That’s great. So, that actually brings me to my next question. What was important to you when you were establishing the collective?
Jaz: So, I think one of the biggest problems in the book industry, not just book design, but just publishing on a larger scale, would be kind of an opaque quality of the information out there. So, when you’re new to the world of book design, you don’t really know what you’re getting into.
Pricing, for example, is one of the hottest topics within the collective because nobody knows how to price things. Oftentimes, a publisher or client will say, well, I don’t know what it’s supposed to cost. So, what’s your fee? And then everybody kind of freezes and doesn’t know what to say because there’s no guidelines online. You don’t want to bid too low and undervalue yourself. You don’t want to bid too high and lose the client.
And I think, when there’s no information available, you really feel stuck and you don’t know where to go. And that applies to so many different areas, not just pricing, but not knowing how to work with different publishers and what some of the standards are and all of that. So, I think this lack of information about how things work within the industry, even how rights work, should we charge for working files or not? All these questions that there might be standards in other industries that feel like they work within, say, a big marketing agency context are very different and niche within kind of a more creative arts focused industry like publishing.
So, that was really an important part of building the collective because I had all those questions myself. So, getting to chat through them is really validating. Even if we don’t necessarily have all the answers, we can discuss these things together to come up with what feels right for us. Because at the end of the day, one of my missions within the collective is to ensure that book designers and anybody who’s with us can have a fulfilling career that’s sustainable within the world of book design. And I don’t think it’s news to anyone that working in publishing in any space within publishing is not an easy career path. A lot of kind of low-pay jobs, whether it’s freelance or in-house.
So, having transparency about these things and how the industry operates, I think, can only enhance how we deal with things, how we negotiate our fees, how we know what we’re worth, how we don’t undervalue ourselves and take on projects that are too low to kind of just raise industry standards. So, that’s been a kind of secondary mission to the community building, but a very important one as well.
Nataly: Yeah, and very valid. Okay. I love that. So, one of the collective’s current initiatives is the fielding of the book designer pricing survey, which actually ties really well with what you have been mentioning just now. Can you tell us who it is for and what are you hoping to accomplish with it?
Jaz: Yeah. So, this is for absolutely any stage of book designers. That means any stage of their career. You could be freelance, in-house, full-time, part-time, wherever you are at, junior, senior, we want to hear from you. Because as I’ve been mentioning, pricing is one of the very opaque areas within the industry. And it has been a constant area of discussion within the collective. Nobody knows how to price their work. People are very afraid of going too low. Most designers are not able to sustain a career within book design. They have to supplement it with other things because of budgets being very low. So, we really wanted to get a baseline going of what people are charging currently to see what needs improvement. Are there any standards? Are there any kind of ranges that we can put out there as what feels comfortable to most people, especially for folks that are new, having a baseline to help them figure out how they should price things so that they’re not going too low.
And it is very interesting because, so far, it is an anonymous survey, but I’ve popped in there to see where things are landing. And there’s a huge range. And I think that’s what folks struggle with the most is that they go online and they Google what should a book design cost. And it’s just an extremely vast amount of answers that come up.
So, I’m not really aiming to create standards, but I hope that it helps folks not undervalue their work and perhaps help publishers see that they need to increase budgets for their designers or people will be dropping out of the industry because it’s too difficult to survive within. So, it’s kind of an initial starting point to see where things land. And then I hope it allows us to better support our members who are having a lot of trouble with pricing.
And there’s an open-ended quality to the end of the survey where they can kind of list any issues they have with pricing. So, those kinds of anecdotal responses will be really interesting as well. But, yeah, I’m really excited to review everything once it comes back because, as I mentioned, it is such a hot topic right now in the collective.
Nataly: I bet. And do you have plans to conduct research on other topics that are also important to the collective?
Jaz: I don’t have any current plans at the moment, but I think, because this is very community-based and community-run, as I mentioned, I feel that my role is as a facilitator. So, I’m always in Slack, looking at what people are discussing. And folks come to me when they have specific issues that they need to discuss or if things are … if they’re having trouble in certain areas of their business.
Number one, I ask folks to do that because it becomes really great meeting topics for us to chat about when we have our bi-monthly meetups on Zoom. But number two, if there is an area that keeps kind of coming up for folks, then that would definitely allow me to choose what direction to go in for future research as it is guided by the community. And that’s exactly how the pricing survey came up, because it has repeatedly been an issue within the collective.
And actually, it has been a joint effort with another collective who saw the same thing with her group of designers. So, that’s why we were both like, we got to put some surveys out there to try to figure this out, because everybody is very lost when it comes to pricing. So, if there’s any other area that feels like we need to pursue, I’m more than willing to do further research to help out the community.
Nataly: We love a data-driven initiative here at BookNet, as you know. So, where can the designers find more information about the collective and the survey? Where should they go?
Jaz: So, we now have a home base on Substack, which is very exciting, because before the community, which I love, was very scrappy. I love a scrappy business. We started just by folks connecting on Instagram, and then we had a Slack channel and our monthly Zoom meeting. And it just got so out of hand for me to add and remove people on Google Calendar invites. So, I moved us to a place where we can be very organised. So, all the links can be found there to our various meetings.
I also post monthly resource articles for book designers specifically. And then once … if anybody signs up as a free subscriber from Substack, you get a link to join our Slack channel. And once I see a new member pop in, I welcome you to the group, and you can basically just start hanging out in all of our channels. They’re coded by different book design issues, such as self-publishing category, business. Our job board is in there and all of that. So, that’s the best place to find us.
Oh, and I should say, the Substack is called The Book Design Collective. If you type that into Substack, we should come up, but I can also give you the link.
Nataly: Thanks, Jaz. That was lovely. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me and to share all these insights about this wonderful initiative.
Jaz: Thank you so much for having me. And, yeah, if anybody wants to do the survey, I would so appreciate the time. It only takes three to five minutes. The more data, the better, as you know. So, thank you so much for having me on.
Nataly: Before I go, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that BookNet Canada’s operations are remote and our colleagues contribute their work from the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, the Wyandot, the Mi’kmaq, the Ojibwa of Fort William First Nation, the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations (which includes the Ojibwa, the Odawa, and the Potawatomie), the Métis, as well as the unceded and ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, or Tsleil-Waututh peoples, the original nations and peoples of the lands we now call Beeton, Guelph, Halifax, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Vancouver, Vaughan, and Windsor.
We encourage you to visit the native-land.ca website to learn more about the peoples whose lands you are listening from today. Moreover, BookNet Canada endorses the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and supports an ongoing shift from gatekeeping to spacemaking in the book industry. The book industry has long been an industry of gatekeeping. Anyone who works at any stage of the book supply chain carries a responsibility to serve readers by publishing, promoting, and supplying works that represent the wide extent of human experiences and identities in all that complicated intersectionality. We at BookNet are committed to working with our partners in the industry as we move towards a framework that supports spacemaking, which ensures that marginalised creators and professionals all have the opportunity to contribute, work, and lead.
We would also like to acknowledge the Government of Canada for their financial support through the Canada Book Fund, and of course, thanks to you for listening.
