Book Cover Series Design and Interior Layout Template

OVERVIEW We are launching a 15+ book collection of books and accompanying small group studies under a new brand, Highlands Publishing. The writing is finished. What does not exist yet is a cohesive and inspiring design. This first project is deliberately scoped small and specific. We want one designer to establish the visual brand for the entire library and prove it holds across several very different titles. If this round goes well, the remaining nine covers, the companion guide covers, and the interiors for the rest of the library follow with the same designer, and new titles are being added regularly. We are not shopping this out book by book. This is a fixed price project for the scope below. WHAT WE ARE ASKING YOU TO DESIGN A family of books, not a uniform series. Each cover should stand on its own, but someone seeing two of them side by side should immediately know they belong to the same library. Shared type system, shared palette, shared structural elements. Not one layout with a different title dropped in. Direction: modern and clean, driven by typography, illustration, or vector art. The attached PDF shows the current placeholder covers, which are being replaced, and the direction we are moving toward. DELIVERABLES PART 1. Book one, "Grace.", complete. - Interior layout in Adobe InDesign. Straight narrative text with chapter openers. The existing interior is functional but plain. We want clean, professional typesetting, not a heavy redesign. - Full cover: front, spine, back. - Amazon KDP paperback: interior PDF and cover wrap built from KDP's official template for the final trim size and page count. - Amazon KDP hardcover: interior PDF and case wrap built from KDP's hardcover template, with correct spine calculation and wrap and hinge allowance. - Local printer file: press ready PDF/X-1a, bleed and crop marks, fonts embedded. - Reflowable EPUB exported from InDesign, built on real paragraph and character styles, validating clean in EPUBCheck. Trim size to be confirmed with you, 6 x 9 unless you recommend otherwise. PART 2. The companion guide treatment. Every book in the library has a matching Small Group Companion and Leader's Guide that uses the same cover art. Design one reusable banner or badge element that identifies a companion guide, and apply it to "Grace." as the working example. We need the mechanism, not fifteen separate designs. PART 3. Five additional front covers. Front cover only for these. No interiors, no print builds, no EPUB. - Waldo - Beyond Your Resume - Tabitha - On the Worst Day - Beyond the Walls These five were chosen because they are the hardest cases in the library. If the system works on all five, it works on everything. PART 4. Source files. This is a required deliverable, not an extra. - Packaged InDesign files: the .indd, an IDML export, the Links folder, and the Document Fonts folder. - Layered cover source files, Illustrator .ai or Photoshop .psd. Flattened JPEG or PNG only is not acceptable. - A written list of every typeface used, confirming the license permits commercial publishing use and can be transferred to or purchased by us. - Full transfer of rights to all artwork and layouts on final payment. REQUIREMENTS - Adobe InDesign for all layout. We will not accept Word, Canva, Affinity, or Vellum files. - You must be comfortable working from Amazon KDP's official cover templates for both paperback and hardcover. - Cover art must be built as vector or layered raster so it can be rebuilt at any size later. NOT INCLUDED IN THIS ROUND - Audiobook or audio master files - Interiors for any book other than "Grace." - Interiors for the companion guides - Amazon account setup, listing, or uploading - Writing, editing, or proofreading - Logo design WHAT WE PROVIDE - Final manuscript for "Grace." - Full title list with subtitles and authors for all 15 books - Back cover copy and author photos - The Highlands Publishing logo - A PDF showing the current covers and our visual direction WHAT IS ATTACHED There are three attachments to this post. 1. The full interior of "Grace.", the first book. This is the content you would be laying out. 2. Current covers and full library list. The 13 covers that exist today, plus every title in the library. 3. Design direction. Published covers the authors picked out themselves as the direction they want to move toward. Please look at all three before you reply. TO APPLY Two things, please. 1. Show us your covers. Send links or images of book covers you have designed. If you have ever designed a series, a set, or any group of books meant to sit together on a shelf, lead with that work. That is the closest thing to what we are asking for. 2. Tell us about your current workload. How many active clients are you working with right now? Is this your full time work or something you do alongside another job? Realistically, how much attention could you give this project over the next several weeks? We are NOT looking for a particular answer here, just gauging how this relationship might work now and in the future.