Selling Graphic & Web Design, by Donald Sparkman, is a book and guide to a design business and ethical business practices. You’re getting 218 pages full of content without pictures and filler. Donald Sparkman is the president of Sparkman + Associates, Inc., founded in 1973.

My summary of the book is pretty broad, “a guide to a design business”, but the book really does cover a lot of ground in a short amount of text. In fact, because this book covers so much pertinent material, it’s safe to say that a lot of people in the business could read it and gain a lot out of it. I would recommend this book first to executives to sift through, then downward to project managers and finally to the actual designers/developers. You will be receiving handy advice and examples from areas like ethics, law, pricing, proposals, partnerships, etc. Best of all, the book is written in blunt, simple language- there wasn’t a moment I was bored of it; I felt connected and inspired.

What I love most are the examples. Donald Sparkman actually took the time to give us sample documents to look at, names and addresses of organizations we may be interested in, a full glossary of any terms he may have forgotten to define in context and even suggested other books worth reading. Isn’t that sweet? In fact, I got more useful information within this book about how to evaluate and sustain my own worth than some national design organizations could ever provide. I highly recommend anyone involved in design or web design to read this book, especially project managers, self-employed designers and small business owners.

The following tip comes straight out of the chapter entitled “Billing For Your Time, You’re Worth It”:

• If you are providing consultation specific to the planning of a project, your time should be billable. This is only true if you can provide a “value added” service, not sales chit-chat. A good rule of thumb is to ask the question: Could this process be completed just as successfully and on schedule without my input or assistance? If the answer is yes, then don’t count your time as billable.

Buy it on Amazon.com - they rated it 4 out of 5 stars and have “search inside” available.