Pricing Design, Second Edition

In 2014, I talked with my friend and mentor Jason Santa Maria about an idea I had for a book about pricing for designers. I was 12 years into freelancing and 2 years into running my own agency, and I had learned a thing or two about the business side of design that allowed me to make more than triple the amount of income I had made prior. Coincidentally, Jason, Katel LeDu , and Jeffrey Zeldman at A Book Apart had been tossing around some ideas for a new series of their books called “Briefs,” which Jason explained to me as “topics that either don’t need as much room as one of our normal books, or want the flexibility to be more beginner or more expert level focused.” He mentioned that a book on pricing could be a perfect fit. Two years, a proposal, a bunch of manuscripts and edits later, I published my first book, an A Book Apart Brief called Pricing Design.

In March of 2024, A Book Apart closed their doors and gave authors back the rights to their books, along with a few conditions for authors that wanted to continue to distribute their books. Around that time, amidst some of the worst mass layoffs the tech industry has seen in a long while, I started to get increasingly more requests for my now unavailable book, presumably as more designers were looking to turn to taking their financial livelihoods into their own hands.

So, I decided to release as second edition of Pricing Design, and you’re hearing it here first. The easiest way to read it is for free on the new Pricing Design website. If you’d like a PDF of it, you can request a free PDF to be emailed to you on directly the site. The printed paperback, Kindle/e-reader, and audiobook versions are all in the works and soon-to-be-released in the next couple of weeks, and you can sign up on the website to be notified once they’re out.

Also, it’s been almost 9 years since I wrote the book, so there’s a ton more I’ve learned about pricing that I want to share! If you request the free PDF, you’ll also have the ability to opt into a very actionable mini-lesson where I tell you exactly how to value price your first prospect, step-by-step.

The website and book design are all the brainchild of Jonas Leupe (https://jonasleupe.com/), one of the people I’ve been working with over the last few months in my quest to find a designer who can ship. Jonas is kind, humble, and incredibly talented. I’ve really enjoyed our collaboration so far. (I’ll tell you more about Jonas and share more about the behind-the-scenes of hiring in an upcoming newsletter issue.)

If you’re thinking about making the leap to freelancing or need some new ways to level up in your design business, check out the new edition of Pricing Design.

—Dan

P.S. - My Design System University Design System in 90 Days program from early-bird registration opens on Monday, January 6 at 10am Eastern. If you’ve wanted to level up your organization’s design system through week-to-week instruction, it’s a perfect chance to do it while tickets are $1,000 off!