Books built to fine-press standards, inside the limits print-on-demand actually imposes. Scroll, and open one.
Meditations: The Complete Edition. Designed, typeset and published here.
The cover opens on the half title, set small on purpose.
The frontispiece faces the title. The ascent is complete.
A chapter opener: crimson drop cap, small-capital lead-in, Greek folio.
Body text. Every line end measured against the house standard.
The map, set across the turn. A template cannot do this.
Closed again. The back cover, the same hand.
Scroll
Most self-published books are not badly written. They are badly made. The type is set by a template that never saw the manuscript, the hyphenation stretches the lines to fit, the chapter openings drift, and the book reads as amateur before the reader reaches the bottom of the first page.
We design books to the standards of fine press printing inside the constraints of print-on-demand. One house, one hand: the cover, the interior, the ebook, the portrait and the site are made by the same person to the same standard.
Three books that could not look less alike. Open any of them to see its pages, large, one at a time. Nothing is a mock-up.
Meditations: The Complete Edition
The title opening. A frontispiece on the left, the title on the right. The title is set at 69 point and does not shout, because of the three pages the reader passed to reach it.A chapter opener. Crimson drop cap on the second line, the first line carried in true small capitals, the folio a Greek numeral because the book is translated from the Greek.A part title. Full-bleed crimson, the book's number as a Greek letter, nothing else. Twelve of these punctuate the text.Body text. EB Garamond at a measure chosen for the line. Marcus's own entries are set ragged because they are his voice; the publisher's essays are justified.The map. A two-page spread that asks the reader to turn the book. A template has no idea what a turn is.Apparatus. The people of Book One in two columns, small-capital names, Greek keys. Per-word pricing cannot describe this page.A timeline plate. Sixteen moments on a crimson rule, dated above and below so the eye reads the line, not a list.The colophon. The last leaf, a centred display page naming the faces, the men who drew them, and the concept the interior follows.The full wrap. Back, spine and front, as one design.In a hand. Book Nine, pages 132 and 133, cream stock, printed on demand. The object is real.
The Wisdom Forge
The title opening. The same ascent, a different book: the frontispiece on black, the title in Brandon Grotesque over Garamond.A part divider. One geometry, drawn in line, used for every part.A chapter opener. The same drop cap and lead-in as the Meditations, derived from a different body size, in a different face. The construct is the house; the clothes are the book's.A figure in the text. Illustration, caption and running text sharing one grid.Worksheet pages. Fill-in rules, numbered prompts, a signature line. Pages designed for a pen.A protocol as a schedule. Hours in the margin, steps in the body, readable at a glance.The full wrap. Back, spine and front.
Saving Hosanna
The frontispiece. A hand-drawn map of China facing the title. A memoir about a country opens on the country.A part divider. The part title in true small capitals, an epigraph beneath, nothing else.A chapter opener. A fleuron under the chapter number, the title in italic, the first line in small capitals. Quieter, because this voice is quieter.Photographs in the text. Set to the text block's width, captioned in italic, the prose flowing around without a gap.Running heads. The book's title on the left, the chapter's on the right, small capitals at ten percent tracking.The full wrap. Blurb, bio and portrait on the back, made alongside the cover so they sit as one design.The author portrait. Natural light, her own chair, nothing staged. It sits on the back of the wrap, where it was always going to go.
What you are looking at
Five of the decisions in those pages, and the thinking behind them. Move through them sideways.
The drop cap
The large initial that opens a chapter is older than printing: scribes left the space and a rubricator painted the letter, and Gutenberg kept the habit. Here it is an ordinary capital of the text face, set large, in the book's one accent colour, with its baseline on the second line of text. Its size is derived, not chosen: the top of the cap meets the cap height of the small capitals beside it, so every letter comes out a slightly different size and every opener looks the same. The gap after it depends on whether the cap is a whole word or the first letter of one: wide for an I that stands alone, tight for the I in It, so the word does not break in two.
The small-capital lead-in
After the cap, the first line is carried in small capitals before the text settles into lowercase, so the eye descends in two steps. The rule is written and exact: the lead-in runs to the end of the first set line, never onto the second, ending at a full stop, a line break or a colon where one falls first, and never inside a name. The capitals are the font's own cut, not shrunken full capitals, which read pale. And because small capitals are wider than lowercase and move the very line break the rule measures against, the lead-in is set after the page is rendered, read back off the page, and set again until nothing moves. Two or three passes, on every opener, on every build.
The ascent, and the posticum
A reader does not arrive at the title page; they are brought to it. The half title first, small. Then a blank leaf, deliberately spent. Then the frontispiece. Then the title at full voice. Each page is judged by the one before and after, which is why the half title here is set larger than tradition: at the smaller size it vanished and the title shouted. The end of the book gets the same care. The image that closes it, answering the frontispiece that opened it, is called the posticum, after the rear porch of a Roman temple that answers the porch at the front. Publishing has no word for that page, so the house borrowed one. These books come in through a picture and go out through one, and open and close on a leaf of their own colour.
Hyphenation, measured
Every justified book hyphenates; the question is how often, and what it cost. The standard: hyphenated line endings under three percent of body lines, one percent the target, never three in a row, never on the last line of a page. The second half is the part most people skip. It is trivial to reach one percent by letting the word spacing open until the lines fill, and that is a failure, not a pass. So two numbers are recorded on every book, the hyphenation rate and the mean line fill, and both have to move the right way. On a recent 140-page interior the rate fell from 3.8 percent to 0.5 while line fill moved from 71.9 to 71.4 characters. The type chose different places to break. The spacing did not pay for it.
The colophon
The last leaf of a well-made book tells you what it is set in and why. The habit goes back to the first printers, who signed their work at the end as a scribe had, and it was revived in the twentieth century by publishers who thought a reader deserved to know. Here it is a centred display page, the heading in true small capitals, no drop cap, no rule, no running head, naming the faces, the men who drew them, and the concept the interior follows. Most books today do not carry one. These do.
What you can commission
All prices in US dollars. We work to a written house standard rather than taste, and every interior is measured before it ships: the hyphenation rate and the mean line fill both, because a low rate beside stretched spacing is a failure, not a pass.
$2,000Cover design, full wrapFront, spine and back. The only way a print cover is taken.
$1,500Cover design, ebook onlyFront cover alone, where there is no print edition.
$0.10 per wordInterior typesetting and layout$5,000 minimum, which covers the setup a book needs before a page is set. Books carrying apparatus - indexes, footnotes, tables, plates, multi-part structures - are quoted individually. That is the work this house is built for.
QuotedEbook productionAn EPUB built rather than converted: real structure, working navigation, type that survives reflow.
$1,500Author portraitPhotographed in Edmonton, or on location with travel quoted.
$500Author bioWritten with you, for the back cover and everywhere that asks.
$1,500Author or book websiteA landing page with about and contact, in-house through our sister studio, End Goal Media. Larger sites quoted. The Meditations companion site is the model.
QuotedSupplementary PDFsDownloadable extras for ebooks, audiobooks and launches.
−15%The complete bookEverything commissioned together. Saving Hosanna, above, is what that looks like.
Three rounds of revision are included on design work. Everything else is project dependent, and good work needs you to describe what you want, with references where you have them.
We do not rush books
A book takes the time the book takes, and the work is done when it is right rather than when a calendar says so. For scale: the industry standard from finished manuscript to shelf is roughly two years. We are considerably faster than that, and considerably slower than a template. If you need a book by Friday, we are the wrong house.
Everything you would ask before hiring anyone
What does interior typesetting cost?
Ten cents per word in US dollars, with a five thousand dollar minimum. The minimum covers the setup a book needs before a single page is set: the type is chosen for the manuscript rather than applied to it, the page is built around that type, and the standards are measured on the result. A 60,000-word novel is $6,000; a 90,000-word book is $9,000. Books carrying apparatus - indexes, footnotes, tables, plates, multi-part structures - are quoted individually, because that work is not measured in words.
What does a cover cost?
Two thousand US dollars for the full wrap: front, spine and back. The full wrap is the only way a print cover is taken, because a spine and a back designed by somebody else undo the front. Where there is no print edition at all, an ebook-only cover is fifteen hundred.
Why is the minimum five thousand dollars?
Because the first fifty pages of a properly set book cost the same as the last two hundred. Choosing the face, building the page, setting the measure and leading, designing the openers, the running heads and the folios, and then measuring the result against the house standard - that work happens once and does not get smaller for a short book. Below roughly 50,000 words the per-word rate would not cover it. The minimum is the real cost of doing it properly, not a markup.
Is there a discount for commissioning everything?
Fifteen percent off the combined price when the cover, interior and the rest are commissioned together. Not as a promotion, but because a book made as one thing is less work than a book assembled from parts, and that saving is passed on.
Why are your prices higher than the formatting services I have seen?
Because they are not the same service. A formatting service applies a template to your manuscript, usually in software, usually in days, for a few hundred dollars, and the result reads as printed out. This is typesetting by hand to a written standard that is measured before the book ships, and the result reads as published. If a template is what your book needs, you should use one; they are good at what they do. If it is not, nothing a template produces will get you there.
What is the process?
You tell us about the book. We tell you honestly whether it is one we should make. If it is, there is a conversation about what the book is and what it should feel like, then a quote. Then the work: a sample spread first so the direction is agreed before the whole book is set, then the full build, then a proof, then the measured report, then the files. You will see the book at every stage that matters and at no stage that does not.
Do you take every book?
No. Books are taken by application. Some are not a fit for this house and some do not need what this house does, and you will be told which, without a sales pitch either way.
What do you need from me to start?
The final manuscript - edited, proofread, and not going to change. Typesetting a manuscript that is still being revised is the single most expensive mistake an author can make, because every edit after the pages are set reflows the book. Alongside it: your trim size if you have one, the printer you intend to use, any images at full resolution, and references for anything you have strong feelings about.
Should the manuscript be finished before you start?
Yes, completely. Edited and proofread. Typesetting is the last thing that happens to a book, not a stage in writing it. If you are still revising, finish first; it will save you money and save the book from the drift that comes from setting pages that then change.
How long does it take?
As long as the book takes. We do not rush books, and we do not publish a turnaround. For scale, the industry standard from finished manuscript to shelf is roughly two years; this is considerably faster than that and considerably slower than a template. If you need a book by Friday, this is the wrong house.
How many revisions are included?
Three rounds on design work. Beyond that, revisions are quoted. In practice, three is rarely reached when the brief is clear and the references are good, which is why both are asked for up front.
What do I actually receive?
For an interior: print-ready PDFs for each edition you publish, built to the exact specification of the printer you are using, plus the measured report showing how the book performed against the house standard. For a cover: print-ready wrap files for each format, sized to the final page count, and the ebook cover. For an ebook: a validated EPUB that passes retailer checks. All files are yours.
Do I own the files?
Yes. The design is made for your book and the deliverables are yours to publish, reprint and reissue without further fees. The one thing not transferred is the right to resell the design itself as a template to someone else, which nobody has ever wanted to do.
Do you do ebooks?
Yes, built rather than converted. A proper EPUB has real semantic structure, a working table of contents and navigation, typography that survives reflow across every device and font size, and it passes retailer validation first time. It is quoted per project, and it is substantially cheaper when done alongside the print interior because the structure is already understood.
Will the ebook match the print book?
It will share the book's identity - the openers, the hierarchy, the voice of the design - but an ebook is not a fixed page and should not pretend to be one. Drop caps, small-cap lead-ins and chapter openers are carried across where devices render them well; the things that only work on a fixed page are not forced onto a screen.
Do you photograph the author portrait yourself?
Yes. The back-cover portrait is shot in-house, which means it is made to sit with the cover rather than arriving from somewhere else and needing to be made to fit.
Can you build the author's website too?
Yes, in-house through our sister studio, End Goal Media. A landing page with about and contact is fifteen hundred; larger sites, downloadable companion material and launch funnels are quoted on the work. The Meditations has a companion site you can see - the map, the timeline, the documents behind the book - which is the model.
What trim sizes do you work in?
Any size the printer offers. For KDP that includes 5 x 8, 5.25 x 8, 5.5 x 8.5, 6 x 9 and the larger trims for nonfiction and workbooks; IngramSpark offers a wider list. The trim is chosen for the book - its length, its genre, and how it should feel in the hand - not defaulted. A 240-page novel and a 500-page reference book should not be the same size.
Do you work with KDP and IngramSpark?
Both, and with any printer that publishes a specification. The files are built to that specification: bleed, safe margins, spine width calculated from the page count and paper stock, and colour profile. Where you publish through both, the files are built for each, because their specifications are not identical.
Hardcover, paperback, or both?
Whatever you are publishing. The interior is set once; the cover wrap is built separately for each format because the spine width, the bleed and sometimes the trim differ. The Meditations on this page was published in four editions from one interior: paperback, hardcover, a colour hardcover, and ebook.
What if my book has images, tables, or an index?
Then it is one of the books this house is built for, and it is quoted individually rather than by word count. Plates get a scrim so the type on them reads. Tables are set, not pasted. Indexes are built against the final pages so every reference is right. These are the books that templates cannot do at all.
What if I already have a cover?
Then the interior is designed to live beside it. The faces and the proportions inside the book will be chosen to agree with what is on the outside. If the existing cover is weak, you will be told so, once, and then the decision is yours.
Can a print-on-demand book really look professionally typeset?
Yes, and the constraint is the craft. Print on demand fixes the trim sizes, the paper, and the binding, and removes spot colour and special finishes. Working well inside those limits is harder than designing without them. The standards here are the same ones a fine press works to; only the production is different. Every spread on this page came out of a print-on-demand press.
Why do self-published books look self-published?
Almost always the interior rather than the cover. A template sets the type without ever seeing the manuscript, so the hyphenation stretches lines to fit, the word spacing opens up to compensate, chapter openings drift from one to the next, and the running heads sit wrong. A reader will not name any of it, but they feel it before the bottom of the first page and they trust the book a little less from then on.
What is the difference between formatting and typesetting?
Formatting is applying a layout to a manuscript. Typesetting is building the page around the manuscript. The first is done by software in minutes and the result is a book that reads as printed out. The second is done by hand, decision by decision - the face, the measure, the leading, where each line breaks - and the result is a book that reads as published. This house does the second.
Where are you, and do you work remotely?
Edmonton, Alberta. The design work is done for authors anywhere; almost all of it happens remotely. The author portrait is photographed in Edmonton, or on location anywhere with travel quoted separately.
Tell us about the book
Books are taken by application rather than by order. Tell us what the book is and we will tell you honestly whether it is one we should make. If it is not, we will say so.
