Book formatting services

A finished manuscript is a huge achievement, but it's not quite a finished book. You may have spent months, or years, writing, researching and illustrating, but there is still the question of how all that material will work when it's printed through Amazon KDP, Ingram or an independent printer.

That is what book formatting is for. It's the step from manuscript to book. Text is set for comfortable reading, headings and sections are organized, and images and tables are fitted around the text in a way that is clear and easy to follow. Then there are the less glamorous details, like margins, binding edges and bleed.

Most readers will never notice good formatting, and that's the point. If they start clocking margin settings or running heads then we've done something wrong. Good design should just stay quietly out of the way and let the writing do its thing.

Book formatting, or typesetting, is the process of taking a manuscript and turning it into a book. A book formatter flows the words and images from Word into InDesign, then works through everything from margins and headings to images and page numbers.

Then there's a lot that goes on in between. We set the page up for the right trim size and binding, choose and style the type, build chapter openers and heading levels. Then the text itself is worked through for spacing, hyphenation and all those awkward little page breaks that nobody wants to notice. Images will nearly always need resizing, cropping or adjusting for print and then finally all those pesky bits, like tables, footnotes, contents pages, running heads and indexes, that need setting.

With the layout complete, we prepare the final PDF to the requirements of your chosen printer, including things like bleed, font embedding and ink settings. For heaps more detail on all of this, take a browse through our article, what is book formatting?

We want you to feel confident your book is in the hands of people who really care about good design. For twenty years, we've worked for authors around the world across every genre. We really do know what works on the page. We know how to make it read smoothly and all the tricks to make it print perfectly. Let our book formatters show you just how good your book can look.