Your Story Deserves to Look Beautiful on the Inside
Formatting headaches are the unexpected bane of many an indie author. You’ve spent months, maybe years, pouring your heart into your manuscript. The plot is tight, the characters are alive, and the editing is done. But when you upload your Word document to KDP or IngramSpark, the margins warp, the page numbers vanish, and the paragraph indents look messy.
You don’t need complex design software or expensive, frustrating packages. You just need a clean, industry-standard layout that lets your words shine.
Let me take the technical headache off your hands.
Choose Your Formatting Style
Choose a clean digital layout. Or add a touch of genre styling, or go fully bespoke. The choice is yours; select the formatting tier that fits your story.
Tier 1: Clean & Classic — £15
Perfect formatting for standard novels, short stories, and memoirs looking for a polished, text-only layout.
- The Format: Beautifully structured, industry-compliant PDF (for paperback) and/or EPUB (for digital e-readers).
- The Look: Classic typography, precise margins, professional drop caps, and seamless headers and footers.
- Text formatting: Text Bubble and handwritten fonts to stand out from the main text.
- The Content: Text-only (no images, custom dividers, or graphic flourishes).
Tier 2: Illustrated Chapters — £25
Ideal formatting for fantasy, romance, historical, or cosy mystery novels wanting a touch of genre-appropriate style.
- The Format: High-quality PDF and EPUB files fully optimised for all major publishing platforms.
- The Look: Everything included in the £15 package, plus cohesive, eye-catching digital graphics for your chapter titles.
- The Graphics: Simple, elegant chapter headers and scene-break dividers (such as stars, leaves, scrolls, or clean geometric lines) to match your book’s mood. Provided by the client.
- The Standard: Beautifully rendered graphics that look crisp on both high-resolution paperbacks and e-reader screens.
Tier 3: Advanced Interiors — Price on Application (POA)
The choice for books requiring full-page artwork, maps, intricate borders, non-fiction layouts, or highly complex formatting.
- The Format: Completely bespoke print-ready PDF and digital EPUB files tailored to your specific design requirements.
- The Look: Custom, high-end integration of full-page illustrations, maps, family trees, tables, or decorative borders. Provided by client.
- The Process: We will have a detailed discussion about your design vision, the complexity of your graphics, and your overall book length to build a fair, custom quote.
- The Standard: Beautifully rendered graphics that look crisp on both high-resolution paperbacks and e-reader screens.
Tier 4: Traditional Hand-Binding Formatting (Octavo) — Price on Application (POA)
Bespoke formatting for authors, fine-press publishers, and craft binders creating heirloom, physical hardbacks.
- The Format: Masterfully constructed PDF layouts configured specifically for physical signature printing.
- The Structure: Expertly arranged into standard 8-page or 16-page signatures (Octavo format), ready to be printed, folded, gathered, and sewn by hand.
- The Precision: Tailored margins to accommodate the sewing swell, spine gluing, and edge trimming, ensuring your text remains perfectly balanced on the page once bound.
- The Process: Following a detailed discussion of your specific binding methods, paper weight, target page count, and leaf size, I will construct a tailored layout script to output your book in perfect printer’s imposition.
How it works
Select Your Package: Click the button from the relevant tier to get started or request a bespoke quote.
Submit Your Manuscript & Graphics: Send over your completed, fully edited manuscript in a Word document (.docx) along with your design ideas or binding specifications. All graphics to be used must be supplied at this time.
Ready to Publish: You receive print-ready, upload-ready, or signature-imposed files back, fully optimised for your chosen destination.
Traditional hand-bound books are not printed page-by-page like modern paperbacks. Instead, multiple pages are printed on large sheets of paper which are then folded down to size into “signatures” (or booklets) and sewn together. Octavo formatting arranges the pages out of sequential order on the screen so that when printed and folded, they appear in the perfect, correct order for sewing.
These are clean, black-and-white decorative flourishes placed at the top of each chapter page (e.g., beneath or above the chapter number) or illustrations used as scene-break dividers. Examples include simple botanical vines, stars, minimalist swords, or elegant scroll-work.
This tier is for manuscripts that require more than just chapter-top flourishes. It includes full-bleed full-page illustrations, custom maps, charts, family trees, or intricate border designs. Because these require precise scaling and positioning relative to your book’s page count, we price this individually to give you the fairest rate.
Yes. If you have custom-designed maps, illustrations, or chapter accents that you own the rights to, I can seamlessly incorporate them into your layout.
No this service is to formats the elements you currnelty own. If you need advice we have a preferred supplier list, including the Authors Vault to source artwork for your manuscript.
Absolutely. All digital and standard print files (Tiers 1, 2, and 3) are fully formatted to meet the strict upload specifications of Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, Kobo, and Apple Books.
I accept fully edited, final draft Microsoft Word (.docx) files.
No. I do not edit, proofread, or alter the words of your manuscript in any way. My services are strictly focused on interior design and formatting.
My job is to take your final, polished text and layout-design it to look beautiful and professional—ensuring your margins, typography, chapter headings, and page numbers are industry-standard and ready for print or digital publication.
To ensure your book is absolutely perfect before formatting begins, I highly recommend having your manuscript fully edited and proofread before sending it to me. Any text changes made after the formatting process is complete may incur additional fees.
Your finished files will be delivered within 10 working days of receiving your final manuscript and payment. (Bespoke Advanced Interior and Hand-Binding timelines will be agreed upon during our initial discussion).
If you have an urgent deadline please let me know and I will do my best to accomodate this.