Every book has an ideal design — one that serves the text, fits the genre, and keeps the reader reading without calling attention to itself. Finding that design is the work. It is not the same work for every book, and it does not take the same amount of time.
This is a collaborative process. The best results come from a working relationship, not a transaction — an author or publisher who is engaged with the work, not just waiting for a file to arrive.
The most common first question is: how much will it cost?
It sounds simple. The answer rarely is.
I do not quote by the word or by the page. Flat rates work when the work is predictable. Books rarely are. Instead, I review the files and base a quote on what the book actually requires.
To illustrate the range: I once took 90,000 words of lorem ipsum text and produced a fifteen-chapter, 975-paragraph book. The entire project — formatting, review, cleanup, PDF, final check — took roughly two hours. That was possible because nothing could go wrong. No design decisions, no dialogue, no structural complications, no spelling or punctuation problems. The text was perfect, and I knew it before I started.
Your book is not lorem ipsum.
The file review is how I find out what your book actually is. That is where the quote comes from.
Built into every project is a full editorial pass performed before formatting begins. This covers spelling, grammar, punctuation, and mechanical consistency — and goes further: pattern and repetition review across the manuscript, continuity checking, and a skeptical editorial read that looks for what mechanical correction misses: logical gaps, unexamined assumptions, staging problems. It does not impose a house style, normalize authorial quirks, or rewrite for clarity.
Before formatting begins, you receive a corrections package: itemized lists of what was changed and what was flagged, organized by category. You review it. You accept or reject each item. Nothing is changed without your approval, and formatting does not begin until you've sent back an accepted version.
If your manuscript comes back clean, you'll hear that too.
The goal is a manuscript both of us can trust before a single page is set. Formatting reveals problems that are invisible in a word processor — and problems visible during typesetting are problems that cannot be unseen. Fewer surprises in formatting means fewer author's alterations, less back-and-forth, and a better book at the end.
After the initial design, the first formatted file looks and reads like a finished book. At this point, problems missed in the manuscript frequently surface. Fixing them is customary — but it is work beyond what the original quote assumed.
Author's alterations are billed at $80 per hour. Time is tracked to the minute by task. In practice, AAs can double or triple the time required to finish a book.
The distinction between AAs and printer's errors protects both of us.
Corrections requested after formatting is complete. These are changes to the manuscript — anything beyond what the original quote assumed. Billed at $80/hour.
Errors introduced during formatting — spacing problems, mechanical mistakes, even typos. These are my responsibility. You do not pay for those.
The standard editorial pass includes continuity checking — character details, ages, timeline, and internal facts reviewed across the full manuscript. For longer or more complex fiction, a dedicated continuity audit is available as an add-on: a deeper, more systematic pass specifically focused on the class of error that linear reading reliably misses regardless of how carefully the book was edited.
A character who is 37 on Monday in chapter three and 29 on Tuesday in chapter four. A town that is coastal in act one and landlocked in act three.
Most editors won't promise they caught all of these. A dedicated continuity audit won't promise it either — but it is specifically looking for them in a way that neither the author nor the editor was by the time the manuscript arrived here.
Contact me to discuss scope and pricing.
Images are a variable cost. Some projects require only resizing and minor adjustment. Others require extensive correction or reconstruction. Charging a fixed rate per image assumes all images are equal. They are not.
Poor image preparation produces disappointing print results. I cannot control how every book prints — but I can minimize the risk. That work is part of what you are paying for.
Image preparation is quoted after I have seen the art. For projects with significant image content, I may ask to review some or all of the original files before providing a quote. There is no way to assess image work accurately without seeing what you are starting with.
Most commercial printers will share profiles, specifications, and guidance to help a project print well. Print-on-demand platforms are more closed — KDP especially so. Their guidelines tell you what to submit. What happens after that is not something they discuss.
I have worked with what is now KDP since 2000 — through BookSurge, CreateSpace, and KDP proper. In that time I have produced books whose sole purpose was to understand how the platform handles color, grayscale, images, and file preparation. Not just using the platform — testing it. That research informs every project.
The same applies, in varying degrees, to Ingram Spark and Lulu. None of the major POD platforms are transparent about their processes. Knowing what they will and won't do — and what to do when something goes wrong — is not a small thing.
Design and formatting is collaborative. The best results come from engagement, not delegation. A typical project involves a file review, a design discussion, formatted pages for review, revisions, and final delivery. Along the way there are questions — from both sides.
A colleague and I once independently tallied the emails exchanged on book projects. We compared notes. We had both arrived at the same number: 39 per book, on average. Some of those emails take an hour to answer thoroughly. That is not inefficiency — that is what it takes to do the work properly.
Email is the right tool for most of this work. It creates a record, allows for careful answers, and respects both parties' time. Phone calls are available when they're genuinely the better option.
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