Book layout and formatting from Design for Writers

It’s what’s on the inside that truly counts.

Give your readers the best possible experience, and treat your manuscript to the beautiful design it deserves, with a professional layout and formatting package from Design for Writers. Every layout is guaranteed to ebook standards and the specification of your chosen print service.

Layout & formatting packages

We have professional formatting options to suit your budget. Buy our Layout Express package if you’re working on a budget or need a fast turnaround. You’ll be able to select one of our lovingly crafted pre-designed layouts, with all of our expertise baked-in. Or get personal, and commission a fully bespoke interior, uniquely tailored to the look that’s right for your book. We’ll work with you through a detailed briefing process before preparing your design sample which we can tweak until it hits the spot. Select your local currency (quotes in alternative currencies available on request) then choose the package that works for you.

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€

£

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$ 149

epub and mobi files provided, suitable for all retailers
Pre-design briefing process
An opportunity to tweak before completion
IDPF validation & industry-standard guarantee
Guaranteed to specification of major ebook retailers

$ 269

Everything in Layout Express, plus…
Select from seven beautiful print layouts, designed by us.
Upload your ready-to-format text and leave the process to us
Includes a round of reasonable tweaks (up to forty) to your formatted text
Guaranteed to the specification of your chosen print service

Popular

$ 459

Everything in Layout Express, plus…
Professional, fully bespoke print layout
Comprehensive pre-design briefing process
Tweak your design sample until you’re happy before we layout your entire book
Inclusive placement of up to 15 images
Includes reasonable tweaks to the text
Guaranteed to the specification of your chosen print service

€

€ 129

epub and mobi files provided, suitable for all retailers
Pre-design briefing process
An opportunity to tweak before completion
IDPF validation & industry-standard guarantee
Guaranteed to specification of major ebook retailers

€ 239

Everything in Layout Express, plus…
Select from seven beautiful print layouts, designed by us.
Upload your ready-to-format text and leave the process to us
Includes a round of reasonable tweaks (up to forty) to your formatted text
Guaranteed to the specification of your chosen print service

Popular

€ 409

Everything in Layout Express, plus…
Professional, fully bespoke print layout
Comprehensive pre-design briefing process
Tweak your design sample until you’re happy before we layout your entire book
Inclusive placement of up to 15 images
Includes reasonable tweaks to the text
Guaranteed to the specification of your chosen print service

£

£ 109

epub and mobi files provided, suitable for all retailers
Pre-design briefing process
An opportunity to tweak before completion
IDPF validation & industry-standard guarantee
Guaranteed to specification of major ebook retailers

£ 199

Everything in Layout Express, plus…
Select from seven beautiful print layouts, designed by us.
Upload your ready-to-format text and leave the process to us
Includes a round of reasonable tweaks (up to forty) to your formatted text
Guaranteed to the specification of your chosen print service

Popular

£ 349

Everything in Layout Express, plus…
Professional, fully bespoke print layout
Comprehensive pre-design briefing process
Tweak your design sample until you’re happy before we layout your entire book
Inclusive placement of up to 15 images
Includes reasonable tweaks to the text
Guaranteed to the specification of your chosen print service

For those extra special touches

Sometimes a book needs those special extra flourishes to feel just right. We’ve got those covered, too. Just drop us a note to discuss options and pricing

Custom frontispiece

A custom title page to match your Design for Writers cover design: a beautiful frontispiece is the perfect way to make your readers feel confident that they're holding a great read that's been professionally published.

Standard indexing

We'll compile an index from your keywords for your non-fiction book. Just let us know your key terms and let us take care of the rest. And in ebooks, this will be dynamic, hyperlinked text to make things easy for your readers.

Non-standard content

Pixel-perfect placement of images and tables into your layout. Images can have the text wrapped around them, and tables will look smart and professional, and all will be properly embedded into your reflowable ebook.

Express customisations

Swap a typeface, add some fancy ornamentation to your ebook, or adjust the running headers on one of our pre-designed Express layouts. All can be customised for a small fee, if required, so you can tweak and tinker to your heart's content.

Technical layout

For more complex layouts, such as recipe, art-heavy or academic books. We can add full-bleeds, footnotes, endnotes, or a combination of all of these. Or add in-text referencing using hyperlinks in your ebooks to help your reader navigate your text.

Alternative ebook formats

If you need something a little bit different from your ebook, let us know! We can create interactive PDF's, ebook sample chapters for your website, or a fully-prepared Word document for submission to publishers, etc.

The White Glove Publishing Package

Engage Design for Writers as your creative partner across the entire publishing journey and benefit from a truly integrated approach. We’ll build a relationship and develop your brand across ebook, print, digital and marketing. We’ll even upload your book to your chosen retailers on your behalf, leaving you free to focus on the most important part of all: writing.

Attention to detail, and a process that works.

If you ask us to format your treasured manuscript, the first thing you can be sure of is that we take that responsibility seriously.

We’ll begin by welcoming you into our system and walking you through the tried-and-tested briefing process appropriate to the design package you’ve chosen. This ensures that we collect everything that we need from you, when we need it. We’ll then produce a design sample which you can refine before we go ahead and lay out the entire book.

After proofing and completion you’ll receive our guaranteed files in the formats you need, all ready to fire off to your chosen print and ebook services.

It’s a bullet-proof process we’ve developed over almost a decade of collaborating with publishers and authors just like you. We’re proud of it and, more importantly, our clients have come to count on it, too. That system has all of our experience and lessons learned baked-in, and it’s ready for your benefit.

Ebooks that work, everywhere.

If you’re publishing an ebook, let us help you through the minefield of digital publishing with epub and mobi files that are guaranteed to meet IDPF validation and are up-to-date with the latest developments in this exciting and ever-developing publishing market. Let us be your digital publishing hero.

We keep abreast of the developments with Kindle and epub formats so that your book will always look beautiful on the newest technology.

We will make sure your ebook displays your pictures, tables and text seamlessly, smoothing out the glitches and issues that can crop up from time to time. And if you encounter a problem, we’ll put it right.

Don't just take our word for it

“As a complete novice at self-publishing I was unsure of so many things, but Rebecca's professionalism and friendliness reassured me so much. Design for Writers went above and beyond, guiding me through the necessary steps to get my book in shape before I unleashed it to the world. The quality of the ebook and print formatting is exceptional and I would not hesitate to recommend Design for Writers to anyone.”

Annie TuckerIndependent author of Orrcry

Frequently asked questions

Answers to some of the most common queries you might have…

Why do I need interior layout? Can't I just upload a Word document?

You can indeed, and that will be enough for some needs. There's a lot of advice online to that effect, but it's not a service we offer as we're all about helping authors like you achieve professional publishing quality with your beloved book. An ebook riddled with formatting errors or a printed book with poor typesetting is a common source of negative reviews, and that's an unnecessary situation we'd like to help our clients avoid. The files we provide at the end of the process have best practices baked in, and they're guaranteed so that if there is a technical issue when you upload them, we'll sort it for free.

How long will it take for my book to be formatted?

We like to make sure that your book is beautifully laid out in every format, so we'll take the time to make sure we get it just right. The process itself can take anything from around five days (for a simple ebook with no images or tables) up to a few weeks for more complex projects, from start to finish. Remember to allow longer than you think to review files, and please be aware that we do get booked well in advance. Our advice is always to give at least two months notice when booking to be sure that your space is reserved in our calendar.

When do I send you my manuscript?

As soon as it's ready! Don't send a manuscript that hasn't been edited or checked for errors, as it could cost you time and unnecessary fees in the long run. We recognise that seeing your book laid out for the first time will flag up that typo on page 30 or that misspelled name that you corrected ten times (and we include a round of reasonable revisions in some packages for exactly those moments), but your text should some to us as close to print-ready as you can get it. Unreasonable revisions after the layout is complete would require a discussion about additional fees, but we wouldn't apply any additional fees or work without prior discussion and agreement with you. We're very transparent about that sort of thing. Remember to book early then send your manuscript later. That will allow us to save your slot in our calendar and have the groundwork ready to move on your manuscript as soon as you're good to go.

Will any additional fees be incurred, such as for images or fonts?

Very rarely, and only if you have very specific needs which aren't covered by our design packages or add-ons. If you know that you'll require complex indexing, for example, then selecting that add-on up front would mean you have no unexpected fees further down the line (though you can always select add-ons at any time during the process, should you choose). Very occasionally a client will have a very specific request, such as wanting to use a font which we don't already licence (exceptionally rare). In such a case the cost of that font would of course be charged in addition to our quoted fee. Essentially, so long as what you ask is respectful of the agreed scope of work then you need have no worry about hidden fees, because nobody likes hidden fees! Whatever happens, we're very transparent and will never make any additional charges without prior discussion and your full agreement.

What are ebooks, and how are they different from print books?

Ebooks can be a great way to reach more readers, often at a smaller cost to both the publisher (you) and the reader. It can help to understand the technology of ebooks by thinking of them less as 'books' and more as small, basic websites. They rely on some basic coding to achieve their layout, while 'pages' as we know them no longer exist. Readers have the ability to set their own font size, and even font type, meaning that you as the author relinquish a great deal of the control over how your book appears to your readers. What's important is to recognise this as a positive: set up your ebook correctly with good code for the two most common file formats (epub and Kindle) and you'll enable every reader to enjoy your book in a way that suits them. But for that to work consistently, it's important that your files are set up correctly...which of course is where we can help. There's no single ebook format which will work across all services (readers on Amazon Kindle, for example, will require a different file preparation from readers using Apple iBooks) so we cover all bases and our ebook files (like all of our files) are guaranteed to work. If you do have a technical problem, that guarantee means we'll sort it for you.

What if I want images or tables in my book?

That's not a problem, just let us know when you book how many there are likely to be. Some of our packages include such elements, and we have add-ons for when something extra is needed. Images need to be clearly-labelled high resolution jpegs, ideally around 300-350dpi, and your manuscript should indicate where you want them to go. Bear in mind that for ebooks, your book will be viewed on an electronic device which won't display photographs all that well, and a lot of detail may be lost. So consider carefully whether or not they really add anything to your book. If you have any specific requirements for your book (trust us, we've seen it all) just let us know and we'll discuss how best we can meet your needs.

DESIGN for WRITERS

DESIGN for WRITERS

It’s what’s on the inside that truly counts.

Layout & formatting packages

layout Express

Layout Pro

Layout Deluxe

layout Express

Layout Pro

Layout Deluxe

layout Express

Layout Pro

Layout Deluxe

For those extra special touches

Custom frontispiece

Standard indexing

Non-standard content

Express customisations

Technical layout

Alternative ebook formats

The White Glove Publishing Package

Attention to detail, and a process that works.

Ebooks that work, everywhere.

Don't just take our word for it

Frequently asked questions

Why do I need interior layout? Can't I just upload a Word document?

How long will it take for my book to be formatted?

What if I need a faster turnaround to meet a deadline?

When do I send you my manuscript?

How do I send you my book?

Will any additional fees be incurred, such as for images or fonts?

What are ebooks, and how are they different from print books?

Can you help me prepare a copyright notice, etc?

What interior files do you provide?

What if I want images or tables in my book?

I'd like to use one of your pre-designed templates, but need to tweak it. Is that possible?

Will you proofread my book?

What if I need help with publishing my book?

I have another question, not answered here