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Publishing pipeline

Your book comes out with a spine width.

Not a document you still have to typeset. A print-ready interior, a cover built to the exact spine your page count produces, and a pre-flight check against the retailer’s specification — run before you upload, not after they reject it.

Start a bookSee the stages
Trim
6 × 9 in
Extent
312 pp
Output
PDF · EPUB · cover
ISBN

The Weeknight Kitchen

A. Adeyemi

spine 0.780 in · 19.8 mm
Cover flat, ready to upload6 × 9 in · 312 pp · cream, 60# · bleed 0.125 in
  • The Weeknight KitchenADEYEMI
    Cookbook
    312 pp · 0.780″ spine
  • OKAFORSAT Reading, Section by Section
    Study guide
    248 pp · 0.620″ spine
  • Ledger
    Low-content
    96 pp · 0.240″ spine
  • Momo and the Long WalkEZE
    Children's
    40 pp · 0.100″ spine
  • MarginsNWOSU
    Business
    184 pp · 0.460″ spine

Typeset specimens, drawn to the trim and spine the pipeline computes — not customer books.

PDF automation

The part that costs a weekend, done in minutes.

Writing a book is the part people talk about. Turning it into a file a printer will accept is the part that sends authors back to Word at midnight — margins that fight the gutter, a spine guessed at rather than computed, an upload rejected for a reason nobody explains. That whole step is automated here.

  1. You bring

    A manuscript, or just an idea

    Paste a finished draft, or start from a premise and let it write. Either route reaches the same place — the production half does not care where the words came from.

  2. It computes

    The measurements nobody enjoys

    Trim, margins, gutter widened for the final extent, bleed on every trimmed edge, and a spine that falls out of the page count and the paper caliper rather than being guessed at.

  3. You get

    A file the printer accepts

    Print-ready interior PDF, EPUB, and a cover wrap built to that spine — checked against the retailer's own rules before you upload, not after they reject it.

You can use this half on its own. Bring your own manuscript and never touch the writing side — it is the step Vellum charges $249 for and Atticus $147, and the one that decides whether your upload is accepted.

What you get

A printer will take these without asking you for anything.

Every figure below is a constraint of the format rather than a feature we picked. They are set in the same face the product uses for measurements, because that is what they are.

Print interior

A PDF composed at your trim size, with the gutter widened as the page count grows — the measurement most often got wrong, and the usual reason an interior comes back.

formatPDF/X-1a
colourGreyscale or CMYK
bleed0.125 in
fontsEmbedded, subset

Cover flat

Back, spine and front as one artboard, with the spine computed from your final page count and the paper you chose. A spine off by a millimetre is a rejected cover.

layoutBack · spine · front
spineComputed from page count
bleed0.125 in all round
safe area0.25 in from trim

EPUB

Reflowable, with a navigable table of contents and semantic headings — so it reads correctly at any type size and a screen reader can move through it.

formatEPUB 3
navSemantic, nested
imagesRe-encoded, sized
validationChecked before export

The economics

What a finished book actually costs.

Three ways to get the same book made. The freelance ranges are open-market rates for the work a finished book takes, and every figure in this table is sourced in the code that renders it — because an inflated number here is the kind of thing a competitor screenshots.

What a finished book costs doing it yourself with AI, hiring freelancers, or using BookGrid.
Do it yourself with AIChatGPT, Claude and the likeHire freelancersOne specialist per jobBookGridOne subscription
Writing$20–$200/mo. Coherence drifts past ten thousand words, and you are the one holding the thread across chapters.$3,000–$25,000. One to six months.Included. Outline, then chapters, with the context carried between them.
EditingYou are the editor. Expect hours of re-reading for repetition and drift.$600–$1,200. A separate hire.Included. A pass over every chapter that leaves alone what it cannot improve.
TypesettingNot possible in a chat window. You export to Word and set the margins, gutter and trim by hand.$200–$1,500. Interior layout to your trim size.Included. Print-ready PDF with the margins, bleed and gutter computed for the final page count.
CoverAn image, not a cover. No spine, no bleed, no wrap built to a page count.$150–$800. One to two weeks.Included. A full print wrap built to the spine your page count actually produces.
Listing metadataA summary. No keyword or category work, and nothing checks the limits.$100–$500. Another hire.Included. Description, keywords and categories, checked against the retailer's limits.
Retailer pre-flightYou find out when the upload is rejected.Not usually offered. You find out when the upload is rejected.Included. Twenty-three checks against the retailer's rules, run before you upload — plus the AI disclosure answer to give.
Total$20–$200/mo, plus the evenings. Every book, every time.$4,050–$29,000 per book. One to six months.From $29/month. Days, not months.

  • Writing

    Do it yourself with AI

    $20–$200/mo. Coherence drifts past ten thousand words, and you are the one holding the thread across chapters.

    Hire freelancers

    $3,000–$25,000. One to six months.

    BookGrid

    Included. Outline, then chapters, with the context carried between them.

  • Editing

    Do it yourself with AI

    You are the editor. Expect hours of re-reading for repetition and drift.

    Hire freelancers

    $600–$1,200. A separate hire.

    BookGrid

    Included. A pass over every chapter that leaves alone what it cannot improve.

  • Typesetting

    Do it yourself with AI

    Not possible in a chat window. You export to Word and set the margins, gutter and trim by hand.

    Hire freelancers

    $200–$1,500. Interior layout to your trim size.

    BookGrid

    Included. Print-ready PDF with the margins, bleed and gutter computed for the final page count.

  • Cover

    Do it yourself with AI

    An image, not a cover. No spine, no bleed, no wrap built to a page count.

    Hire freelancers

    $150–$800. One to two weeks.

    BookGrid

    Included. A full print wrap built to the spine your page count actually produces.

  • Listing metadata

    Do it yourself with AI

    A summary. No keyword or category work, and nothing checks the limits.

    Hire freelancers

    $100–$500. Another hire.

    BookGrid

    Included. Description, keywords and categories, checked against the retailer's limits.

  • Retailer pre-flight

    Do it yourself with AI

    You find out when the upload is rejected.

    Hire freelancers

    Not usually offered. You find out when the upload is rejected.

    BookGrid

    Included. Twenty-three checks against the retailer's rules, run before you upload — plus the AI disclosure answer to give.

  • Total

    Do it yourself with AI

    $20–$200/mo, plus the evenings. Every book, every time.

    Hire freelancers

    $4,050–$29,000 per book. One to six months.

    BookGrid

    From $29/month. Days, not months.

Pre-flight

We reject the file first, so the retailer does not.

Every mechanical rule a store applies before a human looks at your book, applied first. It cannot tell you whether the book is good. It tells you whether it will be accepted — which is the part that wastes a week when it goes wrong.

  • Bleed present on every trimmed edge0.125 in
  • Gutter widened for the final extentpage-count aware
  • Spine matches the paper and page countcomputed
  • Images above minimum effective resolution300 ppi
  • Fonts embedded and subsetno substitutions
  • Nothing inside the safe area0.25 in from trim

How it runs

It tells you which chapter it is on.

A percentage is least accurate exactly when someone is sitting and watching it, and ninety per cent for four minutes reads as a stall. So the product names the stage it is on and the ones behind it — and while it drafts, the chapter.

  1. 01DraftAn empty book with a subject, a trim size and a binding.
  2. 02Researching the subjectSources gathered and summarised, with the claims that will need checking marked as you go.
  3. 03Building the outlineA chapter structure with a word budget per chapter, sized to the page count you want.
  4. 04Writing chaptersChapters drafted against the outline, one at a time, in order.
  5. 05Editing and continuityA pass across the whole manuscript for repetition, contradictions, and terms used two different ways.
  6. 06Formatting the interiorThe manuscript typeset to the trim size: margins, gutter, running heads, folios, and a real table of contents.
Every stage, and what you control

White-label

Run the whole thing under your own name.

Imprints and course businesses run the pipeline as their own product. Their customers have no way to tell we exist — which is the only version of white-label worth selling.

How the programme works
  • Your name, palette and typefaces on every screen
  • Your own sign-in credentials, so the consent screen names you
  • Your merchant account — money settles to you

Finish the book, not the file.

Start with a subject. You keep the copyright, you can export everything at any time, and nothing you write is used to train a model by us.

Start a book