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Book designand typesetting.

A book that looks like a publisher made it.

A cover has to work at the size a retailer shows it, an interior has to survive three hundred pages in an armchair, and the press files have to match what your printer asks for. Three different crafts, and most books get one of them right.

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What we offer

Print and digital
01

Cover design

Front, spine and back as one object, since that is how it prints and how it sits on a shelf. Series and imprint systems where more than one title has to look related.

  • Cover design
  • Series and imprint systems
  • Dust jackets and case wraps
  • Barcode and ISBN placement
  • Thumbnail legibility checks
02

Interior typesetting

The reading experience. Type chosen for length and set on a grid, with the small mechanics attended to rather than left where the software put them.

  • Interior typesetting
  • Type and page size
  • Baseline grid and margins
  • Running heads and folios
  • Footnotes, tables and images
03

Front and back matter

Everything around the text: half title, copyright, contents, acknowledgements, index and colophon. This is where a book most often gives away that nobody set it properly.

  • Title and copyright pages
  • Contents and part openers
  • Index setting
  • Endnotes and bibliography
  • Colophon
04

Press-ready files

The handoff to the printer. Spine width from the final page count, bleed and trim to their spec, colour and resolution checked, exported to the standard they ask for.

  • Press-ready PDF/X export
  • Spine width from page count
  • Bleed, trim and safe margins
  • Colour space and image resolution
  • Printer proof checks
05

Ebook and audio-ready

The same book in the other formats people buy it in. Reflowable EPUB, fixed layout where the design depends on the page, and a clean manuscript for narration.

  • Reflowable EPUB
  • Fixed-layout EPUB
  • Retailer specifications
  • Accessible structure and alt text
  • Narration-ready manuscripts
Proof in practiceStandards, not sales claims
PDF/X
Press-ready outputFonts embedded, bleed and trim correct
1
Accountable teamStrategy through delivery
0
Hand-offs requiredNothing waits on another vendor

Books we've made

Cover and interior, from the print files
Every Square Inch cover: the title in heavy white capitals over a teal and copper painted texture, above the earth's curve, with the subtitle How the Kingdom of Jesus Reclaims the World
Cover design and interior typesetting

Every Square Inch

Joseph Boot · Ezra Press

The concise edition of a much longer book, which meant the interior had to carry three hundred pages of dense argument without tiring the reader. Type chosen for length, set on a grid, with the scripture references, footnotes and chapter openings all given a consistent place. The cover is built to hold up as a thumbnail on a retailer's grid and as a printed board.

A typeset spread from Every Square Inch: running text with a footnote rule on the verso, and a chapter opening on the recto reading Chapter Nine, Understanding Crime and Punishment, with a drop cap beginning the first paragraph
Pages 180 and 181, exported from the working file rather than photographed

How a book comes together

Fewer hand-offs, faster builds

Print has one constraint the rest of our work does not. Once it is printed, it is printed, so the sequence is fixed.

  1. Cover direction

    Settled first, because everything used to sell the book is built around it.

  2. Wait for final text

    We set pages once the manuscript has stopped changing. Re-flowing a laid-out book because a chapter moved is expensive and avoidable.

  3. Typeset the interior

    Type, grid, front and back matter, and the small mechanics. You approve a full sample chapter before the whole book is set.

  4. Build the press files

    Last, and only once the page count is final, because the spine depends on it. A physical proof is checked before the run.

Where this comes up most

Sectors we have real work in
Non-profitEducationChurchesProfessional services

Also from us

The rest of what we do
Brand and identityPositioning, naming, logo design and the identity system around it.Web design and developmentNext.js, WordPress or Shopify. Built for people, structured for AI tools.SEO and GEOGetting found in search, and cited by AI assistants.Paid mediaGoogle, shopping and paid social, managed end to end.

Questions we get

Let’s get started

Tell us what you're building.

Send a paragraph. You’ll get a reply from the person who would do the work, not a sales rep.

hello@cecile.co(519) 697-3523