Helping our authors prepare their manuscript and supporting assets is the first step to a successful partnership.


Manuscript Preparation

Final steps as you prepare to hand off your final manuscript and supporting assets for the design and production process.


Book Cover Design

Armed with a rough manuscript and some key information about the book, we can get the cover design process underway. You will be provided with one or more cover concepts to review. We'll then gather your feedback and make adjustments to get a final front cover you are in love with. At this point, we can generate a high-res graphic you can use to begin your marketing efforts for your book.

Delivery of Final Manuscript

Before sending us your manuscript, you'll want to finalize it as much as possible. We strongly encourage hiring a copyeditor to tighten things up on a broader level, and a proofreader to catch typos and punctuation that may have slipped through the cracks. Any changes that come after this will need to be worked into the production process.

Page Design

You will be provided a sampling of pages for you to review the fonts and text sizes suggested for the body text, headings, and chapter pages, as well as any other textual and visual elements in the book. We'll gather your feedback and make adjustments to get a final design template (a road map of sorts) we'll use to typeset your book.

Typesetting

It's now time to go through your manuscript page-by-page and format your book using the final, approved page design template, magically transforming your manuscript into what will ultimately be your finished book pages. Along the way, we will perform some general clean-up tasks, and provide a proof in PDF format for you to review and proofread.

Proofread

At this time you'll read through your book one more time, which is now formatted as it will look in your printed book. No doubt some unseen typos and errors will jump off the page—they always do, and it's all part of the process. Better yet, pass it over to your proofreader for one more review. Mark up any edits, either digitally or on a set of printed pages, and pass them to us to get fixed up.

Type Edits and Changes

Here we take the compiled edits you have marked up and go back into the layout to make any necessary changes to the first proof. Once finished, you will be provided another proof for review and approval. Repeat the step above, if necessary. This is the time to make any final changes before we go to print.

Full Cover Design

Now is the time to send us your copy for the back cover, endorsements, images, and author biography to build the full cover. This includes the back cover and spine for softcover books, as well as dust jacket flaps, case cover, and endpapers for more complex projects. We will collaborate on any edits and changes needed to get a final cover file for your printer. Registering your book for an ISBN and Library of Congress number, as well as creating a barcode and publisher logo would happen right around this step as well if you've enlisted our help with additional publishing services.

Final Approval

This is the final review process before files are sent to print. Send us confirmation that everything looks great and we will prep the final files and send them to your printer. They will likely require one more approval before books are finally printed.

eBook Conversion

Now that your print book is finalized, we can complete the process of converting your book to digital format. We will retain as much of the formatting from the print version as possible, and provide an online proof for review and approval. Final industry-standard Kindle and ePub files will be provided to you for uploading to the book retailers of your choice.

Publishing Support

Unsure of what to do next? We can help get your book set up on KDP, IngramSpark, and other platforms for print-on-demand sales. We know these can be confusing waters to navigate and won't leave you stranded right at the finish line.