Designs · Twenty Directions, Nine Trim Sizes
Each design is a book designer’s direction: the typography, the chapter openings, the running heads, the ornaments, the way a page breathes. Cantos follows that direction while it sets your manuscript, page by page. Pick your trim, pick your design, and Cantos builds your book in it.
Start Your BookEvery design is built for all nine trim sizes. You can change your mind after the book is built.
Your book is never used to train AI. Ever.
Measured, not guessed: every design was rendered at every trim size to get its real words a page. That is 211 pages between the tightest and the most generous, on the same manuscript, and pages are what a printer charges you for.
From the team behind BookDesignTemplates.com, trusted by first-time authors since 2011. Real people who have designed books for fifteen years, now working for you.
The Twenty
Thriller, fantasy, science fiction, historical, business, memoir, self-help, literary, poetry, and large print for accessibility. The words-a-page figure under each one is measured at 6x9; every design has its own figure at each of the nine sizes. The typefaces each design sets, shown as real specimens from our own renderer, are on the typefaces page.
Nine Trim Sizes
Margins, gutter, running heads and folios are set for the size you choose, not scaled down from another one. The binding gutter is calculated from your book’s real page count, so a thick book does not swallow its own inside margin.
The Number Nobody Else Shows You
Every design was rendered at every trim size with its real type, and the words a page were counted off the result. So at the picker, each design carries its own measured density, an “about N pages” figure for your manuscript at your trim size, and a plain word for how it reads.
Each design is compared against the middle of the pack at that trim size, so the label is honest about that size rather than borrowed from another one. Dense fits more on a page; roomy gives the reader more air.
The five densest designs at the trim you picked carry the badge. They are the ones that will hand you the shortest book, and the cheapest per copy, without looking cramped.
Your word count against that design’s measured density, plus an allowance for the front and back matter, and padded upward on purpose so a print budget built on it is safe. The exact number comes from the finished book.
Accessibility
Large print is not a niche; it is the difference between a reader finishing your book and putting it down. Magnificent sets your book in clear 14 point type, for readers with low vision and for anyone whose eyes are tired by the end of the day, and it does it for fiction and non-fiction alike. It pairs with the 7x10 and 8.5x11 trims, which is where large type belongs: on a small page it balloons the page count and the print cost, and we would rather say so than sell you a 700-page paperback. Large-print trim sizes are available on every design, not only this one.
Before It Builds
Once the design is picked, Cantos asks about the decisions that are genuinely yours. Never more than four, never one your manuscript did not raise, and every one already has a sensible answer selected: one click on Use Cantos’ recommendations takes them all.
The Price
One book, any of the twenty designs, any of the nine trim sizes, and revision passes included if you want another look after it is built. Interior and cover together, $149.99; interior, cover, copy editing and the marketing kit, $249.99.
100% money-back guarantee for 30 days. If your book is not what you wanted, ask for a refund within 30 days and you get back everything you paid. No subscription, no trial to cancel.
Refunds: 100% of what you paid, within 30 days, self-service, on every purchase; a refund withholds the files it paid for. The whole policy is in our Terms.
Being Straight With You
Nothing is poured into a fixed shape. The design is direction, and Cantos makes the page-by-page decisions your particular book needs. If you would rather do that work yourself in Word, our sister store BookDesignTemplates.com sells the hand-drawn templates for exactly that, and it is a good answer to a different question.
You are not choosing a typeface, a leading and a margin one control at a time. Each design is a complete typographic system that was made to hold together, which is why the books look designed rather than assembled. Try a different one as often as you like.
These are designs for books made of words: prose, chapters, headings, tables, figures. A cookbook, a children’s picture book or a heavily illustrated reference book needs a designer laying out every spread, and we will tell you that rather than sell you something that will disappoint you.
One App, The Whole Book
The design decides how your pages look. The rest of the book is here too, in the same project, and none of it needs a second account.
Why We Built This
I have been designing book interiors for fifteen years, and selling the templates for them to authors who wanted to do it themselves. Those designs are where these twenty came from. They are not decoration. A chapter opening, a running head and the space around a paragraph are how a reader knows, before the first sentence, that the book in their hands was made with care.
What authors were never given was the consequence. Nobody tells you that choosing one design over another can mean two hundred pages of difference on the same manuscript, and that every one of those pages is charged to you on every copy you sell. So we measured all of it, at every size, and put the number on the card you are choosing from.
And Magnificent is here because accessibility is not a checkbox to us. A reader with low vision should get your book, set properly, in a size they can read.
Tracy Atkins, founder
Before You Start
You get your money back. Every purchase carries a 100% money-back guarantee for 30 days: ask for a refund within 30 days of your purchase and you get back everything you paid, no questions asked (one refund per account). It is self-service from Account, Purchase History. A refund returns the whole purchase, so the files it paid for stop being available. Before that, revision passes come included, so you can tell Cantos what to change on Revise.
Yes. Every design is built for 5x8, 5.25x8, 5.5x8.5, 6x9, 7x10, 8.5x8.5, 8.5x11, A4 and A5, and the margins, gutter and running heads are set for that size rather than scaled from another one.
Yes. On your book's project page, open “Start a part of your project over” and choose the Interior option, “rebuild from your manuscript”. Cantos lays the whole book out again in the design and trim size you pick, and your grammar corrections come with it. The new layout starts from your manuscript, so changes you made on Revise are not carried into it; Revise itself keeps the design and trim size your book was built in. The rebuild uses one revision pass, and revision passes come included with every purchase.
Start with your genre: the grid above names what each design was made for. Then look at the words a page. If page count matters to you, a denser design saves real money on every copy printed. If you want the book to feel unhurried, a roomier one is worth the pages. There is no wrong answer you cannot change later.
Our large-print design: clear 14 point type set for readers with low vision, and for anyone whose eyes are tired at the end of the day. It works for fiction and non-fiction alike. Pair it with the 7x10 or 8.5x11 trim, because large type on a small page balloons the page count and the print cost.
It is measured, not guessed: every design was rendered at every trim size with its real type to get its words a page, and your estimate is deliberately padded upward so a print budget built on it is safe. The exact count comes from the finished book, measured off its real pages.
6x9 is the standard for non-fiction, memoir and trade paperbacks. 5x8, 5.25x8 and 5.5x8.5 are the familiar novel sizes. 7x10 and 8.5x11 suit manuals and large-format non-fiction, and they are the sizes that carry large print comfortably. A4 and A5 are the European equivalents.
No. Nothing is poured into a fixed template; Cantos sets your book page by page, following the design the way a typesetter follows a designer's direction. If you would rather do the typesetting yourself in Word, our sister store BookDesignTemplates.com sells the hand-drawn templates for that, and it is a perfectly good answer to a different question.
Choose what your book needs, check out, and Cantos builds it in the design and the size you choose. If your book is not what you wanted, ask for a refund within 30 days and you get back everything you paid.
Start Your Book100% money-back guarantee for 30 days. Never used to train AI.