Designs · Sixteen 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 see your whole book in it free.
See My Book FreeEvery 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 205 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 Sixteen
Thriller, fantasy, science fiction, historical, business, memoir, self-help, literary, 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.
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, which you see free.
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 sixteen designs, any of the nine trim sizes, as many looks as you want to try before you decide. Interior and cover together, $149.99; interior, cover, copy editing and the marketing kit, $249.99.
You see it before you buy it. Cantos builds the whole book free, in the design you picked, and shows you a watermarked, full-resolution proof copy of the finished thing. Payment releases the clean files. No card up front, no trial to cancel.
Refunds: a flat 50% within 14 days, self-service, on every purchase; a full 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 sixteen 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
Yes, and that is the point. Cantos builds your whole book in the design you pick and shows you a watermarked, full-resolution proof copy of the finished thing. You read your own pages in your own design before any money moves. Payment releases the clean files.
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. Ask Cantos on Revise, in plain words, and the book is set again in the new design; your text, your corrections and your images come with it. Each item in your project includes three revisions, and after release further revisions are priced individually.
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, and you see that before you pay.
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.
Cantos builds the whole thing free, in the design and the size you choose, and shows it to you before anything is paid.
See My Book FreeNo card up front. Never used to train AI.