The Gold Standard
in AI Book Design.
Upload your manuscript — Cantos designs your interior, cover, grammar, and marketing kit for you. Human‑quality, ready in minutes.
See your book free before you decide.
Meet Cantos — a professionally trained AI book shepherd, and the only one of its kind. Hand it your manuscript and Cantos reads every word you wrote, then does what no formatting software can: it designs — weighing every chapter opening and every line of type against the book you actually made, painting an original cover, copyediting with a professional’s ear, and writing the complete marketing kit your launch deserves — all on the most capable AI models ever made, and almost entirely done for you. That’s the difference between a book that looks generated and one that’s been lovingly crafted.
Actual Cover and Interior by Cantos AI
This is a complete production house, from manuscript to publishing day. What used to take a design studio weeks — and thousands of dollars — Cantos finishes before your coffee cools: a professionally typeset interior as press-ready PDF, eBook-ready ePub, and editable DOCX; an original full-wrap cover with press-ready files for every printer you publish with, in one pass; careful copyediting three ways, including a tracked-changes red-line; and a thirty-piece, three-phase marketing and premiere kit that would cost more than the book design alone. Sixteen professional designs, nine trim sizes, large print included. Your novel, memoir, business book, or how-to guide — finished to one uncompromising standard: every paragraph matters.
From the creators of BookDesignTemplates.com — professional book design templates trusted by self-publishing authors since 2011.
How it works
Three steps to a finished book.
Upload your manuscript
Any Word document — raw, messy, half-formatted, it doesn't matter. Cantos cleans it up before a single page is laid out.
Choose your design
16 professional Foundation Designs across 9 trim sizes. Thriller, fantasy, sci-fi, and historical fiction — plus business, memoir, self-help, literary work, and a dedicated large-print design for accessible editions.
Cantos does the rest
Interior layout, eBook formatting, and — whenever you add them — copy editing, custom cover design, and a comprehensive 30-piece marketing and metadata kit. Delivered as ready-to-publish PDF, Word, ePub, and upload-ready cover files for KDP, IngramSpark, and Lulu.
Meet Cantos
Your AI book shepherd.
Cantos is more than a formatting tool. It's like having a professional editor, designer, and publicist focused entirely on your book. And Cantos listens at every stage — ask it to adjust your layout, rework a chapter, refine your marketing copy, or polish your prose. Talk to it like a colleague; it works like a professional.
Copy Editing
Grammar, style, and consistency — fast and thorough.
Interior Layout
Paperback, hardcover, and eBook. Print-ready files for KDP, IngramSpark, and Lulu.
Custom Covers
Upload-ready paperback wrap, hardcover case wrap, and eBook front — sized exactly to spec.
Marketing and Book Premiere Kit
An 30-piece, three-phase Book Premiere Kit — descriptions, keywords, press release, and more. Add it to any project.
Vellum? Atticus? Template? Designer?
Those are tools. Cantos is a designer.
Vellum and Atticus are good tools — if you want to learn software and lay out every page yourself, on the right computer. Cantos is different: you upload your manuscript and it designs the whole book for you — interior, custom cover, and marketing kit — at the quality of a professional designer, ready in minutes, on any device. Not a tool you operate. A designer you hire.
| CantosBookDesignerAI | BookDesignTemplates.com | Atticus | Vellum | Hire a designer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | Cantos, for you | You | You | You | The designer |
| Interior design | ✓ Bespoke, per book | ✓ Template | ✓ ~17 themes | ✓ ~8–10 themes | ✓ Custom |
| Custom cover | ✓ Available | – | ✗ None | ✗ You supply | ✓ +$625–1,250 |
| Marketing kit (around 30 pieces) | ✓ Available | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Reads your book & decides | ✓ Yes | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ Yes |
| Works on any device | ✓ Any | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ Mac only | – |
| Finished in | Minutes | Hours of your time | Hours of your time | Hours of your time | 2–4 weeks |
| Master files included | ✓ Yesfinished files + the editable masters | ✓the template is yours | ✗*your project stays inside the app | ✗*your project stays inside the app | Often extrasource files frequently cost hundreds |
| Price | From $99.99per book, done for you | $49.99/bookor $129 for all your booksyou format it | $147*one-time tool | $249.99*one-time, Mac only | $1,500–$2,500+per book |
* The vendors above may change their pricing or product offerings at any time.
From the team behind BookDesignTemplates.com — the professional design templates 70,000+ authors already trust. A single design is $49.99 per book, or $129 for all your books — if you do all the work yourself. Cantos does it all for you — interior, cover, and marketing — for a fraction of a human designer's fee.
Designed for every book
Sixteen Designs.
Every Foundation Design is professionally crafted with proper front matter, running headers, and page numbering — ready for IngramSpark, Amazon KDP, or Lulu. Each design serves as artist's direction: the inspiration and guidance Cantos follows while it crafts a bespoke interior around your words.
Trim sizes
Our active designs
Atlanta
Brisk
Elite
Indie
Lightning
Minimalist
Pulp
Spark
Noir
Magnificent
Bard
Asimov
Historian
Leadership
Nin
Inspire
Output formats
Actual cover created by Cantos
Cover Studio
Custom covers, sized exactly to spec.
Cover Studio is as revolutionary as the rest of Cantos. Unlike generic AI image tools that hand you a square JPG and a shrug, Cover Studio produces upload-ready cover files for the platforms authors actually publish to — built around your book's exact spine width, trim size, safety margins, and bleed requirements. No cropping. No guesswork. No "close enough."
Three Files, Every Time
Paperback wrap (front + spine + back), hardcover case wrap (with hinges + bleed), and eBook front cover — produced in one pass.
Sized for Major Platforms
KDP, IngramSpark, and Lulu each have their own spec — and you can check every printer you publish with to get press-ready files for each, in one pass. Upload and publish, everywhere.
Spine Calculated From Page Count
Spine width is computed from your interior page count and paper stock. Drop your book straight into the press — the spine fits.
Safety Margins Enforced
Every text element — title, byline, back-cover blurb — is auto-checked against the safe zone. Nothing trims off at the bindery.
Cantos Suggests, You Direct
Cantos picks fonts and colors that fit your book's mood. Don't love it? Tell Cantos what to change and it refines the design — like working with a designer who never gets tired.
PDF/X-1a Output
Print-ready PDF/X-1a (the publishing standard) plus high-res JPG. Fonts embedded, color-safe, and ready for any press.
Use Cover Studio solo for $99.99 (or 3 books for $199.99), or bundle it into a book project (see pricing below).
Marketing & metadata
The Marketing and Book Premiere Kit.
Everything you need to publish, market, and sell your book — generated from your manuscript.
Full fanfare for your book. Cantos reads your manuscript and writes a complete 30-piece, three-phase Book Premiere Kit — every word of it about your book. Phase 1 gets you found: tested keywords, category strategy, descriptions, and every upload field, done right. Phase 2 is opening night: your press release, media one-sheet, and ready-to-send pitch letters for podcasts, reviewers, bookstores, and libraries. Phase 3 drives sales for months: a personalized six-month promotion calendar, playbooks for bookstores, speaking events, fairs and signings — even how to attract a publishing house. Delivered as Word and PDF with a clickable table of contents, in English or Spanish to match your book. Add it to any project for $99.99 (or 3 books for $199.99).
Back Cover Copy
Up to ~260 words, sized to fit the back of the printed book.
Amazon Description
Keyword-optimized listing that front-loads the hook before the fold.
Short Description
150–200 words for retailer product pages and quick reads.
Long Description
900–1,100 words for back-cover use and extended listings.
100-Word Description
Tight blurb for sales sheets, postcards, and social graphics.
Hook & Pitch
One-sentence hook, elevator pitch, and five ready-to-use taglines.
10 Keywords
Specific 2–5 word searchable phrases tuned to your book.
7 Amazon Keyword Boxes
Strategic phrases for all seven fields, capped at 50 characters each.
3 BISAC Codes
Real codes from the official list, each with a rationale.
Comp Titles
Comparable books with specific, useful matching rationale.
Author Bio — Short
~45–50 words for Amazon, reviews, and bylines.
Author Bio — Long
150–200 words for back-of-book, media kits, and speaking.
Press Release
300–400 words in a standard, timeless format.
Bookstore Pitch
150–200 words for indie bookstores, with ISBNs included.
10 Social Media Posts
Announcements, quotes, and engagement posts — hashtags ready.
10–12 Interview Questions
Thoughtful prompts ready for podcasts and journalists.
Cover Design Brief
Detailed specs to hand to your cover designer.
Publishing Checklist
A personalized, step-by-step to-do list through launch day.
Not just novels
Built for non-fiction, too.
Writing a business book, a self-help guide, a how-to, or a memoir? Your book is your credibility — and a cheap-looking interior quietly undermines the authority you wrote it to build. Cantos gives your non-fiction the clean, professional structure it needs: a clear heading hierarchy, readable typography, and navigation that works — so it reads like a major publisher set it. Authority you can hold in your hand.
Actual non-fiction interior by Cantos AI
Proof, not promises — a real non-fiction book, both files, yours to inspect:
Business & Leadership
Look like the expert you already are.
Self-Help & Personal Growth
Clear, calm, and credible.
How-To & Instructional
Easy to follow, easy to trust.
Memoir
Your story, beautifully set.
And here's the part that matters if your book is the serious kind: Cantos handles the hard reference work that breaks ordinary formatting tools — real tables that hold their shape, footnotes and endnotes that stay with their pages, numbered lists and steps that keep their numbering, callout and tip boxes, charts and figures, a deep, navigable heading structure — and yes, a real, professional index, with page numbers computed from your finished pages. Bring your own index marks and Cantos honors them; have none and Cantos builds one; bring a typed index from an old layout and Cantos replaces it before its stale page numbers can mislead a single reader. Before Cantos, a book like that honestly had two good options: professional design templates or a human designer. Now it has three. Most books finish in minutes — but a dense, reference-heavy business book earns as long as it needs, and Cantos will gladly spend an hour making sure every table, note, and numbered step lands exactly right. Done fast when it can be. Done right, always.
We focus on text-forward books, where the words carry the weight. We're not the right fit for cookbooks, children's picture books, or heavily-illustrated reference and textbooks that need page-by-page art direction.
The math is simple
What this replaces.
Pricing
Start at $99.99. Build only what your book needs.
Mix and match what your book needs — your cart bundles automatically and shows your savings as you build. Every offering comes with single-book and 3-book pricing for series and backlist authors.
Interior
Professional, done-for-you formatting for your ready manuscript.
or 3 books for $199.99
Start your InteriorCover
A custom, print-ready cover — paperback wrap, hardcover case wrap, eBook front.
or 3 books for $199.99
Start your CoverInterior + Cover
Interior layout plus a custom AI-designed cover, bundled.
or 3 books for $299.99
Start Interior + CoverFull Package
All four components — Interior, Cover, Grammar, and the Marketing and Book Premiere Kit — designed to work together.
or 3 books for $499.99
Start the Full PackageMix and match what your book needs — your cart bundles automatically and shows your savings as you build.
Every book comes with a generous pool of Universal Revision Passes you can spend on anything — interior, grammar, or cover. Need still more? Passes are $25 for 5. Humans charge hourly; we don't.
Secure checkout is powered by PayPal — pay with PayPal or any major credit or debit card (no PayPal account required). At checkout, PayPal may also offer Pay in 4 and other financing options, at their discretion, to make your book even more affordable.
One book, every piece in sync
The pieces work together.
Most tools treat your interior, cover, and marketing as three separate jobs. Cantos builds them from the same manuscript, so each one makes the others better — the way a real design studio works.
Grammar before layout
Copy editing runs first, so every page is set from already-clean text — never typos patched in after the pages are built.
Your words shape the cover
Your back-cover copy and book summary flow straight onto the cover — the blurb on the back, the tone in the design. The marketing kit makes the cover stronger.
One source of truth
Title, author, ISBNs, trim size — entered once and carried perfectly across your interior, cover, eBook, and all 18 marketing pieces.
Work alongside the Cantos AI Grammar editor — or let it run.
You're always in control of the words. Work side by side with Cantos and approve every edit as it goes — section by section, your call on each one — or hand it your manuscript and let it edit autonomously, then review the finished book. Prefer your own desk? Take a tracked-changes red-line into your word processor and accept or reject every edit yourself. Every revision after works the same way: direct each change yourself, or just say what you want and let Cantos handle it. Your book, your pace.
FAQ
Questions & answers.
This is a professional production tool that delivers human-level results — not a quick AI gimmick that spits out something you then have to fix. Cantos was developed over two and a half years of painstaking work, refined against decades of manuscript review know-how until the output could stand beside a book from a professional design house.
Behind it is a rare combination of expertise: book design and typography, deep knowledge of the book industry and self-publishing, serious software engineering, and the very latest in frontier AI-model research. Most tools have one of those. Turning a manuscript into a press-ready, beautiful, correct book takes all of them working together — which is exactly what Cantos is.
The result is work that passes professional scrutiny and real-world standards: print-ready files that sail through KDP and IngramSpark preflight, typography that reads like a designer set it, and covers built to exact spine and trim specs. You get the quality of a professional production team — at a fraction of the cost and the wait.
Yes — and they're included, not an upcharge. Alongside your press-ready PDFs you receive the editable masters: a fully editable DOCX master of your interior, a layered Photoshop (PSD) master of your cover with every element — artwork, title, author name, spine text, back copy — on its own layer, and the background artwork on its own for your marketing. Your files are yours — download them and keep them.
Most formatting services either keep your project locked inside their app or charge hundreds for source files. We think you should own your book — all of it. See exactly what's delivered on our Output Files & Specs page.
Vellum and Atticus are do-it-yourself formatting tools — you buy the software, learn it, pick a template, and lay out every page yourself (and Vellum only runs on a Mac). They're good tools. But they only do the interior — no cover, no marketing — and the work is all yours.
Cantos does the work for you. You upload your manuscript and it reads it, makes the professional design decisions, and hands back a finished interior, a custom cover, and a complete marketing kit — on any device, in minutes. It's the difference between buying a power drill and hiring a carpenter. If you love driving the software yourself, those tools are great. If you'd rather hand it to an expert and get a finished, print-ready book, that's us — from the team behind the design templates 70,000+ authors already trust.
At $99.99 to start, Cantos out-values both ends of the market. It's less than the do-it-yourself apps — Atticus is $147 and Vellum is $249 — and unlike those tools, it's done for you, not handed to you to learn and operate. And it's a world apart from the free "AI book" tools, which make one quick pass through a small model and hand you the rough, one-shot results the internet calls "AI slop" — which you then spend days fixing.
Cantos works like a professional studio. It runs on the best, highest-end AI models available and puts your manuscript through many specialized passes — structure, copy editing, typography, layout, cover design, and quality review — each one checked and refined. That depth costs real computing power on every single book, and it took years of work to build and tune.
What you get back is a book that's actually ready to publish — files that sail through KDP and IngramSpark, typography that reads like a designer set it — not a draft you have to rescue. Better results than the cheap tools, done for you unlike the apps, for less than you'd expect.
Yes — watch a full walkthrough of the whole process from start to finish. See exactly how a manuscript becomes a print-ready interior, and how Cantos designs a complete cover, step by step.
Your book is yours. The story, the voice, the years of work, the imagination — that's you, and nothing here changes a word of it without your say-so. We are not in the business of writing or replacing your art. We are in the business of getting your finished creative work across the finish line and out into the world.
Think of Cantos as a tool, not the author — the way a word processor, a camera, or a printing press is a tool. The hard, beautiful, human work of making the book is already done by you. What used to take weeks of fighting with margins, fonts, spine widths, and export settings — or thousands of dollars and a long wait on a designer — now takes minutes, so your brainchild reaches readers while the fire is still in you.
We love creators. We love the art, the joy, the imagination, and the knowledge that human beings bring into the world. AI doesn't take any of that away — here, it simply clears the technical hurdles between your manuscript and a professional, published book. You bring the creativity. We just help you cross the finish line.
Cantos is built for books where the words carry the weight — both fiction and non-fiction. That includes literary and genre fiction (mystery, thriller, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, historical), memoir and essay collections, and text-forward non-fiction: business and leadership, self-help and personal growth, and how-to and instructional books. We also offer a dedicated large-print design (Magnificent) for accessible editions — clear 14-point typography, best paired with our 7"×10" or 8.5"×11" trim sizes. We're not the right fit for children's picture books, cookbooks, photography books, illustrated reference, or textbooks — anything that needs custom page-by-page art direction.
PDF/X-1a (print-ready with all fonts embedded — works for paperback and hardcover), DOCX (Word), and ePub 3 (the universal eBook standard for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and other readers). All three in every order.
Your interior is professionally formatted in grayscale (black & white) — the standard for novels, memoirs, and literary books. It also keeps your printing cost low: color interior printing costs significantly more per copy, which would eat into your royalties. Photos in your manuscript come through in crisp grayscale, and interiors use clean professional margins (no full-bleed, edge-to-edge interior printing). Your cover is designed in full color, and your eBook keeps your images in full color too — the grayscale conversion applies only to the print edition.
Each component you buy adds Universal Revision Passes to one shared pool you can spend on anything — formatting, grammar, cover image, or cover typography. Interior includes 10, Cover 20, Grammar 5, and the Marketing and Book Premiere Kit 5 — so the Full Package comes with 40 passes pooled together. Most authors are done in a round or two. Need more? A Universal Revision Pass is $25 for 5, usable on any step — each re-generation is one pass.
Human designers typically include 2–3 rounds of revisions and then bill by the hour for additional changes — that's how revision costs balloon. We just include far more: a generous shared pool that grows with whatever you buy, and if you ever want more they're $25 for 5 — one simple pass that works on your interior, grammar, or cover alike.
Checkout is securely powered by PayPal. Pay with your PayPal balance, or with any major credit or debit card — Visa, Mastercard, American Express, or Discover — no PayPal account required. Your card details go straight to PayPal over an encrypted connection; we never see or store them.
At checkout, PayPal may also offer Pay in 4 (split your purchase into four payments) or other financing options — at PayPal's discretion and subject to their eligibility — a handy way to spread the cost of your book over time. Availability and terms are set by PayPal, not BookDesignerAI.
Cover Studio designs your book's cover and outputs three files per project: paperback wrap (front + spine + back, with bleed and exact spine width calculated from your page count), hardcover case wrap (with hinges and trim), and eBook front cover. Each file is sized to spec for KDP, IngramSpark, and Lulu — upload and publish.
Cantos starts by reading your title, author, and your cover brief, then generates three concept directions for you to choose from. Pick one, and Cantos picks fonts and colors that match your book's mood — then tell it what to change and it refines the design. Output is print-ready PDF/X-1a (the publishing standard) plus high-res JPG — and you can check every printer you publish with (Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, Lulu) to receive press-ready files for each, sized to that printer's own spine and bleed spec.
A cover is $99.99 (or 3 books for $199.99). Add it to any project in the cart — pair it with an Interior and the bundle discount kicks in automatically — or buy it standalone if you've already formatted your interior elsewhere.
Yes. Bring a front-cover image or a full wrap (back + spine + front) and Cantos does the rest — your title and author set as real typography, and print-ready files built to your publisher's exact specs. Bring a front-only image and Cantos gives the spine and back a complementary color drawn from your artwork, so the whole wrap feels designed. Perfect for authors working with an illustrator, or with artwork they already love. Same price either way.
Generic AI image tools give you a square JPG. Beautiful, sometimes — but a book cover isn't a JPG, it's a precisely dimensioned wrap with a spine, hinges (for hardcover), bleed, and per-platform safety zones. Cover Studio handles all of that: spine width is computed from your page count and paper stock; trim and bleed match your book's exact dimensions; safety margins are auto-checked on every text element; output is print-ready PDF/X-1a sized to KDP, IngramSpark, and Lulu specs. Upload directly — no cropping, no guesswork.
Six descriptions and copy pieces (back cover, Amazon, short, long, 100-word, hook/pitch), four Amazon & retail assets (keywords, keyword boxes, BISAC, comp titles), and eight author/media pieces (author bios, press release, bookstore pitch, social posts, interview questions, cover brief, publishing checklist). All generated from your manuscript.
Word can absolutely produce a professional book — with the right templates. We've sold Word book design templates at BookDesignTemplates.com since 2011; that's the right route for DIY authors and for genres we don't handle here (cookbooks, children's, illustrated nonfiction).
Cantos is the done-for-you path for novels, memoirs, and fine literary work. Upload, and it handles interior layout, print-ready PDF, ePub, copy editing, and a complete marketing kit — in minutes. ChatGPT can draft copy but can't produce press-ready files. Cantos can.
Your projects and files stay on your account, ready to download whenever you need them. We still recommend downloading your final PDF, DOCX, and ePub and keeping your own copy — a good backup habit for any author.
Your work, your copyright. Everything you upload — manuscript, metadata, cover artwork direction — stays yours. BookDesignerAI claims no copyright on your book. The copyright page does NOT carry a BookDesignerAI copyright line; the only attribution is the optional "Design Assisted by BookDesignerAI" credit, which you can remove from Book Details.
How AI processes your content. Cantos uses leading AI providers to read your manuscript, generate cover artwork, audit layouts, and produce marketing materials. Your content is sent over a secure connection ONLY for the duration of the API call needed to produce your requested output:
- Your data is NOT used to train AI models. The providers we work with operate under contracts that prohibit using customer API inputs/outputs as training data.
- Limited retention by the AI provider. AI providers typically retain API inputs/outputs for up to 30 days for abuse-prevention and trust & safety review only, after which the data is deleted from their systems.
- No third-party sharing. We do not sell, license, syndicate, or share your manuscript or cover artwork with anyone outside the AI provider needed for the work you asked us to do.
You can delete your data or your account at any time. Your Account page has two buttons under Data privacy: "Delete all files and projects" wipes your data but keeps your account active for future books. "Delete my entire account" wipes everything including your identifying information. Both actions are permanent and irreversible. Anonymized purchase records survive only for refund / chargeback / billing-compliance audit trails per EU and California law.
Your book deserves this.
Join 70,000+ authors who trust our designs — and give your book the shepherd it deserves. Lovingly crafted, ready to publish.