One Free Chapter in About a Minute · No Credit Card

You wrote the book.
Now watch it become a real one.

See it happen to your own words, free. Pick a design and send the manuscript you have. Cantos, your professionally trained AI book shepherd, sets one chapter of your book and shows you the page, in about a minute. Like what you see and it builds the whole book, still free, as a beautifully typeset watermarked proof. No credit card. You only pay when you are ready for your full-resolution, unwatermarked files.

Pick a look for your book · twenty designs

Atlanta · Literary

Nin · Memoir

Leadership · Business

Noir · Thriller

Bard · Fantasy

Asimov · Sci-Fi

Inspire · Self-Help

Historian · Historical

Elite · Classic

Magnificent · Large Print

Brisk · Modern

Indie · Novel

Lightning · Bold

Minimalist · Clean

Pulp · Genre

Spark · Fresh

See One Chapter of My Book →

Bring your manuscript as a Word document (.docx). An older .doc, an .rtf or an .odt works too, and Cantos converts it for you. Make your free account, choose your file, and your chapter is on the screen in about a minute. The whole book is free too, whenever you want it.

Free forever. No credit card, ever. You keep the copyright to every word.

Your manuscript is never used to train AI. Ever.

Before: the Word document

The First Images

On July 11, 2022, the White House released a single photograph: a patch of sky the apparent size of a grain of sand held at arm's length, crowded with thousands of galaxies. Webb's First Deep Field, centered on the cluster SMACS 0723, took less than a day of observing time. Hubble's comparable deep fields had taken weeks.

The next morning brought the rest: the spectrum of water vapor in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-96b; the death-shroud of a dying star in the Southern Ring Nebula; the compact dance of Stephan's Quintet; and the image that ended up on posters everywhere, the Cosmic Cliffs of the Carina Nebula, a coastline of dust and starlight seven light-years tall.

After: the same pages, designed by Cantos The same passage professionally typeset by Cantos: real margins, running heads, figures, and chapter openings

The same passage professionally typeset by Cantos: real margins, running heads, figures, and chapter openings

The very same words, before and after. This is the difference between a book that looks generated and one that looks crafted by a designer. See it happen to yours, free.

Do not take our word for it. This is a real book we designed, and you can inspect both files yourself:

↓ The Word Manuscript (.docx) Open the Finished Book (PDF)

How It Works

Three steps. About a minute for the first one. No payment.

1Upload your manuscript

Any Word document. Raw, messy, half-formatted, it does not matter. Cantos cleans it up before a single page is laid out.

2Choose your design

Pick from twenty professional designs built for memoirs, novels, business books, and more. Not sure? Set your chapter in one, then in another: five test chapters a day, so everybody gets a turn.

3Then Cantos builds your whole book

One click from your chapter. You get a professionally typeset, watermarked proof of your entire book to open, read, and hold up to the light, with no limit on how many books you build. See your finished book before you spend a cent.

Prefer the Full Tour First?

Watch a whole book come to life.

We filmed the complete, unhurried walkthrough: a real manuscript becoming a finished book, interior and cover, start to end. Twenty minutes, nothing skipped, nothing staged. Or skip the film and try it on your own book; that only takes a few minutes.

▶ Watch the Full Walkthrough

One App, The Whole Book

Cantos handles the full stack.

Interior, cover, copy editing, and the marketing kit, all in one place, each $99.99, with bundles that save up to $150. Start with your free interior preview today and add the rest whenever you are ready.

InteriorYou are here. Try it free. CoverThree complete designs. You choose. Copy EditingThree ways to work, your voice kept. Marketing Kitaround 30 pieces, written from your book.

Why We Built This

A note from Tracy Atkins, founder

Fifteen years ago, my team and I started BookDesignTemplates.com because first-time authors kept telling us the same thing: I wrote the book, but I have no idea how to make it look like a real one. Since then more than 70,000 authors have trusted our designs, and more than 300,000 books have been published with our work inside them.

Cantos is the next step. It is not a gimmick that spits out AI slop for you to fix. It is a professionally trained book designer that reads every word you wrote and sets it with a craftsman's care, so your book looks made, not generated.

And your words stay yours. We claim no copyright on your book. We never use your manuscript to train AI. We built this for authors, by people who have spent their lives around books. You bring the story. We help you cross the finish line.

Tracy Atkins, founder

Before You Upload

The questions every author asks us first.

Is my manuscript safe and private?

Yes. Your manuscript is sent over a secure, encrypted connection only for the moment it takes Cantos to design your pages. We never sell, license, or share it with anyone. You can delete your files or your entire account at any time, permanently, from your account page.

Will my book be used to train AI?

No. Never. The AI providers we work with operate under contracts that expressly prohibit using your manuscript to train their models. Your words are yours. This is the promise we take most seriously.

Is it really free?

Yes, genuinely free. Your test chapter is free, and so is the whole book: Cantos builds every page of it and shows it to you as a watermarked proof at no cost, with no credit card. Test chapters are limited to five a day so everybody gets a turn; building whole books is not limited at all. You only pay if you decide you want the full, watermark-free files.

What happens after the proof?

You download a watermarked PDF of your whole book to keep and review, and your free account keeps it for you so you can come back any time. If you love it, you can unlock your full-resolution, unwatermarked files starting at $99.99, with no deadline. Your project waits for you. If you are not ready, nothing happens. No charges, no pressure.

What if I don't like it?

Try another design. A test chapter takes about a minute, so you can see your book in a few different looks before you decide anything. And when you do buy, every book comes with a generous pool of revision passes, so you can tell Cantos exactly what to change until it is right.

Do I keep the rights to my book?

Completely. BookDesignerAI claims no copyright on your book, ever. The small optional "Design Assisted by BookDesignerAI" credit on the copyright page is yours to keep or remove with one checkbox. Your work is yours, start to finish.

What kinds of books can Cantos format?

Text-forward books, both fiction and non-fiction: novels, memoirs, business and leadership, self-help, how-to. It even handles the hard things that break ordinary tools, like footnotes, endnotes, tables, and numbered lists that stay numbered. It is not built for children's picture books, cookbooks, or heavily illustrated books.

You wrote the book.Now watch it become a real one.