Book Designer AI

Backlist Second Edition · Recover, Design, Cover

The book is out of print. The rights are still yours.

One purchase turns a book you can only read into a book you can publish again: the manuscript recovered from its PDF, the interior set fresh in a design you choose, and a new cover designed for it. $179.99 for all three on one book, and we tell you for free whether the recovery will work before a cent moves.

Check My PDF Free

The determination is free and commits you to nothing. If we cannot recover the book cleanly, we say so and charge you nothing at all.

Your book is never used to train AI. Ever.

One purchase, three steps
1. Recover The PDF of the printed book becomes a clean, editable manuscript: chapters, italics and footnotes intact, the page numbers and running heads gone.
2. Design You pick one of sixteen designs and a trim size, and Cantos sets the whole book again, page by page.
3. Cover Cover Studio designs a new cover for the new edition, built to your printer’s exact specifications.

The interior and the cover are yours from the moment you pay, so when the manuscript lands there is no second checkout waiting for you.

70,000+ Authors Served · 15 Years of Publishing Craft · 300,000+ Books Published

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.

As seen on  Amazon KDP · IngramSpark · BookBaby · Lightning Source · The Huffington Post · The Creative Penn · BAIPA · PBS

Who This Is For

The catalogue nobody can reopen.

The book is real, it printed, it sold, and the file it was made from is somewhere nobody can reach.

PublishersA backlist with no source files

The designer retired, the agency folded, or the layout files open in nothing anyone owns any more. The printed book and its PDF are all that survived, and the catalogue still has to be reissued and sold.

Estates and rights holdersA title coming back

You hold the rights to a book that went out of print before anybody kept digital masters. A second edition starts with getting the text back, and ends with a cover that looks like this decade.

AuthorsA book you want to publish properly this time

An old edition from a service that has closed, a cover you have outgrown, and corrections you have been carrying in your head for years. This is the whole job in one purchase.

Before You Pay Anything

The free determination comes first, always.

Upload the PDF and Cantos reads it on the spot, at no charge, and answers a plain yes or no with the numbers it measured. The bundle is only offered after a yes: nobody who has just been told no is sold a bigger thing.

A yes names the numbers

  • How many pages, and how many carry real text underneath
  • How many words were recovered
  • How many chapter headings and footnotes were found
  • Whether any page numbers or running heads leaked into the text
  • Anything counted but not carried across, named so you can look at it

A no costs you nothing

  • A PDF that is only pictures of printed pages is refused at the door, because we sell only what we can recover exactly
  • Text under the pages that reads as noise is refused too: we will not sell you a book full of guesses
  • A locked file is named, with what to do about it
  • In every case, no charge and the reason in plain words

What Arrives

A second edition, not a photocopy.

Each step hands the next one everything it needs, which is the whole reason to buy them together.

The manuscriptEditable, and yours to keep

US Letter, Times New Roman 12 point, double spaced: standard manuscript format. Chapters as real headings, bold and italics where they were, footnotes as real footnotes. The old edition’s title page, copyright page and contents come back in a separate file rather than being silently deleted, and a verification pass returns its corrections as tracked changes you accept or reject.

The interiorSet fresh, page by page

Sixteen designs, nine trim sizes, real front matter, running heads, drop folios and a contents page with true page numbers. You get the print-ready PDF, the editable DOCX master and the ePub. Your interior includes three revisions, as it always does.

The coverDesigned for the edition it belongs to

Cover Studio builds a paperback wrap or a hardcover case wrap at your printer’s exact size, with the spine calculated from the new page count, plus an eBook front cover and a layered master file. Your own artwork is welcome instead, if you have it.

The Price

One purchase for the whole reissue.

$179.99 per book

The conversion, the Interior component and the Cover component, on one project, paid once.

Bought one step at a time, the same three are the conversion at $99.99, the Interior and Cover pair at $149.99, less the $49.99 recovery credit that comes off the Interior. The bundle is priced below that sum, and it can never cost more than it: the comparison on your checkout card is computed from the live prices rather than typed, so the two can never drift apart.

The recovery credit is not given on top of the bundle, because the bundle already contains the Interior the credit would discount. It is the same discount, once.

This one is paid before the work runs, for the same reason the recovery is: the manuscript is a deliverable we cannot show you without giving it to you. The free determination is how we keep that fair. Refunds follow our usual policy, in the Terms.

Being Straight With You

What this is not.

By designNot a copy of the old design

The book is set again in one of our own sixteen designs, not rebuilt to look like the edition you are leaving behind. That is usually the point of a second edition, and if it is not, this is not the product for it.

Not includedNot copy editing, and not the marketing kit

Copy editing and the Marketing & Premiere Kit are separate components you can add whenever you like, on the same project. The bundle is the three steps named above and nothing else.

Your call, not oursNot a rights service

You must own or hold the rights to the text you upload. We do not adjudicate rights, and we convert only what you tell us is yours to convert.

If your PDF is a photograph of printed pages with no text underneath, the determination refuses it, free, and says why. We would rather lose the sale than sell a book full of guesses.

One App, The Whole Book

And whatever the edition needs next.

The reissue lands in the same place as everything else, so the rest of the work is a click rather than another supplier.

Why We Built This

A note from Tracy Atkins, founder

A publisher wrote to us about a backlist he could not touch. The books were printed, the books were selling, and the files behind them had died with a version of software nobody runs any more.

We built the recovery for him. What became obvious afterwards is that almost nobody wants only the manuscript: they want the book back on sale. The recovery is step one of three, and buying it as three separate decisions means three chances to stall.

So this is the same three steps as one decision, priced below what they cost apart. The part I care about most is what happens after the manuscript lands: your design and your cover are already paid for, so the next thing you see is your own book, set again.

Tracy Atkins, founder

Before You Start

The questions publishers ask.

What exactly do I get for one price?

Three things on one project: the recovered manuscript with its report, its set-aside file and its tracked-changes verification copy; the interior set fresh in a design you pick, as a print-ready PDF, an editable Word master and an ePub; and a new cover built to your printer's exact specifications, with an eBook front cover and a layered master file.

Am I actually saving money?

Yes. Buying the three steps one at a time costs the conversion, plus the Interior and Cover pair, less the recovery credit that comes off the Interior; the bundle is priced below that total and can never be priced above it. Your checkout card computes the comparison from the live prices, so the number you see there is the one that counts. The bigger reason is certainty: there is no second checkout waiting when the manuscript lands.

Do I still get the recovery credit toward the interior?

No, and nothing is being taken from you. The credit exists to discount the Interior for somebody who bought only the recovery. The bundle already contains that Interior, so the discount is already in the price. It is the same money, once.

What if the determination says no?

Then you are charged nothing and told why in plain words. The bundle is only ever offered after a yes, so a book we cannot recover is never sold a reissue.

Can I choose the design myself?

Yes. When the manuscript lands you pick from sixteen designs and nine trim sizes, exactly as any other author does, and Cantos sets the book in the one you choose. Cover Studio is already open at that point too, because the cover is part of what you bought.

Will the new book look like the old one?

Only in the ways you choose. This is a second edition: one of our designs, a new cover, your text. It is not a rebuild of the old edition's layout, and rebuilding old layouts is not something we do.

Does it include copy editing or the marketing kit?

No. Those are separate components and you can add either to the same project at any time. We would rather sell you a bundle that says plainly what is in it.

What happens if I ask for a refund?

The usual policy applies, and it is in our Terms. A partial refund changes nothing: you keep the manuscript, the interior and the cover. A full refund withholds all three and takes the entitlements back, because a full refund means the work was not wanted.

I have fifty titles. Can you do a catalogue?

Yes, and please write to us at cantos@bookdesigner.ai before you start rather than uploading fifty files one at a time. Tell us roughly how many titles and how they were originally produced, and we will run the free determination across a sample first.

Bring the book back.

The determination is free, the answer is honest, and the second edition is one purchase away.

Check My PDF Free

Free determination first. Never used to train AI.

Check My PDF Free