Publishing

ePUB2 is the older standard — fine for plain text books and still accepted everywhere. ePUB3 supports audio, video, MathML, fixed layouts and much better accessibility. Most retailers now expect ePUB3. If your book is straight prose, either works. If it has equations, media or accessibility requirements, go ePUB3. We produce both.

Reflowable is the default: text resizes and reflows to fit any screen, which is what novel and textbook readers expect. Fixed layout locks each page exactly as designed — right for children's picture books, cookbooks and heavily designed pages. Fixed layout costs more per page and reads poorly on phones, so use it only where design genuinely matters.

Word files, PDFs, InDesign packages, QuarkXPress and FrameMaker files, LaTeX, HTML, even printed books or scans. Clean Word or InDesign source is cheapest to convert. PDFs take more work. Scans need OCR or rekeying first. Send whatever you have and we will tell you the most economical route.

Yes. JATS for journal articles, BITS for books, DocBook for technical documentation, plus custom DTDs and schemas if your house has one. We validate every file against the DTD before delivery, so it loads into your production system without surprises. Send the DTD and a sample document and we will quote from those.

It depends on the scan. Clean modern print OCRs well, and we correct the output against the page images. Old, faded or complex pages — tables, footnotes, non-Latin scripts — are often faster and more accurate to rekey, typically double-keyed by two operators and compared. We look at sample pages and recommend whichever gets the accuracy you need at lower cost.

Copyediting fixes the writing — grammar, consistency, style, unclear sentences — and happens before typesetting. Proofreading is the final check after layout, catching typos, bad line breaks and formatting slips. They are separate passes by different people. If your manuscript has already been edited, you only need proofreading. If not, skipping copyediting usually shows in the finished book.

Yes. We produce ePUB3 files that follow the ePUB Accessibility specification and WCAG: proper heading structure, reading order, alt text for images, accessible tables, navigable contents. We can write image descriptions or work from yours. Many markets and institutional buyers now require this, so it is worth building in from the start rather than retrofitting.

Yes. We embed the standard metadata inside each ePUB — title, contributors, ISBN, language, accessibility data — and we can prepare or update ONIX records for your distributor feed. If you give us a metadata spreadsheet for a batch of titles, we apply it across the run so every file goes out consistent.

Per page for conversion and typesetting, per title for batches of similar books. The rate depends on complexity: plain prose is the base rate; tables, equations, footnotes, images and poetry cost more because they need hand attention. Volume brings the per-title price down. Send one representative title and we will give you a firm quote.

A straightforward novel from clean source: a few working days including QA. Complex textbooks with maths and tables: longer, often two to three weeks. Batches run in parallel, so 100 titles does not take 100 times as long. We run 24/7, which helps with deadlines. Tell us your date and we will plan the schedule around it.

Yes, and we would rather you did. Send one representative title — ideally a tricky one — and we convert it free or at a nominal rate as a pilot. You check the output, your distributor checks the files, and we agree the spec. The pilot becomes the reference standard for the rest of the run.

Every ePUB passes epubcheck with zero errors before it leaves us. Beyond that, we proof the rendered book on actual reading systems — Apple Books, Kindle Previewer, Adobe Digital Editions — checking contents links, images, special characters and page breaks. XML is validated against the DTD. A second person signs off; the converter never QAs their own file.

We fix them at no charge. Report anything that is our error — conversion mistakes, validation failures, rendering problems — and we turn corrected files around quickly, usually within a day or two. Changes to the content itself, like author corrections, are new work, but small ones are cheap since we hold the source.

Yes, that is regular work for us. We start with a pilot batch to fix the spec, then run the rest on a schedule — typically in monthly deliveries so your team can check files at a steady pace. Mixed inputs are fine; we sort titles by source type and price each group accordingly. Per-title rates drop at volume.

You do. On final payment, every deliverable — ePUBs, XML, InDesign packages, fonts licensing aside — belongs to you, with no ongoing fees or lock-in. We deliver the source files, not just the output, so any vendor can update them later. We can archive copies for you as a backup, but that is your choice.

Email us one or two sample titles and tell us the output you need — ePUB3, JATS XML, print PDF, whichever. We will assess the source, send a quote and a timeline, and usually offer a free pilot conversion. We will sign an NDA first if you want one. Most quotes go out within one working day.