Factory Pass
One manuscript through the studio's book factory
A pass takes one manuscript through the whole protocol: a transmittal (your spec — trim size, typeface, front matter, the decisions a typesetter would ask you about), an authoring template generated from that spec (optional — an existing draft needs only its heading styles), a conformance preflight that tells you where your file departs from it, and a build that yields a print-ready PDF and an EPUB from that one .docx. Machine-typeset in the studio's house style, with licensed print fonts. There is no software to learn: you stay in your own editor — Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice, Pages, anything that saves a .docx.
What's included
- 1 project — one manuscript, one transmittal, one book spec.
- Unlimited preflights. Checking your file costs nothing, ever.
- Unlimited proofs, 3 finals. A build makes both files: the EPUB and a typeset PDF at your trim size. Proofs are free and unlimited — the proof PDF carries a small PROOF line along the foot of every page. When it reads right, export a final: the same build, clean, ready for a printer; that is the one that uses a credit. Read the EPUB first — it’s the quickest way to see how the machine understood your file — then check the PDF. The EPUB is what Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo and IngramSpark all take; there is no separate .mobi to make.
- 6 months of storage and downloads.
- Your generated authoring template — a file with your styles in it (.docx, or .odt for LibreOffice Writer), yours to keep. Optional: see Bring your manuscript.
- Every build kept. Build 1 is still there when you make build 3.
What's not
- Human time. No email support — see Support for what a human costs.
- Typst source. You get the outputs and the template, not the typesetting code.
- A different manuscript. A pass is bound to one book; a second title is a second pass. Revising the same book and rebuilding is a build, not a new pass.
- Cover design. Interiors only.
Price
Purchasing opens after the September workshop; workshop attendees receive a pass with their seat. If you want one before then, or want to be told when it opens, write to j@djinna.com.
Everything under “What's included” is in that number.
Add-ons
| Add-on | What it is | Price |
|---|---|---|
| +3 finals | Three more final exports on the same pass, EPUB and clean print PDF each time. | $99 |
| +6 months storage | Keeps the project rebuildable and downloadable. | $29 |
| Index | A real back-of-book index — topics, run-in subentries, see and see also, page numbers resolved at build time so it stays right after every rebuild. Drafted by the factory in a few minutes, reviewed and edited by you on the factory page before it goes into a build. | $100 |
| Preflight Review | A human reads your file and its preflight report, and sends one written reply listing what to fix. No back-and-forth. | $75 |
| Live help | Screen-share with the studio. One-hour minimum, booked in advance — pick a time. | $100/hr |
| Studio typesetting | The book set by hand, by a person, to your design. When the factory isn't the right tool. | from $800 |
Bring your manuscript — from any editor
You do not need Word, and you do not need to move your text into our template. The factory reads one thing from your file: the name of each paragraph's style. Every editor that saves .docx — Word, Word for the web, Google Docs, LibreOffice Writer, Apple Pages — has the two names that matter, and a two-word marker covers the rest.
- Chapter titles → Heading 1. Part titles too. This is how the factory finds your chapters.
- Sub-heads → Heading 2 (and Heading 3 if you use them).
- Special paragraphs → a marker. Type
[[quote]]at the start of a block quotation,[[verse]]for a poem,[[epigraph]],[[code]]for computer text,[[break]]for a scene break,[[signature]]under a foreword. Close a run of paragraphs with[[/quote]], or mark each one. The build applies the style and removes the marker; Inspect lists them under “Marked styles” so you can see it understood you.Italics and bold pass through as they are. Nothing else in your file is read. - Export .docx → Inspect. File → Download → Microsoft Word in Docs; Save As → Word 2007–365 in Writer; Export To → Word in Pages. Inspect is free and unlimited: it tells you what it found before you spend a build.
Starting from a blank page? The template generated from your transmittal is the comfortable way: every style is already in the Styles gallery. It comes as .docx for Word and as .odt for LibreOffice Writer (free, offline, Mac/Windows/Linux). Google Docs cannot hold custom styles, so in Docs use the markers. Apple Pages renames Heading 1 on export; if Pages is your editor, run Inspect and tell us what it says — we are working on it.
A book a week? The same contract holds for a press: the markers are plain text, so a house style guide can say “[[quote]] before every extract” and any author, in any editor, produces a file the factory reads. For scripted intake there is the API.
How a build works
- Transmittal. Answer the spec questions once — trim size, typeface, front and back matter, how chapters open.Output: your book spec + an authoring template (.docx / .odt) generated from it, if you want one.
- Upload your .docx. From any editor that saves Word files — see Bring your manuscript. Nothing to install.
- Inspect. The preflight reads your file against your spec and lists what conforms and what doesn't.Free, unlimited, as many times as you like.
- Build. Build a proof (free, as often as you like): EPUB and a PROOF-stamped print PDF. Read the EPUB first; when it reads right, check the PDF, then export a final — the clean PDF.Proofs are free. Each final uses 1 of your 3.
- Download. PDF, EPUB and the preflight report, from your project page, for six months.
The deliverable is a correctly typeset PDF and EPUB of the manuscript as it conforms to your transmittal. The preflight tells you what doesn't conform — that's the honest broker between your file and the machine, and it runs as often as you want, as do proofs, before you spend a final. Failed finals (the factory erroring out) are not counted against you.
How it runs — who does what
The same five steps, read as lanes. You only ever touch the top lane. The Studio lane is the visible part of the factory: it holds your spec, checks your file against it, and runs the chain. The Machine lane is programs installed on the factory's server: python-docx reads and writes Word files; Pandoc reads the .docx once and, steered by our Lua filters (which carry Word style names across into typographic meaning), emits Typst source and EPUB3; Typst compiles the print PDF. The bottom lane is what comes back to you.
Inspect and proofs are free and repeatable; only exporting a final spends a credit. Nothing in the Machine lane sees your file except through the Studio lane, and the licensed print fonts never leave the PDF.
Storage & privacy
Your project stays live for 6 months from redemption: rebuildable, downloadable, all outputs kept. After that it goes read-only for 30 days — you can still download everything, you just can't build. Then the source manuscript and the outputs are purged. We keep only metadata: title, dates, build counts.
For unpublished work that is the point, not a limitation: your manuscript does not sit on someone's server forever. If you want longer, take the storage extension before the read-only window closes.
The rest of the fine print — what is delivered, how finals count, whose rights are whose, what the factory does not do — is ten short points on the terms page.
Support edges
Email support is not included in a Factory Pass. Your preflight report is the support. It is written to tell you exactly what to fix, in your own file, in whatever editor you write in — and you can run it as many times as you like, for free, before spending a final.
If you want a human:
- Preflight Review — $75. One .docx plus its preflight report; one written reply listing what to fix.
- Live help — $100/hr, one-hour minimum, booked in advance.
- Studio typesetting — from $800. A person sets the book.
Workshop attendees: the four sessions (Sep 21–22) are the included human time. After the workshop, the edges above apply.
Have your own factory? It's an API
Everything this page describes happens through six HTTP calls, and you can make them yourself. Upload a .docx, run the inspection, spend a build credit, poll, download the PDF and EPUB — from curl, a 90-line stdlib Python script, or whatever already runs your press. Same pass, same credits, same outputs; the browser is optional.
Read the recipe → Six calls, every response shown, error table at the end.
Redeem a pass
Have a code from a workshop seat or from the studio? Redeem it here and we'll set up your project. Fields marked * are required.