AI book cover design just went mainstream — but a cover is still a decision
AI cover design has gone mainstream — but a cover is a marketing decision, not a picture. Why genre conventions, the thumbnail test, and…
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Custom Book Studio — Journal
Month: July 2026
AI book illustration just went studio-grade — what it means for your book
AI image tools just crossed into studio-grade quality — 4K in seconds, believable light, and legible in-image text. Here's what that shift means when…
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How Pizza Pete was made
Pizza Pete is a 32-page felt-styled hardcover made end to end in Custom Book Studio. Here are the actual design prompts behind every section…
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Classic Cocktails: fifty recipes, printed as an Art Deco hardcover
A look inside Classic Cocktails — fifty classic drinks set as a real Art Deco hardcover with full-page photography. Flip through the spreads and…
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What Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement means for authors
A federal judge has approved Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement with authors whose pirated books trained its AI — the largest copyright payout in U.S.…
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Watchers in Stone: designing a book that is half photograph, half history
How we built Watchers in Stone — fifty concrete gargoyles, each a full-bleed plate facing a page of real history — and the strict…
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From one idea to a bound book: how we made Dash
A behind-the-scenes walkthrough of the Custom Book Studio process — brief, cast, story, illustration, cover and a live 3D proof — using our demo…
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Ebook & epub: the book type with no binding at all
An ebook is one reflowable epub file that adapts to any phone, tablet or e-reader — searchable, accessible and with no inventory to print…
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Hardcover, Smythe sewn: the binding built to lie flat and last
A Smythe-sewn hardcover is built from folded signatures sewn together with thread and cased into hard boards — lay-flat, archival and heirloom-grade, with no…
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Softcover, perfect bound: the trade-paperback spine explained
Perfect binding glues a scored cover to a stack of single leaves to make the familiar softcover trade paperback — clean, classic and bookstore-ready,…
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