Bo Bennett on Creating Print Ready PDFs

HOST: Bo, great to have you back for episode 24. You know, you said something in our very first conversation that has basically been the thesis of everything we've mapped out since: "It's not difficult to publish a book; it's difficult to publish a *profitable* one." Every tool we've talked about has been closing that gap from a different angle. Today I want to get into DocToPrint.com, which might be the most quietly essential piece in that pipeline—because if your interior formatting is wrong, nothing else matters. Let's start with the origin: what problem at eBookIt made you build this self-serve formatter? GUEST: There's actually a couple problems. One was the expense of doing it. And I have to admit in the later years, like more recently, it we found somebody to do it incredibly affordable. It's very cheap. Um however, it still took multiple days. That's kind of the trade-off. So, we had to tell our clients, "Well, you need to wait for like three or four days before we can get you a document back." And then, of course, there are the edits. They're going to say, "Well, could you move this here? Could you change this?" And each time, that's like a day or two, sometimes even three or four days. So, it it could take like literally weeks to get a formatted document, even though it wasn't that expensive. That was the major problem. So, that's what prompted me to create something where not only would it be incredibly cheap, much cheaper than than paying a formatter to do it. But being able to to make those changes, make those edits instantly, and have your document ready in like 15 minutes. HOST: So you're solving for both cost and time here, which obviously brings down the barrier for a lot of authors. You mentioned the edits though. Is that why you built that free watermarked preview? So, they can make those changes before they actually have to pay for the final product. GUEST: Well, it the watermarked is really just so they could see what kind of product that they're going to get. Uh the changes don't come then. The changes would come after. Um I I guess technically they could make the changes and and keep on getting the watermarked version. That's fine. But a lot of people are skeptical that AI could really pull something like this off. So, that's why we just let them go ahead and do it, create it. Here's your document. Yes, it has the watermarks on it. And if you like it, well, you you pay the fee and then we um we give you the full version. HOST: Got it. So, it's more of a quality assurance thing for the skeptical author. You also made the decision to stick within the Word constraint, but you mentioned in your own blog that professional book design has mostly moved to InDesign or Affinity Publisher. Why stick with Word for this tool? Is that where effectively all of your customers are starting anyway? GUEST: Yes, without a doubt. Again, more than 95% of our users have Word documents, and that's their starting point. There are those 5% or so that that do have an InDesign file or something else that's not compatible with the system. And for them, we offer the link to the person we used to use on Fiverr, who again does a wonderful job. It just takes a lot longer. HOST: It seems like that partnership with Fiverr is a pretty consistent theme across a lot of your projects. But for that 95% who *do* have Word documents, what are the most common mistakes you see people make when they're trying to format their own interior print PDFs? You know, what's the tool actually fixing under the hood for them? GUEST: It's usually organization. They don't have a table of contents, which is fine because that gets that gets put in, you know, by word. But the the problem is they don't have the the correct heading structure, like the H1, H2, H3, and so forth. So, it it's difficult to for any automated system to be able to identify what they actually mean. Like, only the author really knows what what their organization is supposed to be. Like, okay, is this a main chapter, or is this a subheader? And if you don't if if it's not obvious with the size of the text or with the correct styling, then nobody really knows. So, we try to make that clear to the customer in initially. Like, this is the only thing you really need to do, and that's make sure your headings are correct. Once you do that, then the system can take over from there and and do a fantastic job in making the document look and making the document look pristine and ready for print. But you need to make sure that you have the headings right. HOST: It sounds like clarity in the author's intent is key to making that process seamless. You also mentioned a recent update back in May of 2026 where you added the ability to upload PDFs and convert them into Word before formatting. What prompted that change? Were you seeing a lot of authors coming with already generated PDFs from other sources that they wanted to clean up? GUEST: This wasn't a historical ad in that in the 15 years I've been doing this, we have a lot of people who don't have the source document anymore. They only have the PDF. And if just a quick understanding, you can't write a document in PDF. Like you don't create a document in PDF. PDF is like a photocopy, let's say of of the document or a digital copy. But you you need a a source. Where that document actually comes from. And typically it's word document. But some people lost that over the years and they just have a PDF. So for that, we do have a conversion process that's connected to Dr. Print, but it is separated. There is a separate fee for that. And it can convert your doc and use AI to reassemble it. It's it's it's it's historically a very messy process and it's not easy to do. And I mean, I've literally spent over 20 hours on on certain documents trying to get it right in the old days. But with AI, it could be done a lot more efficiently. But there's still are some some manual checks you need to do. I don't trust it 100%. So that's why I still tell users uh just if you have a word document, use it. If you can't find it, try to find it, and if you can't find it, then then the PDF is good. HOST: It definitely sounds like you've integrated a crucial lifeline for those kinds of scenarios, even with the caveat that Word is still the cleaner starting point. You offer a lot of these standalone focused tools, like PromptBud for AI prompts. But with this print formatter, you've now connected it directly to BookCovers.pro on one side and SelfPublishing.pro on the other. Was that the original vision, or did those integrations come about after you saw how authors were actually using the pipeline? GUEST: The integrations usually come as a result of of what? The authors are asking for and what they need and that's the typical formula I try to follow. HOST: That makes perfect sense. You're letting the user drive the development pipeline. Before we go—for listeners who want to follow up on what we covered, where can they find you and the work you're doing? GUEST: Archieboy.com, you could find all my sites and specifically for the site we're talking about, doc2print.com. HOST: Great. Bo, thank you so much for sharing the thinking behind DocToPrint. I really love that focus on solving for that 95% of use cases. And thank YOU for spending part of your day with us. Let's get you back on soon because there's plenty more we can cover, but until next time—that's a wrap.