Pine Harbour is getting a nice, warm, cozy FLANNEL update!
This blog post is going to be in two parts. First, I’m excited to share a project that I’ve been working on for a year; and second, I’m going to share how I did it for authors who are confused about this emerging formatting option.
So the project I’ve been working on is updating the first eight Pine Harbour books to be available in first person dual POV instead of the original third person dual POV. At first I started to do this for the ten-year anniversary special edition paperbacks, but then reader interest was so high that I decided to make them available as the default ebook version, too.
And then the software that I use to format my books (Vellum) issued a big update, announcing that page decorations (for example, borders) could now be added as part of the end stage formatting.
Very cool.
Very curious. I already did an edge design for my Ainsley Booth hockey books, so I’m familiar with it as a very last step option, but that has some limitations (more on that later if you’re curious).
And with this big announcement came some fresh author discussion about all the different ways to do it (and there are a variety of ways!), so I decided to try out a new automated service. (I’ve now used three different partners to do forced edges, and they’re all fine, and they all have a bit of a learning curve - more on that later on).
Anyway, the important TL;dr end result is… I’m now going to have a very pretty Flannel Shirt edition of these new 1st person books, available on Amazon in most countries.
If you’re a reader, that’s it! That’s the announcement! These books will roll out over the summer. Book 1 is now available, books 2-4 will come out this week (now that I’ve seen how it works on the first one, I’m confident I can quickly get the next three up). Books 5-8 are still on the project list for conversion, so as I update those, that’s when they’ll get these print editions, too.
If you are an author and confused about forced edge design, keep reading! I’m going to share what I know.
Okay, so to understand how I did this, first you must understand that I don’t really know. As in, I didn’t actually do this myself! This is an advanced tech thing that takes a lot of energy to figure out, and my hat is off to everyone who has done that. I will happily pay them money because it’s not really a DIY thing.
But, if you understand computer coding, it might be a DIY thing for you.
Here is the basic process as a customer/client: I send my regular interior book file (in .pdf format) to the forced edge producer, along with a .png file of my edge design (what I want to be visible when the book is closed). For the one above, it was this pink and grey checkerboard flannel plaid. The dimensions of this .png file will be determined by your page count, just like the spine width on your paperback is, and the specific dimensions will be provided by whoever does your edge design. If you use PrintedEdges.com for example, you can upload your .pdf interior and it will give you the dimensions that exact .pdf needs for the top and side designs. (For my 384 page book at 5x8 inches trim size, it’s something like 45 pixels wide by 594 pixels tall for the long side, and 45x369 pixels for the top/bottom sides)
Once I know those dimensions, I use Canva to make the image I want the closed pages to create.
Note: This basic process can be done with ANY .pdf interior file, there’s nothing about this process that requires Vellum. You do want to make sure that your file is set up with full bleed margins, though! Not all formatting software does that automatically (Vellum doesn’t, either; it only turns that on if you have a full-bleed image in your manuscript, so look for that under Print Settings and make sure you turn it on).
This has been around for a few years, and I have a bunch of these books, as I said above.
This week (June 2025), Vellum (the software I use), announced that the latest version allows you to import edge designs earlier in the process. And honestly, while I am a big Vellum fan (big), I think their explanation lacked in clarity. So this blog post is going to be an attempt to explain how it works from my POV, because I’ve now done it their way, too.
This is that work flow:
Printed Edges is currently working on adding this to their website.
A few things I’ve noticed: it takes a LONG time for Vellum to integrate this edge design with the preview (like… ten minutes on my machine, which is a basic MacBook Air), and even longer for it to generate a book that has these edge designs (30 minutes on my machine!). That might be something that will improve over time, but this isn’t as fast as generating books without those edges, fyi.
You upload the .pdf file to Vellum as a Border, and they have a step by step guide for that here.
And then this is what that looks like in Vellum:
And I know this is already overwhelming. So basically, there are now two different ways to apply a forced edge design to your books: before you finish formatting in Vellum, and after you finish formatting the book (either in Vellum or anywhere else).
Let’s break down the pros and cons of each of these, starting with the latter.
POST-VELLUM EDGE DESIGN: This is in some ways the easiest way to do it. If your book is DONE, and you’re never going to edit it again in Vellum, then this has some advantages. It’s easily outsourced to a professional, you get a .pdf file back, and you can just upload that to your printers. You don’t need to worry about dimensions or design at all.
The big con to this is that if you ever want to change the book file at all…you need to get that edge re-applied. This has always been a burr for me, because I like to update back matter and change the CTA (call to action) at the end of books, etc. Sometimes i like to edit things! For example, I had a thoughtless slip and used an outdated, harmful term for a little person in a book last year. I’m glad I could just go and fix that mistake when it was pointed out.
PRE-VELLUM GENERATION EDGE DESIGN: This is brand new, and a LOT of people have questions about how to do it! That’s the big downside: it’s confusing and requires climbing a steep learning curve. I’m going to break down what I know, and what I see as the gaps right now in getting this done.
But the big advantage is that once we figure out how to do this is a cost-effective, easy way, then it allows us to continue to have full access to editing our book as needed.
Either way, the process is similar, and the only part that is easily DIY is the edge design itself.
The magic part? That’s best left to people who speak magic (aka computer code? I dunno? It’s all very impressive to me).
But that part will be easier if you understand that the two pieces you bring to it (interior file + edge design) need to be pretty precise in their dimensions. This often requires a bit of back and forth with your edge designer to make sure that you understand what the file dimension requirements are before they apply the edge designs, and/or so they give you the right size edge design for Vellum.
Oh, and I only talked about one edge, but edges can be applied top and bottom as well, and those are also .png files. Each edge would need their own file, but they can be duplicated. Where the two designs meet in the corner of the page, one will either overlap the other, or the designer with have a way for them to meet more elegantly, but that’s something to think about.
Finally, another option that you can do in Vellum is a solid colour page border, which would give you a solid colour edge design without any exporting/importing required!
In the end, I don’t think this blog post fully answered any questions, so if you are still confused, email me at zoeyorkwrites@gmail.com, and I might add some FAQ to this over time.
