Not a price list — a real breakdown of the factors that determine cost, with sourced industry context, not invented figures.
Written from direct quoting experience by Ata Rafi, Founder and Chief Formatter at Format Fix. See Pricing & Quote to request an actual number for your manuscript.
Request A Free QuoteThis isn't a Format Fix-specific policy. Current multilingual desktop-publishing pricing sources show DTP-only work priced roughly $1–3 per page for standard formats, with a separate published structure charging a higher per-page rate specifically for non-European languages, Arabic included. Even industry-wide, per-page pricing is a starting range, not a fixed number — actual cost depends on the factors below.
These figures are cited as real market context, not as Format Fix's own rate. See Pricing & Quote for how an actual quote is built from your manuscript.
Right-to-left languages — Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, and Urdu — add roughly 30% over baseline desktop-publishing rates industry-wide. This figure was checked again against current multilingual DTP industry pricing during this page's research, not assumed unchanged from when it was first cited on this site.
Standard running text without diacritics or precision requirements takes the least verification time per page — the baseline case.
Quranic tashkeel and Tajweed-sensitive marking demand a higher verification standard, since a shifted mark can change meaning, not just appearance. See Why Tashkeel Placement Errors Change the Meaning of Your Text.
A single-script manuscript is a different job from one planning Arabic and English together from the start. See Bilingual Arabic-English Book Formatting and Mixed Arabic-English Text.
Two different starting points lead to two different quotes.
Already in Word, InDesign, or InPage. Goes straight to a formatting quote — no extra step needed.
Needs to be typed into editable text first. That's a separate service and a separate quote, done before formatting begins.
See Arabic Typing Services or Urdu Typing Services for that first stage.
Length sets a rough scale. Structure and precision requirements set the actual time.
A clean digital file with no footnotes, no tashkeel, and a single script can take less total work than a much shorter manuscript with real structural demands.
Heavy cross-referencing, Quranic tashkeel, or a bilingual layout can push a short manuscript past a much longer, simpler one.
Footnotes, cross-references, indexes, and multi-level headings all take real time to build and verify.
Every reference has to resolve correctly and stay consistent as content shifts. See Arabic Editorial Formatting.
Consistency has to hold across every volume, not just within one. See Multi-Volume & Series Formatting.
Print and ebook each have their own technical requirements and review steps. Producing both from the same manuscript is more work than producing one.
Trim size, margins, bleed, and print-ready PDF export all need their own verification pass. See Print-Ready PDF Formatting.
Reflowable text, embedded fonts, and platform-specific rejection rules (KDP included) require a different build entirely. See Arabic eBook Formatting Services.
Comparing formatting services and trying to work out why one quote is higher than another for what looks like the same page count.
Planning cost across a multi-volume project, where structural complexity and consistency compound the total, not just the per-book price.
Wanting to know what information actually changes a number before sending a manuscript in for review.
Send the manuscript's language, approximate length, and general condition. See Pricing & Quote for how the quote process works, or go straight to Contact to start one.
Request A Free QuoteEven industry-wide, current multilingual DTP pricing sources treat per-page pricing as a starting range, not a fixed number, since manuscript complexity varies far more than page count alone.
Right-to-left languages add roughly 30% over baseline desktop-publishing rates industry-wide, reflecting bidirectional text handling, layout mirroring, and script-specific typesetting rules that Latin-script work doesn't require.
It's a starting point, not the determining factor. A longer manuscript with simple structure can cost less than a shorter one with heavy cross-referencing or diacritic-sensitive text.
Yes — a handwritten or scanned manuscript needs to be typed into editable text first, which is a separate service and quote from formatting itself.
Often yes — tashkeel and Tajweed-sensitive marking demand a higher verification standard than ordinary prose, since a placement error can change meaning, not just appearance.
Send the manuscript's language, approximate length, and general condition. See Pricing & Quote for the full process, or go straight to Contact.
