Hidden Gumption is a one-person book design and formatting studio for indie authors, coaches, and creators.I format books, workbooks, and journals. Fiction series, special editions, illustrated novel interiors. Built for KDP and IngramSpark, print and digital, structured to hold. Not just for this project. For the one after it too.Whatever the format. The file you get back is built to last.

For indie authorsYou've written the book.Now it needs to look like one. Laid out properly, formatted for print and screen, ready to upload without errors.I take your manuscript and build it into a book interior that looks right in a reader's hands, uploads cleanly to KDP, IngramSpark, or your platform of choice, and holds up when corrections come in or the next book in your series needs to match.You leave with a print-ready PDF and a digital file, formatted to KDP, IngramSpark, or your platform's requirements. Named styles and consistent structure, so when you read the proof copy and send back 40 changes, applying them takes an afternoon, not a rebuild.

For coaches, educators, and course creatorsYou have the content. The exercises, the prompts, the framework.What you don't have yet is a layout that makes it feel like the thing it's supposed to be.I design workbooks, journals, and planners in InDesign where the structure does real work: moving someone from page one to the last page without losing them.You leave with a print-ready PDF or fillable digital file, built to outlast this launch. Run it with the next cohort, add a module, update it for next year. The structure holds.

I read. I skim. I look at how it's built. I go through your scope and what you're actually asking for.I try to understand what you were aiming for. Not just what's on the page. This is your work. You've lived with it longer than I have. So I take the time to understand where you're coming from, and where you want to take it.I'm here to support the direction. Not overwrite it.

If a file isn't structurally sound, every change multiplies the work. A simple update becomes 300 pages of scrolling. Manual edits. Risk of inconsistency. So we stabilize first. Continuous text flow. Defined styles. Anchored elements. Because when the system is built properly, you don't fix things 300 times. You fix it once. And the document responds.

A book isn't just a manuscript. There's front matter. Title pages. Copyright. Dedication.
Running headers. Page numbers. Chapters that begin where they're meant to. Most readers don't consciously notice this. But they feel it.
Books have a rhythm and an order that makes them feel finished, intentional and stable.
It's subtle. But it isn't accidental.

Fonts and images require proper usage rights. They aren't just aesthetic choices. They're licensed assets. Before anything goes to print, usage rights need to be clear.
Not because we expect problems but because books are permanent.
You shouldn't publish while looking over your shoulder. Clean files. Clear permissions. Print is permanent, permissions should be too. If the license isn't clear, we clarify it.

When the structure is sound and the conventions are in place, the book isn't fragile.
It can shift formats. It can grow into new editions. It can absorb revisions without collapsing.
It's no longer a file you're hoping survives change. It's a system that carries your vision forward.

Most of this was made for no one in particular.Not for a client. Not for a brief. Just for the question of whether I could actually build what I was imagining, in the right tool, done properly.That tool is Adobe InDesign. It is the professional standard for book and document design, and the reason that matters is not the name. It is that InDesign builds files with real structure underneath, the kind that holds when you hand them to a printer, a platform, or the next person who needs to pick up where you left off. Illustrator and Photoshop came in where the work needed them. But everything here was built in InDesign.Self-initiated, mostly. Made to find out what the tool can do.

5-Book Reformatting project

  • Structural Rebuild from inherited files

  • Multi-format synchronization (Pocket format and Inclusive)

  • Special Edition - Multi Book Merge (Tête-Bêche)

  • 16 adapted covers

  • Future-proofed delivery package

Hi, I'm Sam. Nice to meet you.I'm in my mid-thirties, living in a studio in France with two cats and a dog named Moira who insists on coming everywhere, including bike rides, in a basket, looking extremely pleased about herself.I grew up in the Netherlands, feel most at home in English, and get by just fine in French too. Which quietly means I come with French manners and Dutch directness. I'll be warm about it, but I will tell you the truth.My daily life is quiet, with a bit of quirk here and there: slow mornings with hot cocoa, reading, gaming, and tinkering with systems at all hours.Stories run underneath all of it. Not just books: mangas, light novels, Korean dramas, Chinese dramas, Bollywood, movies, series. Basically: if it tells a story, I've probably watched, read, or fallen completely into it at some point. I'm genuinely fascinated by how a story is built: the logic of a world, the arc of a character, the slow development that turns someone from who they were into who they become. A reader lives a thousand lives. I believe that.I'm the kind of person who sees where something needs to go and then figures out how to get there, whatever tools, skills, or creative detours that takes. Nobody taught me Illustrator. Nobody taught me InDesign. I learned by doing, built my own systems when the existing ones didn't quite fit, and somewhere along the way that became the job. I seek to understand how things work, not because I have to, but because that's just how my brain is wired. There are no problems, only things not yet figured out.

Most of the friction that happens after a formatting project starts before it. A deliverable that wasn’t named. A format outside scope. A file no one else can open.Every project here starts with a brief: what’s included, what the deliverable is, what happens if something shifts. You know what you’re getting before anything starts.Files are documented, organised, and built to outlast the project. If you need to add a format a year from now, update a reprint, or hand the file to someone else, you can.
That’s what built to last actually means.If you need to add a format a year from now, update a reprint on KDP or IngramSpark, or hand the file to someone else, you can.