What it means
Typesetting (or composition) is the craft of turning a manuscript into pages. The typesetter chooses a typeface and size, the leading between lines, a measure (line length — usually 60–75 characters for comfortable reading), the margins and the running heads, then lets the text flow and fixes what the flow gets wrong: bad hyphenation, widows and orphans, loose lines, awkward page breaks.
The term comes from metal type, when compositors set each line by hand from cases of individual letters. Photo-typesetting replaced lead in the 1960s; desktop software replaced that in the 1980s. Today books are typeset in page-layout programs such as Adobe InDesign, in LaTeX, or in dedicated author tools.
Typesetting is not formatting a Word document. The decisions are the same in name only — a typeset book has consistent spacing, real small caps, proper ligatures and kerning, and pages that were looked at one by one.
In Bindery
Bindery typesets every book in LaTeX under the hood, and the typeset, watermarked proof is always free to read before you decide anything.
Make the book, not the checklist
Describe a book or upload a manuscript. Bindery writes with you, typesets in LaTeX, sizes the spine from the real page count and produces printer-validated files — the watermarked proof is always free.
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