The guide press

Find the idea.
Ship the guide.

Idea tools stop at the idea. Octavo finds what people are searching for, writes the guide, designs the pages, sources the photography, and hands you a print-ready PDF with a listing ready to paste into your store.

Build your first guide

See how it works

No card to start. Your first guide is free, start to finish.

Every cover below is a different shelf, and every one is drawn by the same renderer that writes the exported PDF. Scroll on for one of them opened up, page by page.

The 3AM Problem

Fourteen nights to stop waking at three and get back to sleep.

The Over-50 Job Search Reset

Rebuild a dated profile and land paid work in eight weeks.

Thirty Days With a Rescue Dog

The first month at home, hour by hour, so the dog settles.

Four Pans, Thirty Dinners

A month of weeknight cooking from one shelf of ingredients.

The Freelance Tax Year

Put money aside monthly and file without the panic.

Your First Ten Rolls

Shoot film on a manual camera and like what comes back.

Ten Minutes on the Floor

A mobility habit short enough that you actually do it.

The First Six Weeks

What to do at 3am, written by someone who was awake too.

The Balcony Garden Year

Twelve months of things to plant in pots, month by month.

Your First Half Marathon

Sixteen weeks from nothing to the finish, without an injury.

Your First Year on Guitar

Four chords, one song a week, and no theory until month six.

The Sixty-Person Wedding

Plan a small wedding without hiring anyone to plan it.

Six Weeks Out

A revision plan for the exam you have been avoiding.

The AI Hour

One hour a week that takes the admin off your desk.

The Quiet Evening

Get the hour after work back without leaving the house.

Three Days, One City

How to plan a short trip so you come back rested.

The Balcony Garden Year

Twelve months of things to plant in pots, month by month.

Your First Half Marathon

Sixteen weeks from nothing to the finish, without an injury.

Your First Year on Guitar

Four chords, one song a week, and no theory until month six.

The Sixty-Person Wedding

Plan a small wedding without hiring anyone to plan it.

Six Weeks Out

A revision plan for the exam you have been avoiding.

The AI Hour

One hour a week that takes the admin off your desk.

The Quiet Evening

Get the hour after work back without leaving the house.

Three Days, One City

How to plan a short trip so you come back rested.

The 3AM Problem

Fourteen nights to stop waking at three and get back to sleep.

The Over-50 Job Search Reset

Rebuild a dated profile and land paid work in eight weeks.

Thirty Days With a Rescue Dog

The first month at home, hour by hour, so the dog settles.

Four Pans, Thirty Dinners

A month of weeknight cooking from one shelf of ingredients.

The Freelance Tax Year

Put money aside monthly and file without the panic.

Your First Ten Rolls

Shoot film on a manual camera and like what comes back.

Ten Minutes on the Floor

A mobility habit short enough that you actually do it.

The First Six Weeks

What to do at 3am, written by someone who was awake too.

ResearchWriteDesignPhotographExportList

niches to research

pages in the sample guide

cover comps, you pick

Inside a finished guide

See what you are buying before you buy it.

Six pages of The 3AM Problem, out of 10, at the size they export. Nothing here was drawn for the website.

The 3AM Problem

Fourteen nights to stop waking at three and get back to sleep.

The promise

Waking up is normal. Staying awake is not.

Almost everybody surfaces two or three times a night. Most people never find out, because they turn over and go back under before any part of the brain gets involved. What you have is not a waking problem. It is a getting back problem.

That distinction decides everything, because the two have completely different fixes. Nothing in this guide tries to stop you waking at three. It works on the twenty minutes after, which is the part you can change, and on the morning, which is where the change gets locked in.

Fourteen nights. No supplements, no tracker, and nothing you have to buy.

The 3AM Problem02 / 10

02Chapter

If it has been twenty minutes, get up

You do not need a clock for this and you should not use one. Twenty minutes is roughly how long it takes to notice you have stopped drifting and started thinking. By the time you notice, you are past it.

Getting out of bed feels like the opposite of what you want at three in the morning. It is the entire method. Every night you spend awake in bed teaches your brain that this is a place where people lie awake. Every night you get up instead teaches it the opposite, and it learns quicker than you would expect.

Go back when you are sleepy, not when you are bored. Sleepy is heavy eyes and losing the thread of the page. Bored is looking at the clock again.

The rule, in full

Awake and thinking rather than drifting? Leave the bedroom
Somewhere dim, sitting up, no screen anywhere near you
Something dull enough to put you back under
Return only when your eyes are closing on their own
If it happens twice in one night, do it twice

The 3AM Problem04 / 10

03Chapter

Where to go, and what to do there

Pick the spot before you need it. Nobody makes a good decision at three in the morning, so make this one now: a chair, a lamp you can turn on without flooding the room, a blanket, and one book that lives there and goes nowhere else.

Keep the light low and warm. A single lamp at elbow height. Overhead lights and screens both tell your body it is morning, and you are trying to say the opposite.

Pick something genuinely dull. A book you have already read. Not the news, not a novel you want to finish, and never the phone. The hour is not meant to be enjoyable. You are trying to be bored back to sleep.

Do not get productive. Answering one email at three teaches your brain that the small hours are working hours, and it will start waking you on purpose.

The 3AM Problem05 / 10

04Chapter

The morning is where the fix actually happens

This is the part people skip and it is the part that works. What you do at three is damage control. What you do at seven decides whether three happens again.

One fixed wake time, seven days a week, including the bad ones. Especially the bad ones. Sleeping in after a rough night feels like fair compensation and it drags the whole system an hour later, so tonight starts late and you are back where you began.

Then get outside. Daylight in the first hour after waking is the strongest signal your body clock takes, and it sets what time you get sleepy tonight. Fifteen minutes is enough, and a grey morning still counts.

The fourteen days, as numbers

Wake timeSame daily

Weekend alarmYes

Daylight after waking15 min

NapsNone

Last coffee2pm

Last drink4h before bed

Nights before you judge it14

The 3AM Problem06 / 10

05Chapter

Four things that make three o'clock much worse

None of these cause the waking. All of them decide whether you get back down.

A drink in the evening. Alcohol puts you under quickly and then pulls the second half of the night apart as it clears. In people who otherwise sleep fine, this is the most common single cause of a three o'clock wake.

Coffee after the early afternoon. Half of it is still in you six hours later. You will fall asleep on it. You will not stay asleep on it.

The clock face. Seeing the number is what turns a wake into a calculation. Turn the phone over and the clock to the wall.

Catching up. An extra hour on Saturday, an early night on Sunday, twenty minutes on the sofa on Wednesday. Every one of them spends the pressure that would have put you under tonight.

The one to fix first
If you drink most evenings, move that before you change anything else. Two weeks without it will tell you more than two weeks of anything else on this page.

The 3AM Problem07 / 10

Then three files land in your folder.

10 pages · 8.5 by 11in

A print-ready PDF

US Letter, rendered from the exact pages you approved. Prints at home or at a copy shop without a single line reflowing.

1600px · JPG

A storefront cover

The cover you chose, exported big enough for Gumroad, Etsy, Shopify, or your own site to crop however they like.

Title · tags · $24

A listing kit

Title, description, tags, and a price, written in the same voice as the guide. Paste it into your store and publish.

Finding the idea was never the hard part.

The hard part is everything between a good idea and a file someone will pay for. That gap is where most guides quietly die.

Six tools and a weekend

An idea tool that stops at the title
A writing tool, and a day writing
A stock photo account
A design tool, and a template that nearly fits
An export that never quite prints right
A blank listing page to fill in

One tool, one sitting

Ranked ideas, each with its whole spine
The whole guide written, nine to twelve pages
Real photography, graded to match
Designed pages you can edit line by line
A print-ready US Letter PDF
A listing kit ready to paste

How it works

Four steps. About ten minutes.

You choose the idea and approve the words. Octavo does the writing, the design, the photography, and the export.

Pick a niche

Ideas come back ranked. Each one shows the chapters the guide would contain and what to charge for it, before you spend a build.

Page 07 of 10

Octavo writes it

Ten to twelve pages, one idea per page, in plain English. No filler, no invented statistics, nothing left as a placeholder.

You make it yours

Change any line, ask for a page to be rewritten, swap a photo, switch the design. What you see is the file.

$24

Publish

Download and sell

A print-ready PDF, a cover for your store, and the listing copy to go with it. Paste it in and publish.

The studio

It writes a first draft. You make it yours.

Nothing here is take-it-or-leave-it. The studio is a normal editor with the boring parts already done.

07Chapter

If it has been twenty minutes, get up

Go back when you are sleepy, not when you are bored. Sleepy is heavy eyes and losing the thread of the page. Bored is looking at the clock again.

The rule, in full

Awake and thinking rather than drifting? Leave the bedroom
Somewhere dim, sitting up, no screen anywhere near you
Something dull enough to put you back under
Return only when your eyes are closing on their own
If it happens twice in one night, do it twice

The 3AM Problem09 / 11

Page rail, canvas, panel

The layout is the one you already know from every design tool you have used, so there is nothing to learn. Pick a page on the left, see it in the middle, change it on the right.

Every edit renders instantly, no save button
Undo covers copy, photos, and theme
The preview is the same DOM that prints

Edit anything, live

Every heading, paragraph, and list item is a field. Change it and the page redraws under you.

Rewrite one page or all of them

Tell it what is wrong in plain words. Shorter, warmer, more specific, less salesy.

Swap any photo

Search Pexels from inside the studio. The new shot gets the same grade as the rest.

Three typographic themes

Press for business, Atlas for health and home, Quill for creative. Each is a real design, not a colour swap.

Listing copy that reads human

Title, description, tags, and a suggested price, written in the same voice as the guide.

Roughly ten minutes

From an empty niche dropdown to a PDF on your desktop, on a normal connection.

Pricing

Pay for guides you finish

Every plan meters on builds, because a build is the thing you sell. Idea searches are unlimited on every paid tier.

Free

Build one guide start to finish and see the whole thing work.

$0forever

3 idea searches
1 full guide build
3 cover options to pick from
Watermarked PDF, personal use

Start free

Starter

For your first few products.

$29/ month

Unlimited idea searches
8 guide builds a month
20 AI revisions a month
Clean PDF, commercial license
1 brand kit

Start Starter

Studio

For anyone selling guides on a schedule.

$49/ month

20 guide builds a month
Unlimited AI revisions
Listing kit: title, description, tags, price
Regenerate cover options
5 brand kits
Priority support

Start Studio

Press

For catalogues and small teams.

$99/ month

60 guide builds a month
3 seats
White-label export, no Octavo mark
Weekly trend alerts in your niches
Unlimited brand kits
Shopify connect when it ships

Start Press

14 day money-back guarantee on every paid plan. Cancel any time from your billing page.

Everything side by side

Feature	Free	Starter	Studio	Press
Idea searches	3	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Guide builds	1 total	8 / mo	20 / mo	60 / mo
Extra builds		$3 each	$3 each	$3 each
AI revisions		20 / mo	Unlimited	Unlimited
PDF export	Watermarked	Clean	Clean	White-label
Commercial license
Cover options	3	3	3 + regenerate	3 + regenerate
Listing kit
Brand kits		1	5	Unlimited
Seats	1	1	1	3
Trend alerts				Weekly
Support	Docs	Email	Priority	Priority

Questions

The things people ask first

Yes, on every paid plan. The guide, the PDF, and the listing copy are yours to sell, bundle, give away, or rewrite. The free plan is for trying the tool, so its export carries a watermark and is not licensed for resale.

Pexels, which is free for commercial use and needs no attribution. Octavo pulls the full-resolution file, runs every image in a guide through one warm grade so a set from different shoots reads as one, and credits the photographer in your export notes anyway.

That is the part we spent the most time on. Copy is written against a house style that bans AI vocabulary, inflated symbolism, three-item lists where one would do, invented statistics, fake testimonials, and em dashes. Then it gets a second editing pass before you ever see it. You can still rewrite any page in your own words.

One build is one complete guide: the copy, the page architecture, the photo sourcing, and three cover comps. Revisions and re-exports of that same guide do not spend another build. If you use up a month's builds, the next one is $3 rather than a wall telling you to upgrade.

Brand kits let you set the display and body typefaces, a palette, and a footer wordmark, and apply them to any guide. Press tier removes the Octavo mark from the export entirely.

Not yet, and we would rather say so than imply it. Today Octavo gives you the finished PDF, a storefront-sized cover image, and a listing kit you paste in, which takes about a minute. Direct Shopify connect is the next thing we are building for Press.

Your guides and their PDFs stay downloadable. You keep the commercial license on everything you built while subscribed. You just stop getting new builds.

Your first guide is free. Finish it tonight.

Pick a niche, pick an idea, and let Octavo carry it the rest of the way. No card, no trial countdown, no half-finished draft.

Start free See the plans

Find the idea.Ship the guide.

See what you are buying before you buy it.

The 3AM Problem

Waking up is normal. Staying awake is not.

If it has been twenty minutes, get up

Where to go, and what to do there

The morning is where the fix actually happens

Four things that make three o'clock much worse

Then three files land in your folder.

A print-ready PDF

A storefront cover

A listing kit

Finding the idea was never the hard part.

Four steps. About ten minutes.

Pick a niche

Octavo writes it

You make it yours

Download and sell

It writes a first draft. You make it yours.

If it has been twenty minutes, get up

Page rail, canvas, panel

Edit anything, live

Rewrite one page or all of them

Swap any photo

Three typographic themes

Listing copy that reads human

Roughly ten minutes

Pay for guides you finish

Free

Starter

Studio

Press

Everything side by side

The things people ask first

Your first guide is free. Finish it tonight.

Find the idea.
Ship the guide.