#02 · Typeset
Format your book from the draft you already have.
Upload your prose manuscript, choose an interior style and inspect your pages. Work on the layout yourself, without an email inquiry to get started.
Next: sign in and upload your draft on the formatting screen. Start with a watermarked preview; paid export is a separate step. Typesetting is also included in the $50/month Manuscripts plan.
See how the formatting works before you sign in.
Illustrative demo. No account needed. This is an example, not feedback on your draft.
A plain book titled Your book title here opens to its first chapter as a draft. Fred, the editor, first gives his read of the whole book and the one thing to fix first, then suggests a light line edit with his reasoning, and once accepted the page updates. Three typeset styles are tried on the same pages: Romantic with a drop cap, Thriller with a large chapter number, and Editorial with left-aligned headings. The book closes, cover designs are dragged onto it, and it ends ready to publish as a print PDF and an ebook.
Word, PDF, EPUB, Markdown, plain text or AsciiDoc, up to 25 MB. Simple prose books are the best fit; check your edition's requirements before publishing.
Synthetic test book: four chapters, a 12-page 6 × 9 inch PDF and an EPUB 3 with navigation. This shows a simple prose export, not a customer testimonial or store approval. The PDF is below KDP's 24-page minimum and the EPUB has no cover. Your edition needs its own checks; illustrated or complex layouts need a scope review.
01
A real typesetting engine
Justified text, proper hyphenation, ligatures and small caps, with widows and orphans handled. What you see on screen is what prints.
02
Styles for every shelf
From a lush romantic opener to a tight thriller page to clean nonfiction. Change your mind and the whole book re-sets in seconds.
03
PDF and EPUB from one source
A print interior at your chosen trim size and an EPUB from the same manuscript. Check the file requirements for your edition and store before publishing; complex layouts need a scope review.
One part of the house
It all works from the same manuscript, so nothing gets redone.
Common questions
Up to about 15,000 words through the short piece editor (essays, posts, short pieces). Full manuscripts up to about 150,000 words go through the manuscript pipeline, edited in one pass and returned as a marked-up doc.
For now, yes, and on purpose. Editing is the first and hardest part of getting a book out and the part nothing else does well, so it's where we started. But the longer plan is the whole journey from finished draft to published book: editing first, then typesetting, then cover, then getting it onto the shelf and devices. We're building the publishing house as software, one piece at a time, and the edit is the piece that's live today.