Formatting Guide: From Manuscript to Published

How do you format a book for publication?

Bad formatting makes me wince, because it’s among the cheapest problems in publishing to fix and among the most expensive to leave in. A writer spends a year on the words, then loses the reader on page one to a crooked margin and a heading in the wrong font. I think every author owes the book one slow, careful pass through the layout before it goes out, and I don’t accept “I’m not technical” as an excuse for skipping it.

I’ve published 113+ books across Kindle, paperback, and hardcover. Formatting issues show up in every one of them at some stage, and catching them before publication is part of the production process. This guide covers the practical decisions you need to make and the common problems you need to avoid.

Key Formatting Elements

Margins: The space around your text needs to be wide enough for comfortable reading and narrow enough to avoid wasting pages. For print books, the inside margin (gutter) needs to be wider than the outside margin to account for the binding. A 6×9 book typically uses 0.75-inch outside margins and a 0.875-inch gutter, but this varies by page count and binding type. More white space is generally better, though you don’t want to go bonkers with it. Vary it, mixing two-line paragraphs with four-line ones so the right edge isn’t one straight line, because people get bored and stop reading when every paragraph is the same length.

Fonts: Serif fonts (Times New Roman, Garamond, Georgia) are standard for body text because they’re easier to read in long passages. Sans-serif fonts (Arial, Helvetica) work for headings and subheadings. Stick to 11 or 12 point for body text. Decorative or unusual fonts signal amateur production.

I like 1.2 line spacing instead of single spacing, because it’s easier to read. For older readers, consider a font one point larger too. Both add pages. It barely matters with print on demand, where it might raise the retail price by about 50 cents. On Kindle the extra pages cost nothing. The only charge there is the delivery fee on the 70% royalty option, and without a lot of images you won’t care.

Text justification: Full justification (both edges aligned) is standard for print books. Left-aligned text is acceptable for ebooks since the reader’s device controls display. Avoid centered body text.

Headers and footers: Print books typically include the book title on left-hand pages, the chapter title on right-hand pages, and page numbers. First pages of chapters suppress the header. Getting this wrong is a highly visible formatting error.

Scene breaks: In fiction, use a blank line or a centered ornamental break (three asterisks, a small graphic) to indicate time or location changes within a chapter. Don’t rely on extra blank lines alone, because ebook formatting can collapse them.

Styles: Use paragraph styles in your word processor for every heading and paragraph, and skip manual formatting entirely.

Styles keep your formatting consistent throughout the manuscript and make global changes possible with a single adjustment. If you’re bolding every chapter heading by hand, you’re building a mess you’ll have to clean up later. I think it’s the most common way writers sabotage their own layout. I’m amazed how few authors and ghostwriters use styles at all, so every single thing gets formatted by hand. With styles, I change one thing and the whole document follows. Anyway, I’m bragging now.

What Trim Size Should Your Book Be?

The physical size of your print book affects its appearance, cost, and how readers perceive it. Common trim sizes and their typical uses:

6″ x 9″ is the standard for most novels and nonfiction. Large enough to read comfortably, small enough to be portable. This is the default choice unless you have a reason to go larger or smaller.

5.5″ x 8.5″ works for shorter novels, novellas, poetry, and compact nonfiction like self-help or travel books. More portable than 6×9.

5″ x 8″ is popular for genre fiction (mystery, romance) and memoir. A comfortable handheld size.

8.5″ x 11″ is standard for textbooks, workbooks, and manuals where you need space for diagrams, charts, or fill-in exercises.

8″ x 8″ or 7″ x 7″ (square formats) are used for children’s picture books, coffee table books, and image-heavy publications.

Larger trim sizes mean fewer pages for the same word count. (See also a free book planning tool)

That can reduce printing costs but increase shipping costs. Choose the size that matches your genre’s conventions and your readers’ expectations. I’d save the creativity for the story. A romance printed at an odd size looks wrong on the shelf before anyone reads a word, and readers notice even when they can’t say why.

Pick the size once per series and keep it. Readers who collect paperbacks notice when book four stands taller than book three, and on a shelf it looks like a mistake, because it is one. A new series is the time to change, and a long book is the usual reason. At 180,000 words, a 5.5″ x 8.5″ edition runs well past 500 pages and gets heavy and awkward to hold, while 6″ x 9″ brings the page count down and reads more comfortably. Thinner paper cuts the spine too, but cream stock on an upmarket title is part of how the book looks, so changing the trim is usually the better trade. Large-print editions are the other place 6″ x 9″ earns its keep.

Platform-Specific Formatting

Different publishing platforms have different requirements. Getting these wrong causes rejection or display problems.

Kindle: Uses reflowable text, meaning the reader’s device controls font size, margins, and line spacing. Your formatting establishes the structure (headings, paragraphs, scene breaks, images) but not the exact appearance. Keep layouts simple. Use high-resolution images. Avoid text boxes, columns, or complex layouts that break on different screen sizes. The table of contents should use clickable links to chapters. Footnotes go to the back of the book.

Back when I published through Amazon’s KDP, comments caused me real grief. Comments left in a Google Doc leave invisible characters behind, and those made KDP’s conversion choke. So I exported to Word only once. Then I walked the cursor forward through the entire document, and every time it went blip, I backed up and deleted the character. It was a pain.

Some front matter (dedication, epigraph) works better placed at the back for Kindle because readers sample the first pages and you don’t want them spending that sample on boilerplate.

Paperback: Requires fixed-layout formatting with specific attention to margins, gutters, bleed (if images extend to the edge), and spine width. Spine width depends on page count and paper type. The table of contents includes page numbers. Headers and footers display on printed pages. You control exactly how every page looks.

Hardcover: Same considerations as paperback, with the addition of dust jacket design (front cover, spine, back cover, interior flaps). The flaps provide additional space for your book description and author bio.

Always download and review a proof copy before approving a print book for distribution.

What looks correct on screen often reveals problems in physical form. I can’t abide seeing authors skip this to save a few days. The reader who opens a book with text sliding into the gutter blames the author for it, and that reader doesn’t buy the next one.

In the fall of 2010, HarperCollins released the British edition of Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom, and within days it had to admit the book in the shops was the wrong one.

According to ABC News, the typesetter had worked from an earlier draft. HarperCollins said, “The typesetter sent the last-but-one version.” Franzen said the two texts had “a couple of hundred differences at the level of word and sentence and fact.”

HarperCollins recalled the printing, tens of thousands of copies by ABC’s count, and set up a hotline so readers could swap their copies for the corrected edition. His publisher said Franzen had worked on the novel for nine years. I can’t imagine a worse feeling for a writer than learning the version readers bought first wasn’t the one he finished, and one careful check of the printed text against the final file would have caught it before a single copy shipped.

What Software Formats a Book Best?

The right tool depends on your technical comfort, budget, and how much control you need.

Microsoft Word: Most widely available and familiar. Handles basic formatting (margins, styles, headers, page numbers) and is the accepted submission format for most publishing platforms. Limited for complex layouts. If you’re comfortable with Word, it’s sufficient for most books.

Vellum: The favorite among self-publishing authors for producing beautiful, professional results with minimal effort. Instant preview of your book across formats. Mac only. Not cheap, but the results justify the cost if you publish regularly.

Adobe InDesign: Professional-grade layout software used by publishers and designers. Maximum control over every element on every page. Steep learning curve and expensive. Pay for it when the book is image-heavy, a textbook, or a complex layout. Overkill for a standard novel.

Scrivener: Excellent for writing and organizing large projects. Its compilation feature exports to multiple formats. Formatting output is adequate but not as polished as Vellum or InDesign. Better as a writing tool than a formatting tool.

Reedsy Book Editor: Free online tool for writing and formatting. Good for authors on a budget who need basic formatting. Requires internet connection and lacks advanced features.

What are the most common book formatting problems?

These are the issues I see most frequently in manuscripts heading toward publication:

Missing or broken table of contents. Inconsistent heading styles (some chapters use Heading 1, others are manually formatted bold text). Incorrect or missing page numbers. Headers that appear on the first page of a chapter when they shouldn’t. Images that are too low-resolution for print (72 DPI images look fine on screen but print blurry; use 300 DPI minimum for print). Extra blank lines used as spacing instead of proper paragraph spacing settings. Different fonts appearing randomly because of copy-paste from multiple sources. Gutter margins too narrow, causing text to disappear into the binding.

Most of these problems are preventable by using styles consistently from the start and reviewing a physical proof before publication. None of them are hard. They come from rushing, and I think rushing the last stretch of a book is the most painful kind of waste, because the hard part was already done.

When Should You Hire a Professional Book Formatter?

If your book has a simple layout (chapters of text, no complex graphics or tables), you can format it yourself with Word or Vellum and produce professional results. If your book includes complex elements (heavy illustration, charts, sidebars, multiple text styles, workbook layouts), hiring a professional formatter or typesetter is worth the investment. The cost typically ranges from $500 to $2,000 depending on complexity and length.

Graphics don’t have to be complex to help. In most nonfiction I’d include a few simple graphs, and maybe some black-and-white photos from the time period. One client had a couple of little cartoons in each chapter, stick-figure stuff drawn by a relative who was a graphic artist. They carried a theme through the whole book, and it looked really good.

Formatting is where cutting corners shows fastest. A reader forgives a plot that sags in the middle far more easily than a book that looks homemade from the first page. I think any author who pays for editing and a good cover and then throws the interior together is wasting that money, and hurting the book they worked so hard to write.

For fiction writers working on craft fundamentals, the AI-Enhanced Novel Handbook covers manuscript preparation and the publishing process. For promotion strategy after your book is formatted and published, see the AI-Enhanced Book Promotion Handbook.

If you’d like help with formatting as part of a ghostwriting project, schedule a consultation.

From the author

Publish Your Book
Good formatting is one stop on the road to publication. Publish Your Book is my complete self-publishing guide, written from 100+ titles since my first release in 2016.

Frequently Asked Questions