Formatting a book yourself means choosing a program and then living with what it does and does not do. Word, Google Docs, Kindle Create, Vellum, Affinity Publisher and InDesign all produce files a printer will take, and they differ in what they automate, what they refuse, and how much of the layout you have to understand before you start. The file that comes out of any of them still has to satisfy the same upload checks.
This guide gathers our posts on formatting tools and the file you upload in one place: which program suits which book, what to do before handing a manuscript over, what makes a PDF print ready, and why an upload gets refused. Each post answers a single question and stands on its own, so start wherever your question sits rather than at the top. We add to the guide as we cover more ground, so it is worth bookmarking.
One caveat: a tool that produces a technically valid file is not the same as a tool that produces a well-set book. The checks here will tell you whether a file will be accepted, not whether the interior reads well, which is the subject of our print interior guide.
Which program, and what it gives up
- Alternatives to Vellum on a PC: what the options are when the best-known tool is Mac only.
- Whether you need InDesign: what it does that the cheaper tools do not.
- Google Docs: whether it can take a book to print, and where it stops.
- Kindle Create: whether Amazon’s own tool will format a print book.
- Affinity Publisher: how to export a print-ready PDF from it.
- The skills it takes: what you need to know before formatting your own interior.
Preparing the manuscript
- Before you hand it over: what to clean up in the manuscript first, and what to leave alone.
- One Word file, two editions: how to get both a paperback and an ebook out of the same document.
- Ebook and paperback formatting: why the two are different jobs rather than two exports.
- What a formatter does: what the work consists of when someone else takes it on.
The file you upload
- What makes a PDF print ready: what the phrase means, and whether an ordinary PDF can be converted.
- Embedding fonts: how to embed them so the upload is accepted.
- When the interior is refused: what KDP objects to in a PDF, and how to fix each one.