Manuscript Formatting Tool

A real paragraph indent survives an editor changing the font or size. A typed tab, or a blank line pressed twice, doesn't, and it makes the editor's job slower because every one of those habits has to be undone by hand. That's why the tool sets the indent as part of each paragraph and adds no extra blank line between paragraphs. Opening a pasted manuscript and finding tabs in front of every paragraph is one of the first small signs that a file wasn't prepared with care.

The format is a courtesy that serves the reader. Double spacing and wide margins leave room for an editor's marks, a steady typeface makes pages comparable from one writer to the next, and a running head keeps loose pages from losing their owner. None of that will rescue weak writing, and none of it will sink a strong book. Think of it as showing up neatly dressed: it doesn't win the job, but it shouldn't cost you the first impression either. That's also why the tool stops where it does. It handles the mechanical settings, and the writing and the final checks stay with you.

Every setting here is an ordinary page or paragraph setting in your word processor, so changing one afterward is quick. If a contest wants a different typeface, select all and change it. If an agent wants single spacing for a sample, change the line spacing and leave the rest. The one thing to avoid is fixing a mismatch with extra blank lines or tabs, because that brings back the problems the format was meant to prevent.

The title page says "About 82,300 words" and not 82,340. Editors want a ballpark, not a precise figure that changes with every edit, and an exact count would be out of date before anybody read it. The tool rounds to the nearest hundred, so 82,340 becomes 82,300 and 82,350 becomes 82,400. The exact figure sits beside the download button, and the rounded one is what lands on the title page.

The tool trims every line you paste. Consecutive lines with no blank line between them are merged into one paragraph, joined by a space, and a blank line ends the paragraph. A line that is exactly #, *, ***, * * * or --- is treated as a scene break and printed as a centered #. We'd suggest the single # because it's the one the tool's own note describes.

The first paragraph of the text and the first paragraph after each scene break are set flush left with no indent, which is a common fiction convention. Every other paragraph gets the 0.5 inch indent. The word counter counts what's in the text box only. It doesn't count # lines, and it treats a figure such as 12,000 as two words, so a number-heavy book will read slightly high.

The contact block sits top left in single spacing, with "About N words" right aligned on the line below it. After a drop of about 2.8 inches comes the title in capitals, centered, then "by", then your name. A page break follows, and the text starts on a fresh page, double spaced.

The running head uses the last word of your author name as the surname, then the title in capitals, then a page number. We checked the finished file in LibreOffice, where page 1 is a clean title page and page 2 shows "Doe / THE LONG WAY ROUND / 1". Check yours in your own word processor before you send it.

The RTF file format is plain text that describes formatting, which is how the tool can carry real line spacing and indents without any server doing the work. Characters outside basic English, such as the é in "café", are written as Unicode escapes so they come through intact. The file is named from your title plus "-manuscript.rtf", so "The Long Way Round" downloads as the-long-way-round-manuscript.rtf.

The preview on the right is a quick visual check and isn't a page-for-page picture. It shows the contact block and "About N words" side by side, and it fills an empty contact box with placeholder lines such as "Your name" and "Address". The file differs in two ways. The word count line sits beneath the contact block, right aligned, and an empty contact box prints nothing at all. An empty title prints as UNTITLED, and an empty author name prints as "Author Name", so fill both in before you download.

The text is read and the file is built inside the page, and nothing is posted anywhere. Keep your own backup anyway, because closing the tab empties the text box.

Type this into the text box, with "#" on a line of its own:

She opened the door.
It was empty.

#

The room smelled of pine.

She stepped inside.

The first two lines become one paragraph, "She opened the door. It was empty.", because there was no blank line between them. The # becomes a centered scene break. "The room smelled of pine." follows it flush left, and "She stepped inside." is indented 0.5 inch. The counter reads "15 words, 3 paragraphs", and the title page reads "About 0 words", because 15 rounds to zero.

Two stars and spaced dashes are treated as ordinary text, so they'd print as a paragraph. Use a single # and you can't go wrong.

At the word count tool's convention of 250 words to a double-spaced manuscript page, a 50,000-word book runs 200 pages, 80,000 words runs 320, 100,000 runs 400 and 120,000 runs 480. Add one page for the title. That's an estimate of the manuscript, and the printed book will be much shorter, which the word count to pages calculator works out.

Common suffixes such as Jr., Sr., III and PhD are skipped, but a two word surname gives you the second word only. If your surname has two parts, open the header in your word processor once and fix it.

For a book called "The Long Way Round" by Jane Doe, the first page of the file reads like this:

Jane Doe
12 Example Street
Lake City, CO 81235
jane@example.com
                              About 82,300 words


                         THE LONG WAY ROUND
                                 by
                             Jane Doe

The page carries no running head and no page number. Your first page of text comes next, and its running head reads "Doe / THE LONG WAY ROUND / 1".

Paste "Chapter One" directly above "The morning was cold." with no blank line between them, and the tool joins them into one paragraph, "Chapter One The morning was cold." Put a blank line after the heading and it becomes its own paragraph, followed by the text. Either way the heading is plain, left aligned text. In the file it's an ordinary paragraph, so center it and add the page break in your word processor.

Use this tool, or Word with the same settings. A submission is read as a document and not as a book, and nobody expects it to look typeset. In fact a laid-out file with justified text and chapter titles in the headers tells a reader you've sent the wrong thing. Follow the recipient's guidelines first, because they override any convention in this page.

You need an interior: a trim size, margins that widen with the page count, front and back matter, and files the stores accept. For most self-publishers that means a print-ready PDF for the paperback and an EPUB for the ebook. People build these in Word with careful styles, in Google Docs, in Scrivener, in InDesign, or in dedicated book programs such as Atticus and Vellum. Vellum's own site describes it as software for macOS and sells licenses for generating books, so check its current terms before you plan around it. We won't rank them here, because the right one depends on your computer, budget and patience. Whatever you pick, ask the same three questions of it. Does it export a print-ready PDF at your trim size? Does it export a valid EPUB? And can you pay for it, or learn it, before you're up against a deadline? To plan the physical book, use the book page count calculator and the spine width calculator.

Tables, images, poetry, footnotes, a long index or a tight deadline are where a person earns the fee. Interior layout is $2.20 a page with a $600 minimum, listed on our pricing page. A 200-page book would be $440 at that rate, so the $600 minimum applies, while a 300-page book comes to $660. Our book formatting services cover it.