Phase 1: Document Preparation

Before you open formatting software like Word, Vellum, Atticus, or Adobe InDesign, your manuscript must be systematically cleaned. Skipping this step introduces hidden formatting ghosts—like stray paragraph breaks and erratic spacing—that will corrupt the final output.

• Apply a Standard Font: Use a clean, highly readable font like Times New Roman, Garamond, or Georgia set to 11 or 12 point. Avoid decorative fonts in your working draft.
• Remove Manual Formatting: Strip out manual line breaks (created by hitting Enter at the end of every line) and manual page breaks that are scattered arbitrarily through the text.
• Fix Paragraph Indents and Spacing: Set your paragraphs to use a standard 0.25-inch to 0.5-inch first-line indent, or clean block spacing with no indent and a space between paragraphs. Never use the spacebar or the Tab key to create indents.
• Eliminate Double Spaces: Run a global Find/Replace search in your word processor to swap out all double spaces with single spaces.
• Check Heading Styles: Ensure all chapter titles and section headings are explicitly styled as “Heading 1” or “Heading 2” using your word processor’s style palette. This allows automated formatting tools to instantly generate a clickable Table of Contents, mandatory for KDP.

Phase 2: Ebook Formatting

Ebooks utilize reflowable text. Because readers can change font sizes, toggle dark mode, and read on screens ranging from a tiny phone to a large tablet, there are no fixed headers/footers, or page numbers. Your ebook file must be flexible yet structurally sound. NOTE: For ebooks, Amazon KDP offers its Kindle Create tool to format the book during the manuscript upload step. However, many authors complain that the output does not always look acceptable. Also, the formatted ebook file cannot be extracted and used to upload to some other platform.

Refer to this article for KDP ebook and print formatting guidelines:

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200645680

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201113520

Front Matter

• Cover Image: Include a high-resolution front cover image (ideally 2,560 x 1,600 pixels in JPEG format with a 1.6:1 aspect ratio).
• Title Page: Display the book title, subtitle, and author name clearly.
• Copyright Notice: Include the copyright year, author name, all rights reserved notice, ISBN (if applicable), and edition notice.
• Dedication & Epigraph: Optional pages for personal dedications or opening quotes.
• Table of Contents: An automated, hyperlinked Table of Contents that allows readers to jump directly to any chapter from their device’s navigation menu.

Body Matter

• Chapter Openings: Ensure every chapter starts at the top of a fresh screen or page break.
• Scene Breaks: Use a clean, uniform symbol (like a centered * * * or a decorative dingbat) to separate scenes within a chapter, rather than huge vertical white spaces.
• Hyperlinks: Test all internal links (such as clickable chapter links in the TOC) and external links (author website, newsletter signup) to ensure they open correctly.
• Embedded Images: If your book contains images, charts, or maps, ensure they are centered, optimized for low file sizes, and accompanied by alternative text for accessibility.

Back Matter

• Author Bio: A short, engaging biography with a professional author photo.
• Bibliography / Acknowledgments: Optional sections thanking contributors or listing research sources.
• “Also By” Page: A list of your other published works with active retailer links so readers can easily buy your next book.
• Call to Action: An invitation to join your mailing list, leave an honest review, or follow your social media channels.

Phase 3: Print Book Formatting Checklist

Unlike ebooks, print books are rigid physical objects. They require exact geometry, strict margins, and precise page numbering to survive the physical binding and trimming process at the printing press. An author can format a print book to look like a traditionally published book using Word or some other formatting software. To see what the print interior should look like, an author can pick up any traditionally-published fiction book and replicate the format for his/her book.

Page Setup and Geometry

• Trim Size Selection: Choose a standard industry trim size appropriate for your genre (e.g., 5 x 8 inches for fiction, 6 x 9 inches for non-fiction or memoirs).
• Page Margins and Gutter: Set your outside, top, and bottom margins to at least 0.5 to 0.75 inches. Crucially, set a gutter margin (additional inner margin space) of 0.3 to 0.5 inches to prevent text from being swallowed by the book’s spine binding.
• Mirror Margins: Enable mirror margins (facing pages) in your software so that left-hand and right-hand pages alternate their inner and outer spacing correctly.

Front Matter

• Half-Title Page: A minimalist page featuring only the book title (no author name or subtitle), usually placed on page one (a right-hand odd page).
• Series Page / Frontispiece: Optional page listing other books in a series or leaving the left page blank opposite the full title page.
• Title Page: The full title, subtitle, author name, and publisher logo or imprint name.
• Copyright Page: Detailed copyright information, ISBN, LCCN (Library of Congress Control Number), edition history, and printer location notice.
• Dedication and Epigraph: Placed on odd-numbered (right-hand) pages.
• Table of Contents: Lists exact starting page numbers for chapters and major sections.

Body Matter and Typography

• Running Headers and Footers: Ensure running headers alternate properly (e.g., Book Title on the left page, Chapter Title or Author Name on the right page). Suppress headers and footers on chapter opening pages.
• Page Numbers (Folios): Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3…) must begin on Chapter 1 and run continuously to the end of the book. Front matter must use lowercase Roman numerals (i, ii, iii…). Ensure all page numbers sit comfortably within the safe margin zone. Page numbers can be included in the header part of a page or the footer.
• Orphan and Widow Control: Eliminate single lines of text stranded at the top of a page (widows) or bottom of a page (orphans). Adjust tracking or paragraph spacing slightly to pull text together.
• Drop Caps (Optional): If you use large capital letters at the start of chapters, ensure they align cleanly with the baseline of the surrounding text.

Back Matter

• Acknowledgments and Author Bio: Formatted identically to the body text style.
• Blank Pages: Ensure any accidental blank pages at the very end of the document are removed so your book ends cleanly on an even-numbered page (if required by your printer).

Amazon KDP offers Cover Creator, a very good tool to generate a cover at no cost when the print book is being uploaded. The tool offers several front page formats the author can select, including images. The author can also upload his/her own front cover JPG image. The drawback is that the generated cover cannot be downloaded to be used with any other platform.

For an author who wishes to format his/her own print cover, Amazon KDP and IngramSpark offer the following tools:

https://kdp.amazon.com/cover-calculator

https://myaccount.ingramspark.com/Portal/Tools/SpineCalculator

You can also read the following articles on how to format your manuscript:

https://www.stefanvucak.com/how-to-format-your-manuscript/

https://www.stefanvucak.com/publishing-a-hardback-book-with-a-dust-jacket/

Phase 4: The Quality Assurance Pass

Never upload your raw files straight to Amazon KDP or IngramSpark without running a final quality control test.

• The Ebook Device Test: Export your Word docx or EPUB file and load it onto multiple environments using free viewing software. Test it in Apple Books, Adobe Digital Editions, the Kindle Previewer app, and a physical e-reader device if possible. Check that font sizes scale cleanly and images do not distort.
• The Print PDF Export: Export your print interior as a flattened, high-resolution PDF with fonts fully embedded.
• The Print Margin Check: Print out a random sample chapter of your interior PDF on your home printer at 100% scale. Bind the pages together with a binder clip and flip through it manually. Look closely at the inner margin near the crease to ensure no text sits too close to the binding.
• Order a Physical Proof Copy: It is recommended that an author does not skip this step for print books. Order a physical proof copy directly from your printer (Amazon KDP or IngramSpark). Flip through every page with a pen in hand to catch any lingering formatting glitches, misaligned headers, weird line breaks, and general writing errors before you click the publish button.

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