typesetting.ai · book formatting software
Format your book for Kindle, EPUB, print and agent submission
typesetting.ai is AI-assisted book formatting software for authors. Upload a Word manuscript and get a KDP-ready ebook, a validated EPUB 3, a print-ready interior PDF, a Shunn-standard manuscript or a poetry layout — without rewriting a word.
free to try · $5 to unlock a file · no account required
What is typesetting.ai?
typesetting.ai is online book formatting software for authors and self-publishers. It turns Word manuscripts into Kindle/KDP ebooks, validated EPUB files, print-ready book interiors, agent-standard manuscripts and poetry layouts. It also includes free publishing tools for EPUB validation, front matter, book margins and spine calculations.
- Who it is for
- Authors and self-publishers formatting their own books.
- What goes in
- A Word manuscript (.docx), or an EPUB you already have.
- What comes out
- Kindle, EPUB 3, print interior PDF, Shunn manuscript, poetry.
Format your book
Five formatters. Five different publishing jobs.
Choose the file you actually need, instead of forcing one format to do everything.
Submitting to agents?
Manuscript formatter
Create a Shunn-standard Word and PDF manuscript with correct margins, spacing, page numbers and chapter starts.
Format a manuscript →Publishing on Amazon?
Kindle / KDP formatter
Build a reflowable EPUB with chapter navigation, plus a structured DOCX for Kindle Create.
Format for Kindle →Publishing beyond Amazon?
EPUB formatter
Create a standards-compliant EPUB 3 and validate it with EPUBCheck before you upload it anywhere.
Create an EPUB →Ordering a paperback?
Print book formatter
Create a print-ready interior with your trim size, mirrored margins and a gutter sized to the finished page count.
Format for print →Formatting poetry?
Poetry formatter
Preserve deliberate line breaks, indentation and stanza spacing across PDF, EPUB and Word.
Format poetry →
Start with what you have
Start with the file you already have
Most books do not start from a blank page. Find the row that describes where you are.
- A finished bookOn Amazon KDPAmazon KDP·Both files KDP needs, checked against its requirements first.
- Word .docxEPUBWord to EPUB·Turn DOCX structure into EPUB 3 with real navigation and validation.
- EPUBPrint PDFEPUB to print PDF·Add trim size, fixed pages, mirrored margins and gutter.
- EPUBEditable WordEPUB to Word·Recover chapter structure into an editable DOCX.
- EPUBApple / Kobo / GoogleApple, Kobo & Google·Build one validated EPUB 3 for wide distribution.
- A novelThe right formatNovels·Agent manuscript, ebook or paperback — worked out by stage.
- Non-fictionThe right formatNon-fiction & memoir·Contents, chapters, subheadings, EPUB and print.
Not sure which file your book needs?
Work it out by what you are writing, rather than by file extension.
Free publishing tools
Useful even if you never pay us
Four publishing tools. No unlock, no account, no upload limit.
How it works
Three steps, and you read the result before you pay
01
Upload
Drop in the .docx you already have. It reads the structure — what is a chapter, what is a scene break, what should not be in the book at all — and asks about anything genuinely ambiguous instead of guessing.
Nothing to install, and no account until you want one.
02
Download
Choose the edition and take the file. Every format comes with a report of exactly what was touched — so nothing happens to your manuscript that you cannot see.
Free, with one credit line. Read it before deciding anything.
03
Refine
Not right? Say what to change in plain English — no settings to hunt through, no template to edit — and download again. Three adjustments are free on every file.
The words are never touched. Only the layout moves.
Before and after
From manuscript to finished book
The same chapter, as you wrote it and as it comes back. Nothing in the text changed — every word, in the order you put it.
01
Chapters open on a right-hand page
A recto opening, the way printed books do it — with a blank verso before it when the previous chapter ends short.
02
The opening sinks down the page
The chapter title sits well below the top margin, so a reader knows what the page is before reading a word.
03
First paragraph flush, the rest indented
Indenting the first paragraph indents it away from nothing. Every paragraph after it gets 1.5em.
04
Justified, and hyphenated to stay that way
In a 6-inch measure, justification without hyphenation opens rivers of white space down the page.
05
No line left on its own
Widows and orphans are held to two lines, so a paragraph never strands a single line at a page break.
06
Scene breaks survive
The blank line you used gets a real marker, instead of vanishing the moment the page breaks there.
The honest version
What the AI actually does
A fair question to ask of anything with .ai in the name, especially about a book you spent years on. Most AI book formatting tools are vague about this; the answer here is narrower than you might expect, and deliberately so.
What it does
- Reads the shape of the document — what is a chapter opening, what is a scene break, what is body text.
- Spots a chapter title you styled as bold text instead of a heading.
- Marks the pages that should not be in the book body at all.
- Asks when something is genuinely ambiguous, instead of guessing.
- Turns “make the chapter titles smaller” into the setting you meant.
What it never does
- Rewrite, reorder, shorten or “improve” a single word of your prose.
- Decide a measurement. Every margin, font size and page break is ordinary arithmetic.
- Pick your trim size or gutter — those come from your choice and KDP’s requirements.
- Get trained on your manuscript. Not by us, and not by Anthropic.
- Change anything silently. Every quote curled and dash converted is counted in the report that comes with the file.
That split is the whole design. The model is used for the one thing it is genuinely better at — recognising structure in a messy document — and kept away from everything where being nearly right is worse than useless.
The whole point
One manuscript. Every edition.
You wrote it once. Formatting it four times, by hand, in four different sets of rules, is not writing.
Your manuscript
.docx
Kindle / KDP
EPUB that KDP accepts
Print PDF
mirrored margins, real trim
EPUB 3
EPUBCheck clean
Shunn manuscript
what agents ask for
Formatting, typesetting, layout
These get used interchangeably and mostly mean the same request: make my finished manuscript look like a real book. Traditionally that was typesetting software — InDesign, or a professional you paid by the page — and for an illustrated or unusual book it still is. Book formatting software of the kind self-publishing authors actually need is a narrower problem than that.
For a novel, a memoir or a collection of poems, the decisions are well-established enough to automate: the measure, the leading, where chapters open, how much margin a bound spine needs. That is what these tools do. Book layout at that level is a solved problem, which is why a book costs $5 here rather than several hundred.
Standards & sources
Built on publishing standards, not guesses
Almost every measurement here is somebody else's published requirement that we implement. Each one below names the document it comes from and the month we last read it — because these change, and a formatting tool that stopped checking is confidently wrong.
Manuscript
Shunn Classic Format — monospace, double spaced, one-inch margins
William Shunn·verified September 2026
EPUB
EPUB 3.3, W3C Recommendation
W3C·verified September 2026
Validation
EPUBCheck, the conformance checker for EPUB
W3C / DAISY Consortium·verified September 2026
Print margins
KDP inside-margin requirements by page count
Amazon KDP·verified September 2026
Spine
KDP paper-stock thickness per page
Amazon KDP·verified September 2026
Trim sizes
KDP trim sizes and paper options
Amazon KDP·verified September 2026
Checking these in September 2026 is what caught our spine calculator allowing spine text at 79 pages when KDP's wording is “more than 79 pages”. That is the whole argument for citing a source rather than asserting a number.
Format first. Pay only when you want the file.
- Free
- Format any file and read the whole result.
- $5
- Unlock one file. Once, and it never renews.
- $12
- A month, for everything. Cancel from the billing portal.
Nothing is decided until you have read the file — formatting it is free, and the result is yours to judge first.
Your manuscript isn't training data
An unpublished book is the one file an author cannot afford to be careless with. Yours is deleted on a timer, and it is never used to train anything.
- 24h
- Free files are deleted automatically, whether or not you come back for them.
- 7 days
- Unlocked files, then they go too. Download them; we are not an archive.
- 0
- Books used to train a model — ours or anyone else's.
Only a structural outline is sent to the AI model — headings, where paragraphs begin, what looks like a scene break — not full chapters of prose.
Quick answers
typesetting.ai, answered
What is typesetting.ai?
typesetting.ai is online book formatting software that turns Word manuscripts into Kindle, EPUB, print and submission-ready files. It runs in the browser, with nothing to install.
Does typesetting.ai rewrite my book?
No. It detects and changes structure, typography and layout; it does not rewrite, reorder or shorten your prose. The one thing it does change in your text is punctuation style — straight quotes curled, double hyphens turned into dashes — and every instance is counted back to you in a report that comes with the file.
Can I format a book for Amazon KDP?
Yes. typesetting.ai creates reflowable Kindle EPUB files and print-ready paperback interiors, using KDP's own trim sizes and its inside-margin requirements for your finished page count.
Can I create an EPUB from a Word document?
Yes. A .docx is converted into a structured EPUB 3 with real chapter navigation, then checked with EPUBCheck before you download it.
How much does typesetting.ai cost?
Formatting and reading the result is free. Unlocking one file is $5, once, and never renews. Unlimited unlocks are $12 a month, cancellable from the billing portal.
Is my manuscript used to train AI?
No. Manuscripts are never used to train a model, by us or by Anthropic. Free files are deleted after 24 hours and unlocked files after 7 days, and only a structural outline is sent to the model — not full chapters of prose.
Guides
Learn how publishing formats actually work
Written from the same rules the formatters run on, which is the one kind of publishing advice we are in a position to give precisely.
KDP
What Amazon actually requires, and where books get rejected.
- How to format a book for KDP
- Kindle file formats: EPUB, DOCX, KPF and what KDP actually accepts
- Kindle: should you upload EPUB or Word?
- Kindle Enhanced Typesetting: what it is, and how a book gets it
- Kindle Previewer: what it is, what it checks, and how to read what it shows you
- Choosing a trim size for your book
- What book formatting actually costs
Inside the book
The parts of a book, what each is called, and how it is set.
EPUB
How the format is built, and how to read what a validator tells you.
The geometry of a bound book: margins, spines, page breaks.
Manuscript
What agents expect, setting the file up right, and the opening pages.
Chapter One
Your book starts here
Upload the .docx you already have. Read the result before you decide anything — formatting is free, and the file is yours to judge.