Novel Formatter — The Right File for Every Stage
Querying an agent, publishing the ebook and printing the paperback are three different jobs. Start with the one your novel needs now.
What are you doing with the novel?
01
Submitting to agents
Shunn manuscript
12pt monospace, double spaced, one-inch margins. Plain on purpose, so an editor can mark it up and nothing about the presentation distracts from the writing.
Format for agents02
Publishing the ebook
Reflowable Kindle or EPUB
No pages and no fixed type size — the reader decides both. What matters is that chapters are real chapters, so the Go To menu and progress bar work.
Format the ebook03
Ordering the paperback
Print interior PDF
A fixed trim size, mirrored margins and a gutter sized to the finished page count. Every measurement exists because the book is physically bound.
Format the paperbackThe same words, three times
One novel. Three very different files
They are not three exports of one layout. Each is built to a different set of rules, set by whoever is going to read it — an agent, a reading device, or a printing press.
manuscript.docx
Particular to fiction
What a novel needs that other books often do not
- Scene breaks that survive. A blank line is invisible at a page break and at a screen edge, so it becomes a marker that cannot vanish.
- Chapter openings that mean something. In print, a fresh recto with the title set down the page. In an ebook, a real navigation entry.
- First paragraphs set flush. Indenting the paragraph after a heading indents it away from nothing.
- Usually no contents page. A novel read front to back does not need one in print, though the ebook still needs navigation.
- Prose untouched. Layout and punctuation style only — nothing rewrites, reorders or shortens a sentence.
The order it usually happens in
Where are you in the publishing process?
- DraftNothing to format yet. Write it.
- QueryStandard format, for agents.Manuscript formatter
- EditIf the book already exists as an ebook and needs marking up.EPUB to Word
- Publish the ebookAmazon, then everywhere else.Kindle formatter
- PrintOnce the interior is set, the page count is real.Print book formatter
Where next
Everything a novel needs
Querying agents?
Publishing it yourself?
Writing the opening pages?
Questions
Formatting a novel, answered
Is there a separate novel formatter, or is this the normal one?
It is the normal one, and that is the honest answer. A novel is chapters and prose, which is exactly what the tools were built around — so rather than a fourth tool with a different name, this page is about which of the three you need. Poetry is the one genre that genuinely needs different handling, because its whitespace is meaningful.
How are scene breaks handled?
A blank line between scenes is invisible in an ebook the moment it falls at the top or bottom of a screen, and ambiguous in print. Scene breaks become a centred marker instead, which survives re-wrapping and reads as deliberate. If you used asterisks or a hash, those are recognised as scene breaks rather than treated as text.
Do chapters start on a new page?
In print, yes — and on a right-hand page, which is the convention for a novel and means the occasional blank left-hand page. In an ebook each chapter becomes its own section, which is the equivalent: it is where the Go To menu and the progress bar get their structure.
Does a novel need a table of contents?
In print, usually not — readers do not look up chapter seven of a novel. In an ebook the navigation is built into the file whether or not you show a contents page, so the Go To menu works either way. A visible contents page in a novel is optional and slightly old-fashioned.
What about a prologue or epilogue?
Treated as chapters, because structurally that is what they are — they open on a new page and get their own navigation entry. If the detection is unsure whether something is a chapter opening or a line of text, it asks rather than guessing.
Will anything change my prose?
No. Layout and punctuation style only — curly quotes, real em dashes, consistent spacing. Nothing is rewritten, reordered or edited.