User manual

How to bring in a manuscript, format and design it, check it for errors, and export a print-ready PDF and an ebook.

1. Getting started

Book Formatter turns a manuscript into a print-ready book interior (PDF) and an ebook (EPUB). Every page in its preview is a real page: what you see is exactly what goes to the printer.

The four tabs

Your books

Click the book title at the top left to open Your books. From there you can open another book, duplicate one, delete one, open a project file, or start a New book from a template.

Saving and backups

• The app saves automatically a moment after every change. The status at the top right reads "Saving…" and then "Saved" with the page count. Ctrl+S (Cmd+S on a Mac) saves immediately.
• Books are saved in the browser you are using, on that device only. Clearing your browser's site data deletes them.
• Keep backups. Go to Export → Download project to save a .json file of the whole book, settings included. Open it later from Your books → Open project file. Do this whenever you finish a working session.

2. Bringing in a manuscript

Click Import at the top right. Drop a file onto the box, click choose a file, or paste text into the large box. The summary at the bottom shows how many sections, chapters, words and footnotes were found before anything changes.

File types

Old Word .doc files can't be read. Save them as .docx or .odt first.

Importing a PDF

A PDF records where each word sits on the page, not where paragraphs and chapters begin, so the import works those out from the layout. It usually gets the text itself right, but check these after importing:

• Chapter breaks. The title page, half-title and copyright page are dropped, since the app makes its own. Look over the section list for a chapter that was split in two or two chapters that ran together. Use Merge with next section or Split section here to fix them.
• Italics and bold come from the font names in the PDF. Most PDFs name their fonts clearly, but some don't, and then the italics are lost.
• Footnotes are matched by the small raised number in the text and the note at the foot of the same page. A note that continues onto the next page may be cut short.
• Paragraph breaks are guessed from indents and short last lines. A paragraph that ends exactly at the right margin can run into the next one.
• Small caps, drop caps and letter-spaced headings are put back into ordinary text.

Afterwards, the Clean up text button (the wand on the toolbar) fixes leftover spacing and punctuation, and the proofing panel in Preview points out anything odd on the pages.

A scanned PDF is only pictures of pages, with no text in it. The import tells you when this happens. Run it through OCR (text recognition) first. Adobe Acrobat, ABBYY FineReader, or the free OCRmyPDF can add a text layer, then import the result.

Finding chapters

• Lines like "Chapter IV", "Part Two", "Sermon I", "Preface" become sections of the right type. Words such as Letter, Book, Lecture, Homily and Conference are recognised too. When most chapters use one word (for example "Sermon"), the book's chapter label is set to it.
• If a chapter line has no title after the number, a short line straight after it is taken as the title.
• Word headings and Markdown # headings also start chapters.
• Lines that are only a Roman numeral (off by default) start chapters for books numbered that way.
• Convert ALL-CAPS titles to Title Case tidies scanned headings like "THE ARRIVAL".
• A printed "Contents" list in the source is dropped, because the book builds its own. A short title line before the first chapter becomes the book's title.

Cleanup on import

• Remove Project Gutenberg header and licence keeps only the text between the START and END markers.
• Join lines broken mid-paragraph and Rejoin words hyphenated at line ends fix hard-wrapped text.
• Remove lines that are only page numbers removes stray numbers left from scans.
• Footnotes: [Footnote 1: …] blocks with [1] markers (the Gutenberg style), Markdown [^1] notes and ^[…] become real footnotes.
• Underscores to italics, curly quotes, em dashes, ellipses, and lines of * * * to scene breaks.

Where it goes

• Replace the chapters in this book keeps your title page, copyright, dedication, contents and back matter, and swaps in the new chapters.
• Add to the end appends everything.
• Start a new book creates a separate book with standard front matter.

3. Sections

A book is a list of sections, shown in the left panel of Write and grouped as front matter, body and back matter. The number beside each section is the page it starts on. The ☰ button at the left of the section title hides or shows the list, for full-width writing; on a phone it opens the list as a drawer.

Section types

The half title, title page, contents and notes are built automatically. The title pages use your book details; the contents lists every section marked "In contents" with its real page number; Notes gathers footnotes when they are set to print at the end of the book. Each type comes with sensible defaults, such as the copyright page starting on a left-hand page with small text at the foot of the page.

Managing sections

• Add: click Add and pick a type. Front matter is placed among the front matter; anything else goes after the current section.
• Reorder: drag a section by its dotted handle, or use the up and down arrows at the bottom of the list.
• Duplicate, Merge with next section and Delete (with a confirmation) are the other buttons along the bottom of the list. Merging turns the next section's title into a subheading.
• Split: put the cursor where a new section should begin and click the split button on the toolbar. If the cursor is on a subheading or a "Chapter…" line, it becomes the new section's title.
• Change type with the menu at the top of the editor.

Title, subtitle and label

Type the title in the large box above the editor and an optional subtitle or chapter summary below it. The label ("Chapter One") is set automatically from Design; type your own in Label under the section options to override it.

Page and heading options

Open Page and heading options with the Options (gear) button beside the section title. The subtitle box is there too:

Recto and verso

Page 1 of the book is a right-hand page (recto), and odd page numbers always fall on the right. When a section must start on a particular side and the previous one ends on that side, a blank page is inserted automatically. The first body section always starts on a right-hand page numbered 1, and the book is padded to an even page count.

4. Writing and formatting text

The editor works like a word processor: select text and click a toolbar button. Hover over any button to see its name. When the window is too narrow for every button, the rest are under More at the right end of the toolbar. The toolbar stays at the top of the window as you scroll.

The toolbar, left to right

Views and zoom

The view and zoom controls work like the ones in LibreOffice Writer:

• Draft is a comfortable writing view.
• Page sets the text at the book's real page width, margins, typeface, size and line spacing, so lines break much as they will in print. A dashed red line with a label marks where each printed page begins.
• Pages side by side (the two-page button at the top right of the editor) shows the laid-out pages beside the editor. The paragraph your cursor is in is shaded on its page, and clicking a paragraph on a page moves the cursor there. Use −, Fit and + at the top of that pane to size the pages.
• Zoom with the slider, the − and + buttons, Ctrl and the mouse wheel, or Ctrl + and Ctrl −. Click the percentage to return to 100%, and the arrows button to fit the width.

The app remembers your view and zoom.

Paragraphs and line breaks

Press Enter for a new paragraph and Shift+Enter for a line break inside one, which is how verse keeps its lines together. The first paragraph after a heading or scene break is set without an indent automatically.

Footnotes

Click where the note mark belongs and press the footnote button (or Ctrl+Alt+F). Type the note, using the I, B and Sc buttons for italics, bold and small caps, then click Done. Marks number themselves. Click a mark later to edit or delete its note. Where notes print, and how they are numbered, is set in Design → Footnotes.

Typing helpers

With Curly quotes and dashes while typing on (Design → Body text), straight quotes become “curly” as you type, two hyphens become an em dash, and three periods become an ellipsis. Pasted text is cleaned of web and Word styling but keeps bold, italic, headings and lists.

Placeholders

Words in braces such as {title}, {author}, {publisher}, {year} and {isbn} are filled in from Book details when the page is laid out. A line whose only content is an empty field, like "ISBN {isbn}" with no ISBN entered, is left out.

Find and replace

Press Ctrl+F or the magnifier. Choose match case, whole words, or a pattern (regular expression), and whether to search the whole book or the current section. Results are listed by section with a sample; Show jumps there and highlights each match. Replace all replaces every match in the chosen scope, and the change can be undone.

Clean up text

The wand button offers: straight quotes to curly, double hyphens and spaced hyphens to em dashes, removing spaces around em dashes, three periods to an ellipsis, collapsing repeated spaces, removing empty paragraphs, turning lines of * or # into scene breaks, turning short all-capitals lines into subheadings, and turning underscored words into italics. Apply it to the section or to the whole book.

5. Designing the book

Everything about the book's look is on the Design tab, in groups you open and close. The pages on the right update as you change settings. Chapter opening shows a sample of key pages; Whole book shows every page.

Templates

Click Templates at the top of Design to restyle the current book, or New book in Your books to start one. Each template shows a real first page.

Restyling keeps your text and sections. Tick Also add the template's front and back matter pages to add any of its pages the book lacks. A new book from a template has placeholder text in [brackets] to replace.

Book details

Title, subtitle, author, publisher or imprint, place of publication, year, print ISBN, ebook ISBN, edition, language (which sets hyphenation rules for English US or UK, French, Spanish, Italian and Latin; for German, turn hyphenation off, since German rules aren't included), a description for the ebook, and a publisher logo shown on the title page.

Page size and margins

Pick a trim size (5 × 8, 5.06 × 7.81, 5.25 × 8, 5.5 × 8.5, 6 × 9, 6.14 × 9.21, 6.69 × 9.61, 7 × 10, 7.5 × 9.25, 8 × 10, 8.5 × 11 in) or type a custom width and height. Set the top, bottom, inside (gutter, next to the binding) and outside margins in inches. A hint suggests the inside margin printers recommend for your page count, with a button to apply it. Page numbering is either roman numerals for front matter then 1, 2, 3, or one sequence from the first page.

Body text

• Typeface: 19 book faces, including EB Garamond, Libre Caslon Text, Libre Baskerville, Crimson Pro, Cormorant Garamond, Lora, Source Serif 4, Literata, Spectral, Gentium Book Plus, Cardo, PT Serif, Old Standard TT, Sorts Mill Goudy and IM Fell English. All are embedded in the PDF.
• Size in points and line spacing (1.35 to 1.45 suits most novels).
• Paragraphs: first-line indent (with indent size) or space between (with spacing).
• Indent the first paragraph after a heading (off by convention), Justify text.
• Widow lines and Orphan lines: the fewest lines of a paragraph allowed at the top or foot of a page. The layout enforces them.
• Curly quotes and dashes while typing.

Chapter openings

• Six one-click styles: Classic, Heritage, Devotional, Modern, Elegant, Plain.
• Heading typeface, alignment, drop from top (space above the heading) and space after heading.
• Chapter word (Chapter, Sermon, Letter, Book, or none) and chapter numbers (One, Two; I, II; 1, 2).
• Label style (small capitals, spaced capitals, italic, plain, or a large number alone) and size; title style (italic, roman, small capitals, spaced capitals) and size.
• Ornament (rule, asterisks, asterism, fleuron, hedera, cross, dagger, dots) and where it sits.
• Drop cap (2 to 4 lines) and small-cap opening words (how many words of the first line are set in small capitals).
• Chapters start on a right-hand page, the next page, or a left-hand page.
• Part word and part numbers for part-title pages.

Scene breaks

Choose * * *, ⁂, ❦, ❧, ☙, ☩, ✝, †, dots, a short rule, a blank line, or your own text.

Running heads and page numbers

• Left-hand and right-hand pages each show the author, book title, chapter title, chapter number or nothing.
• Head style (small capitals, italic, spaced capitals, plain) and size.
• Page numbers: bottom center, bottom outside corner, top outside beside the head, or none; style 12 or – 12 –.
• Number chapter opening pages: untick to hide the number on every page where a chapter starts.

Running heads are always left off chapter openings and blank pages.

Footnotes

• Place notes at the foot of the page, the end of each chapter, or the end of the book (in a Notes section).
• Numbering restarts each chapter, each page, or never.
• Marks: 1, 2, 3 or *, †, ‡, §.
• Note size and the separator rule (short, full width or none).

A note too long for its page continues at the foot of the next page.

Contents page

Page numbers on the right with dot leaders, on the right without leaders, straight after the title, or none; and whether to include labels such as "Chapter One". The numbers are read from the finished layout, so they are always correct.

6. Hyphenation

Words are split at line ends to keep justified spacing even. The split points come from the standard TeX hyphenation patterns, the rules professional typesetting software uses, with these house rules on top:

• At least 2 letters stay on the line and at least 3 carry over.
• Words shorter than the shortest word to split (6 letters by default) are never split.
• Numbers, words in all capitals, and short contractions are never split. A possessive splits only before the apostrophe.
• The last word of a paragraph is left whole unless you allow it.
• Splits that would read as a different, misleading word are avoided (for example "the-rapist").

Words that wait for you

Some words are left whole until you approve them, because the patterns may get them wrong:

The review window

Open it with the hyphenation button on the toolbar, Design → Hyphenation → Review words, or Review on a Proofing item.

1. Needs review lists the waiting words, most frequent first. All words lists every word that can be split. Your decisions lists words you have set. Use the search box to find one.
2. Each word is shown with its proposed splits marked by a short line between letters. Click between any two letters to add or remove a split.
3. Click Approve (or Save) to use the splits shown, Never split to keep the word whole, or Reset to go back to the automatic rule.

A decision applies to every occurrence in the book and is saved with it. Names are matched exactly as written; other words regardless of capitals.

Settings

In Design → Hyphenation, or at the top of the review window: hyphenate on or off, shortest word to split, most hyphenated lines in a row (Proofing flags longer stacks), split names without asking, and split the last word of a paragraph. Ragged-right books such as poetry and large print usually have hyphenation off.

7. Previewing and proofing

The Preview tab shows every page exactly as it will print. Click any page to jump to its section in Write.

Preview controls

• Spreads shows facing pages as in an open book; Single pages shows one at a time.
• Zoom sets the page size on screen. On a phone the pages fit the screen until you move the slider.
• Margin guides outline the text area (red dashes) and the running-head and page-number areas (blue dots).
• Page: type a page number, roman (ix) or arabic (12), and press Enter to jump to it.
• Proofing shows or hides the Proofing panel. Its badge shows how many problems are left, or a check mark when there are none. The arrow at the top of the panel hides it too, and the pages widen to fill the space. The app remembers whether you left it open.
• On a phone or narrow window, the panel slides in from the left over the pages. Tap Proofing to open it, tap a problem to jump to its page (the panel closes so you can see it), and tap outside the panel or its arrow to close it.

The Proofing panel

Proofing checks every page a moment after the layout changes, then lists what it finds in groups. With Highlight on pages on, each problem is outlined on the page in its group's color. Click a highlight to find it in the list, or click a list item to scroll to its page. Open an item to see its fixes.

What it checks

How the fixes work

• Tighten and Loosen change the letter spacing of that one paragraph by a small step, so lines rebreak. One step usually pulls a runt back onto the line above or pushes a widow's partner line over. You can step up to three times either way; the same buttons are on the editor toolbar.
• Edit opens the paragraph in Write, flashes it and highlights the words concerned.
• Fix all corrects that kind of typing slip everywhere in the book, footnotes included. It can be undone in the editor.
• Check again reruns the check at any time.

If a widow or orphan won't go away, it is often because Design → Body text → Widow lines or Orphan lines is set to 1. Set both to 2 and the layout prevents them.

8. Exporting and printing

The Export tab downloads your book in six forms. In the Claude app you confirm each download; elsewhere the file downloads straight away.

Use Chrome, Edge or Safari when making the PDF so it matches the preview exactly. The PDF is a standard PDF, not the PDF/X format some printers prefer; run it through your printer's file checker before ordering.

Preflight

The right-hand column of Export checks the book before you send it:

• Page count is even (blank pages are added automatically) and at least 24 pages (IngramSpark accepts 18).
• Trim size is a standard printer size.
• Inside margin is wide enough for the page count (0.375 in up to 150 pages, 0.5 in to 300, 0.625 in to 500, 0.75 in to 700, 0.875 in beyond).
• Outer margins are at least 0.5 in (anything under 0.25 in risks being trimmed).
• Fonts are embedded.
• No content runs past the margins.
• No empty sections, a contents page if there are several chapters, and a print ISBN.
• Images are at least 300 dpi at their printed size.
• A summary of the Proofing results.

Cover size

Choose your paper (IngramSpark creme or white 50 lb, white 70 lb, or KDP white or cream). The calculator gives the spine width from your page count, the full cover size with 0.125 in bleed, and its size in pixels at 300 dpi. These are estimates; download your printer's own cover template before finishing the artwork. Spines under about 100 pages are usually too narrow for text.

Ebook cover image

Add a JPEG or PNG, ideally 1600 × 2560 pixels. It is used only in the EPUB.

A typical IngramSpark workflow

1. Start the book from the Classic reprint or Devotional and sermons template, then Import the text with Replace the chapters in this book.
2. Fill in Book details, including the ISBN, and check the copyright page.
3. Read through in Preview. Work down the Proofing list until nothing orange or red remains.
4. Review waiting words in the hyphenation window.
5. Check Export → Preflight, apply the suggested inside margin if needed, then download the PDF.
6. Use the page count with IngramSpark's cover template generator for the cover.
7. Download a project file as your master copy.

9. Running it outside Claude, troubleshooting and shortcuts

Running your own copy

The standalone copy is a folder containing index.html and the fonts, hyph and lib folders. It must be served by a web server; double-clicking index.html won't load the fonts, because browsers don't let a page opened from your disk read other files on your disk.

• GitHub Pages: upload the folder to your C-ee-g.github.io repository (Add file → Upload files) and visit https://c-ee-g.github.io/book-formatter/. If anything fails to load, add an empty file named .nojekyll at the top of the repository. The site is public, but each visitor's books stay in their own browser.
• Cloudflare Pages or Netlify Drop: upload or drag in the folder.
• Your own computer: in a terminal in the folder, run python3 -m http.server 8000, then visit http://localhost:8000.

Each copy keeps its own books. Move a book with Export → Download project, then Your books → Open project file in the other copy.

Troubleshooting

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