Confession: I loathe book formatting. It’s terribly boring, stubborn and difficult. I recently spent dozens and dozens of hours formatting a nonfiction book and hated every second of it.
Even though I’ve made book formatting templates that have helped tens of thousands of authors, I still hate doing it. I even wrote in big red ink on my office bulletin board “NO MORE FORMATTING”.
The problem is, there aren’t many great solutions, and it has to get done somehow. There are a bunch of book formatters out there but most of them are not great. Others plagiarize and steal my book design templates to use in their own portfolio.
But whatever.
Luckily there are some tools that make it a bit easier.
Check out Reedsy’s formatting tool,
or Draft2Digital’s templates
Both allow you to choose a template and quickly format an ebook, which isn’t terrible.
If you’re a mac user, Vellum is a life-saver.
There’s comfort in simplicity…. as a book designer, I kind of hate/resent the ease of use, and also the limitations. But they work and save time.
However none of those tools are good enough (in my opinion) to format a book for print and have it look professional. For that, you might need a real designer. You *can* start with my free templates and do it yourself, but there’s a learning curve.
BOOK FORMATTING PART ONE:
BOOK FORMATTING PART TWO
FREE DIY bookformatting templates:
