The Complete Book Creation Guide: Every Format, Every Platform, From Manuscript to Published

Writing a book is one kind of hard. Turning that manuscript into a product that looks professional across every format and every platform — print, ebook, audiobook; KDP, IngramSpark, Lulu, Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google Play — that’s a different discipline entirely.

Most first-time publishers lose weeks reformatting the same manuscript for different platforms, each with its own specifications, quirks, and rejection triggers. The cover that passed on KDP gets bounced by IngramSpark. The EPUB that looked perfect in Calibre renders broken on Kindle. The interior PDF that uploaded fine has a gutter so tight that readers can’t see the inner third of every page.

This guide covers the entire production process for every format you’ll publish in: print interiors, print covers, ebooks, and the platform-specific requirements that differ between KDP Print, IngramSpark, Lulu, and the major ebook retailers. Follow it and your files will pass on the first upload — everywhere.

Interior Formatting (Print)

Your interior file is a single PDF containing every page of your book — front matter, body, back matter, blank pages, everything except the cover. This file must be formatted, styled, and page-set before you upload it to any print platform.

Choosing Your Tool

Microsoft Word — Suitable for text-heavy projects with simple layouts: novels, memoirs, poetry, business books. Word handles paragraph styles, page breaks, headers, and footers competently. Its limitations appear when you need precise control over image placement, bleeds, or multi-column layouts.

Adobe InDesign — The industry standard for complex layouts: photo books, workbooks, textbooks, illustrated guides, cookbooks, anything with images on most pages. Pixel-level control over every element. Exports PDFs that printers actually want to receive.

Affinity Publisher — A capable alternative to InDesign at a fraction of the cost. Handles complex layouts well and exports clean print-ready PDFs. If InDesign’s subscription model isn’t for you, Affinity is the next best option.

Atticus — A browser-based tool built specifically for book formatting. Handles both print and ebook exports from a single manuscript. Good for authors who want a dedicated book tool without learning InDesign. Limited compared to InDesign for complex layouts but excellent for standard fiction and nonfiction.

Vellum (Mac only) — Popular among fiction authors. Produces beautiful print and ebook files with minimal effort. Templates handle most design decisions for you. Limited customization compared to InDesign, but the output quality is consistently professional.

Google Docs — Not recommended for final production. Useful for drafting and collaboration, but its PDF export lacks the precision needed for professional print output.

Text and Styles

Use paragraph styles — not manual formatting — to control how your text looks. Define a style for body text, chapter headings, subheadings, block quotes, and any other recurring element. Apply them consistently.

Why this matters: styles ensure every chapter heading is the same size, every paragraph has the same spacing, and every page break falls where you intend. Manual formatting — hitting Enter six times to push text to a new page, bolding titles by hand — creates invisible inconsistencies that compound when you export.

Core rules:

• Page breaks — Use your software’s page break function. Never use stacked blank lines to push content to a new page.
• Fonts — Choose a serif font for body text (Garamond, Caslon, Georgia, Palatino) and a complementary font for headings. Two fonts maximum. Use real italics, not faux italics.
• Font size — 10 to 12 points for body text. Smaller trims use 10pt; larger formats use 11pt or 12pt.
• Line spacing — 1.2 to 1.5 times font size. Novels use tighter spacing (1.2 to 1.3); nonfiction benefits from more room (1.4 to 1.5).
• Paragraph spacing — Either indent the first line (0.25 to 0.5 in) or add space between paragraphs — not both. Fiction uses indentation. Nonfiction can use either.
• Widows and orphans — Enable widow/orphan control in your paragraph styles. A widow is a single line of a paragraph stranded at the top of a page. An orphan is a single line stranded at the bottom. Both look unprofessional.

Front Matter and Back Matter

Every professional book includes front matter before the main content and back matter after it.

Front Matter (in order):

1. Half title page — Book title only. Centered.
2. Title page — Full title, subtitle, author name, publisher name.
3. Copyright page — Copyright notice, ISBN(s), edition statement, printing credits, legal disclaimers. Always on the verso (left-hand page).
4. Dedication (optional)
5. Table of contents (nonfiction) — With page numbers. Fiction typically omits this unless chapters are named.
6. Foreword / Preface / Acknowledgments (optional)

Back Matter (in order):

1. Acknowledgments (if not in front matter)
2. About the Author
3. Also By — Other titles in your catalog
4. Resources / Bibliography / Notes (nonfiction)
5. Index (nonfiction, if applicable)

Front matter pages are traditionally numbered with lowercase Roman numerals (i, ii, iii). Body text starts at Arabic page 1. Some platforms (KDP) count all pages including front matter in the total page count for spine width calculations.

Page Numbers and Headers

• No page numbers on the half title, title page, copyright page, dedication, or intentionally blank pages.
• Page numbers begin on the first page of body text. Bottom center or outer bottom corner.
• Running headers (optional) — Author name on left pages, book title on right. No running headers on chapter opening pages.
• Chapter openings — Traditionally start on recto (right-hand) pages. Drop the running header and optionally drop the page number.

The Anatomy of a Book

The Interior

The interior is everything between the covers. It’s delivered as a single-page PDF — no spreads, no facing pages. Each PDF page equals one printed page.

Key structural elements:

• Trim size — Final dimensions of the printed page after cutting. This is the size readers hold.
• Bleed area — An extra 0.125 in (3.175 mm) beyond the trim edge on three sides (top, bottom, outside). Required only if you have images, backgrounds, or design elements that touch the page edge. The spine edge has no bleed.
• Safety margin — A minimum 0.5 in (12.7 mm) border inside the trim edge. All critical content stays inside. Trimming isn’t perfectly precise — the safety margin absorbs that variance.
• Gutter margin — The inner margin on the spine side. Pages near the spine fold into the binding, making text close to the spine difficult to read. Thicker books need wider gutters.

Gutter Recommendations

The gutter is the single most overlooked margin in book design. Get it wrong and readers physically can’t read the inner portion of your text without cracking the spine.

The gutter applies only to the inside margin — the side facing the spine. Outside margins stay at 0.5 inches or wider. Coil-bound and saddle-stitch books don’t need gutter additions.

The Cover

Your cover is a single-page PDF containing three zones as a flat spread:

Back Cover | Spine | Front Cover

The spine folds over the bound page edge. The total cover width = back cover + spine + front cover + bleed on both sides. The total height = trim height + bleed top and bottom.

Cover Layout

The cover is the most visible piece of your book and the most technically demanding to produce correctly.

Cover Structure

1. Back cover (left) — Synopsis, author bio, barcode/ISBN, publisher logo.
2. Spine (center) — Title, author name, optionally publisher name. Width varies with page count.
3. Front cover (right) — Title, subtitle, author name, imagery.

Calculating Spine Width

Paperback formula:

Spine width (inches) = (page count / 444) + 0.06

Spine width (millimeters) = (page count / 17.48) + 1.524

Example: A 300-page paperback = (300 / 444) + 0.06 = 0.736 inches.

Hardcover spine width uses a step table:

Minimum page counts: Paperbacks require at least 32 interior pages. Hardcovers require at least 24. KDP Print has different minimums — 24 pages for all binding types.

Use the Caliana Press Spine Width Calculator to compute your exact spine dimensions automatically.

Platform-Specific Spine Differences

Each print platform calculates spine width slightly differently based on their paper stock:

The differences are small — usually less than 0.05 inches — but enough to cause spine text misalignment if you use one platform’s calculation for another. Always generate a platform-specific cover template rather than reusing the same cover PDF across platforms.

Designing the Spine

1. Leave at least 0.125 in between spine text and both spine edges to absorb trimming variance.
2. If your book is 80 pages or fewer, do not include spine text.
3. Keep the spine background the same color as the surrounding cover to hide slight trim shifts.
4. Spine text runs bottom to top in the US (tilt your head right to read it).

Bleed and Safety

• Bleed: Extend all background images and colors 0.125 in past the trim edge on every side.
• Safety margin: Keep all text, logos, and barcodes at least 0.5 in inside the trim edge.
• Barcode: Lower-right quadrant of back cover, within safety margin. Approximately 2 x 1.2 inches.

Hardcover Considerations

Hardcovers have an additional hinge area where the cover boards meet the book block. Keep all important elements at least 0.75 inches from the spine edge. Dust jacket covers include front and back flaps and require a separate template.

Color Management

RGB vs. CMYK

RGB (Red, Green, Blue) — Additive color used by screens. Wider color range, including vivid blues and neon greens that can’t be reproduced in print.

CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) — Subtractive color used by printers. Narrower range. Some RGB colors shift noticeably when converted.

Which Mode to Use

Modern print workflows handle the conversion well, but your choices matter:

1. New project? Use sRGB IEC61966-2.1 color space. Modern printers map RGB to CMYK accurately.
2. Photographs? Ensure all images use sRGB. This is the universal compatibility profile.
3. Already in CMYK? Stay in CMYK. Converting back to RGB introduces rounding errors.
4. Black-and-white images? Set color space to grayscale, gamma 2.2 to 2.4.

Platform Color Requirements

If you publish across multiple print platforms, using sRGB for everything is the safest universal approach. IngramSpark prefers CMYK for covers, so if IngramSpark is critical for you, create a CMYK cover variant.

Black Ink

• Body text: 100% black (K: 100, C: 0, M: 0, Y: 0). This is “pure black.”
• Large black areas (cover backgrounds, full-page fills): Use “rich black” — C: 40, M: 30, Y: 30, K: 100.
• Total Area Coverage (TAC) must never exceed 270%. Higher values cause ink pooling and drying defects.

Ink and Paper Combinations

Image Resolution

Images that look sharp on a screen can print blurry. Screens display at 72–96 PPI; print requires 300 DPI minimum.

Critical rule: Never enlarge a raster image beyond its original pixel dimensions. A 900 x 600 pixel image at 300 DPI prints at 3 x 2 inches. Scale it to 6 x 4 inches and its effective resolution drops to 150 DPI. If it isn’t large enough, find a higher-resolution source.

Checking resolution in InDesign: Window > Links panel. Check “Effective PPI” — this shows resolution at the image’s placed size.

For ebooks: 72 DPI is acceptable for most ebook readers. However, use at least 150 DPI for images that readers might zoom into (maps, infographics, detailed illustrations).

Ebook Creation

Print is one product. Ebooks are another — and they have their own production pipeline. An ebook isn’t a PDF of your print layout. It’s a reflowable document that adapts to each reader’s screen size, font choice, and display settings.

Ebook Formats

EPUB — The universal ebook standard. Used by Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble Nook, Google Play Books, and most global retailers. EPUB 3.0 supports reflowable text, embedded fonts, audio, video, and fixed-layout pages. This is the format you should build first.

KPF / MOBI / AZW — Amazon Kindle formats. If you upload an EPUB or Word document to KDP, Amazon converts it to their proprietary format automatically. You can also use Kindle Create to produce a KPF file for more control. MOBI is legacy — Amazon now uses KPF/AZW3 internally.

PDF — A fixed-layout format. Not ideal for reading on phones or small tablets because it doesn’t reflow. Used primarily for print replicas, textbooks with complex layouts, and direct-sale digital downloads. Some readers prefer PDF for nonfiction with charts, tables, and fixed design elements.

Creating Your EPUB

From dedicated book tools:

• Vellum (Mac) — Export as EPUB directly. Produces clean, well-structured files.
• Atticus — Export as EPUB. Handles chapter breaks, front matter, and styling.
• Calibre — Free, open-source. Can convert from Word/HTML to EPUB. The output requires more cleanup than commercial tools.

From InDesign:

• File > Export > EPUB (Reflowable). Requires proper styles and export tagging in your InDesign document. InDesign’s EPUB export has improved dramatically but still requires attention to image handling and CSS.

From Word:

• Draft2Digital and KDP both accept Word (.docx) files and convert to ebook format automatically. This is the simplest path for text-only books.
• For better control, convert your Word file to EPUB using Calibre or Sigil, then validate and clean up.

Ebook Interior Specifications

• No page numbers — Ebooks don’t have pages. Content reflows. Remove all page number references.
• No running headers/footers — These don’t exist in reflowable ebooks.
• Table of contents — Must be a functional, linked TOC (clickable navigation). Most ebook platforms require an HTML/NCX TOC, not just a visual list of chapters. Your ebook creation tool should generate this automatically.
• Images — Use JPEG or PNG. Keep file sizes reasonable (under 2 MB per image for most platforms). Total ebook file size affects download speed and delivery costs.
• Fonts — Use standard fonts or embed custom fonts in the EPUB. Some retailers strip embedded fonts. For maximum compatibility, use fonts that are available on most reading devices (Georgia, Palatino, system defaults).
• Chapter breaks — Use proper heading tags (H1 for chapters, H2 for sections) so the ebook reader can build navigation.
• Links — Include hyperlinks to your website, other books, and any referenced URLs. These are clickable in ebooks.

Ebook Cover Specifications

Ebook covers are a single front-cover image — no spine, no back cover.

Universal recommendation: Create your ebook cover at 2560 x 3840 pixels (1.5:1 ratio) in sRGB color space. This exceeds every platform’s requirements and scales down cleanly.

Platform-Specific File Requirements

Every platform has its own specifications. Use this section as a quick reference for the platform you’re uploading to.

KDP Print (Amazon)

IngramSpark

Lulu

KDP Kindle (Ebook)

Apple Books

Barnes & Noble Press

Kobo Writing Life

Draft2Digital

Google Play Books

File Preparation Checklist

Interior PDF (Print)

• Single-page layout (not spreads)
• Page size matches trim size exactly (with or without bleed, consistently)
• All images 300 DPI minimum at printed size
• All fonts fully embedded
• All transparent layers flattened
• Gutter margins set for your page count
• Safety margins at least 0.5 in on all sides
• No crop marks, registration marks, or color bars
• No password protection or security settings
• Page count is even (add blank page if needed)
• Front matter in correct order
• Page numbers start correctly and are sequential
• B&W images set to grayscale
• Color images use sRGB or CMYK consistently

Cover PDF (Print)

• Single flat spread (back + spine + front)
• Dimensions correct (trim + spine + bleed)
• Spine width calculated from final page count for the specific platform
• All images extend 0.125 in past trim edge (bleed)
• Text and critical elements within 0.5 in safety margin
• Spine text has 0.125 in clearance from spine edges (or no text if under 80 pages)
• ISBN barcode placed and scannable
• All fonts embedded
• No crop marks or security settings

Ebook (EPUB)

• Valid EPUB 3.0 (pass EpubCheck validation)
• Functional linked table of contents
• No page numbers or running headers in content
• Images in JPEG or PNG, reasonable file sizes
• Chapter headings use proper H1/H2 tags
• Cover image embedded in EPUB metadata
• Hyperlinks functional
• Tested on at least two reading apps (Kindle Previewer, Apple Books, Calibre)

Ebook Cover Image

• 2560 x 3840 px or larger (scales down for all platforms)
• sRGB color space
• JPEG format (PNG accepted by most platforms)
• No spine, no back cover — front cover only
• Text readable at thumbnail size (the size most shoppers see it)

Proofing

You’ve formatted the interior, designed the cover, exported clean files, and uploaded without errors. You’re done — right?

No. You proof it. In print. On paper. With your hands.

The screen lies. It doesn’t show you that the gutter is too tight on page 147. It doesn’t tell you that the image on page 52 prints darker than your monitor showed. It doesn’t reveal that the spine text wraps onto the back cover.

Order a proof copy before making your book available for sale. This is non-negotiable.

What to Check

Text and formatting:

• Read the entire book looking for typos, missing words, and formatting breaks
• Verify page numbers are sequential and correct
• Confirm headers appear on the correct pages
• Check that chapter openings start on the correct side
• Verify the table of contents page numbers match actual pages

Margins and gutter:

• Open the book flat — can you read inner-margin text without cracking the spine?
• For 300+ page books, check the middle where gutter problems are worst

Images:

• All images printed at acceptable quality — no pixelation, banding, or color shifts
• For color books, compare critical colors to your screen proof
• Full-bleed elements extend cleanly to edges — no white strips

Cover:

• Spine text centered, not running onto front or back cover
• Barcode scannable (test with your phone)
• All text within safety margin

For ebooks — digital proofing:

• Open the EPUB in Kindle Previewer (simulates Kindle rendering)
• Open in Apple Books (Mac/iPad) to verify Apple rendering
• Open in Calibre viewer to check general EPUB rendering
• Test on an actual e-reader device if possible
• Check every chapter break, image, link, and TOC entry
• Resize the font to smallest and largest — does the layout hold?

Common Issues and Fixes

The Two-Proof Rule

Order at least two proof copies if you make changes after your first proof. The first catches problems. The second confirms your fixes didn’t introduce new ones.

Trim Size Quick Reference

Caliana Press Tools

Every tool below is free, requires no login, and runs entirely in your browser.

• Spine Width Calculator — Enter your page count and binding type. Get your exact spine width.
• Page Estimator — Convert word count to estimated page count by trim size and font.
• Word Count to Page Count Converter — Quick word-to-page conversion.
• Trim Size Comparison Tool — All standard trim sizes side by side with visual scale.
• Print Cost Estimator — Compare print costs across KDP, IngramSpark, and Lulu.
• Royalty Calculator — Per-unit royalty across Amazon, IngramSpark, and direct sales.
• Book Price Calculator — Find optimal retail price from production costs and target margin.
• ISBN Barcode Generator — Generate a print-ready ISBN barcode for your cover.

Caliana Press publishes fiction, nonfiction, textbooks, and educational content across all genres and formats. For publishing inquiries, contact permissions@calianapress.com.

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