Your manuscript is done. Now comes the part nobody warned you about.
You've spent months — maybe years — writing this thing. You've revised it, edited it, probably cried over it at least once. And now someone is telling you that before a single reader can experience it, you need to learn about EPUB metadata, print-ready PDFs, gutter margins, chapter sinks, and trim sizes.
Here's the honest truth: how your book looks on the inside matters more than most authors realise. A poorly formatted book doesn't just look amateurish — it actively interrupts the reading experience. Broken EPUB files. PDF margins so tight the text runs into the binding. Chapter headings that look like they were designed in 2003. Readers notice, even if they can't name exactly what's wrong. They feel it, and they mention it in reviews.
The good news is that in 2025, you don't need to hire a professional book designer or learn InDesign. The right software can do most of the heavy lifting — if you pick the right one for your situation.
Quick Verdicts
Vellum — Gold standard for EPUB quality, Mac-only and the most expensive option. Worth it if you're already in the Apple ecosystem.
Atticus — Cross-platform, writing + formatting at $147, solid output for most self-publishers. Good value, limited typographic control.
Deckle — Professional typesetting via Typst, per-platform EPUB optimisation, deepest special pages library, full writing environment. Matches or exceeds Vellum's output depth while adding Scrivener-level organisation.
Reedsy Book Editor — Free, browser-based, surprisingly capable for basic needs. Limited customisation.
Scrivener Compile / Word — Better than nothing; not better than any of the above.
What "Book Formatting" Actually Means
Before we compare tools, let's establish what you're actually trying to produce — because "formatting your book" is three separate tasks.
EPUB is the format you need for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play Books, and virtually every digital retailer. A correctly built EPUB is a structured file with proper metadata, navigable chapter breaks, accessibility-compliant markup, and CSS styling that renders correctly across every e-reader's unique rendering engine.
Print-ready PDF is what you upload to KDP Print, IngramSpark, or any print-on-demand service. This file has to meet specific technical requirements: correct trim size, correct bleed and margin settings, fonts embedded, spine width calculated correctly. Get it wrong and the service rejects it.
DOCX is for your editor, proofreader, beta readers, and — if you're pursuing traditional publishing — your agent. It's not a publishing deliverable, but it's a professional necessity.
What separates amateur formatting from professional is attention to typographic details: drop caps that anchor the first page of a chapter. Chapter sinks that give the opening of each section visual breathing room. Scene break ornaments that signal a transition without interrupting flow. Running headers. A table of contents that works on all devices. Special pages — title, copyright, dedication, acknowledgments — that look like they belong in a real book.
The Contenders
The tools worth your time in 2025: Vellum, Atticus, Deckle, Reedsy Book Editor, and for completeness, Scrivener Compile and Word/Google Docs. This guide focuses on tools that produce professional-grade output. Scrivener and Word are included, but we'll be honest about their limitations.
Vellum
Vellum has been the answer to "how do I format my self-published book?" for Mac-using indie authors since it launched, and for a long time it was the only credible answer. That reputation is well-earned. It's also increasingly complicated by what's happened to the landscape around it.
What Vellum Gets Right
The output quality is beautiful. Vellum's EPUB files are consistently among the best-rendered in the industry — clean structure, correct metadata, great compatibility across Kindle, Apple Books, and Kobo. The style template library is the largest of any formatting tool. The workflow is remarkably intuitive: import your Word document, choose a style, make adjustments in the preview pane, export. For a backlist author who needs to reformat a dozen books, this speed matters enormously.
Box set creation is particularly well-handled. Vellum also has a strong update record — authors who purchased it years ago still access the latest features at no additional cost.
The Problems
Vellum is Mac-only. There is no Windows version, no web app, no Linux version. The company has been explicit: a Windows version is not planned. If you're on PC, your only path to Vellum runs through a cloud Mac service — slow, expensive, and unreliable.
The price is steep. $199.99 for ebooks only, $249.99 for ebooks and print — the highest price point in the category, for a formatting-only tool. You still need a separate writing app.
Typographic customisation has a ceiling. Vellum produces beautiful output within its template system, but granular control is limited compared to what a professional book designer would apply.
Who Should Buy Vellum
Mac users with a backlist to format, authors who've already invested in Scrivener and just need a formatting layer, and anyone who wants the smoothest formatting experience the Mac ecosystem offers.
Who Should Not Buy Vellum
PC, Windows, or Linux users — full stop. First-time authors who don't yet have a writing app, because you'll end up paying for two tools to solve one workflow.
Atticus
Atticus answered a question the self-publishing community had been asking for years: why do I need to own a Mac to format my own book? That question is still Atticus's strongest selling point.
What Atticus Gets Right
Atticus works on Windows and Mac equally well, running in any browser on any operating system including Chromebook. At $147 one-time for everything — ebook formatting, print formatting, writing tools, and all future updates — the value is hard to argue with. 17 preset templates, a custom theme builder, ~1,500 fonts, footnotes, endnotes, callout boxes, H2–H6 subheadings. For nonfiction with structured layout needs, Atticus actually outperforms Vellum.
The Problems
Formatting quality is good, but it has a ceiling. The system is template-driven with limited granular control. The special pages depth is limited — series authors building full back-matter for multiple books will eventually work around the tool's constraints. And because Atticus is browser-based, your manuscript lives on their servers.
Who Should Buy Atticus
Cross-platform authors who want writing and formatting in one tool without a steep learning curve. Nonfiction authors who need footnotes, callout boxes, and subheading structure. Windows users who have been locked out of the Mac-only tier.
Who Should Not Buy Atticus
Authors who need typeset-quality print output for literary fiction. Authors who need built-in research management alongside their writing.
Deckle
Full transparency: Deckle is our app. We'll hold the same standard here we did for Vellum and Atticus.
What Deckle Gets Right
The PDF engine is a genuine differentiator. Deckle's compile system is built on Typst — a professional typesetting engine that applies actual typographic rules to your manuscript, not template skins. Proper widow and orphan control, optical margin alignment, precise chapter sink calculation, correct drop cap baseline geometry, professional small caps handling. The output is closer to what a typographer would produce than what a template system produces.
EPUB output is per-platform optimised. Rather than generating a single generic EPUB file, Deckle produces output tuned to each platform's rendering engine — Kindle's specific CSS handling, Apple Books' typography support, Kobo's layout behaviour. Authors publishing wide and expecting their book to look correct everywhere will notice the difference.
The special pages library is the most complete of any tool in this category. Frontmatter: title page, copyright, dedication, epigraph, foreword, preface, table of contents. Backmatter: about the author, acknowledgments, also-by list, reader teaser, book club questions, glossary. You configure each section once and it compiles consistently across all output formats.
The typographic theme engine gives real control. Font families configurable per block type. Drop caps, small caps, paragraph indentation, line height, chapter sink, scene break ornament sizing — all configurable, and all driven by a single unified configuration that controls the editor view, the EPUB CSS, and the PDF rendering simultaneously. 26 built-in design presets (from classical serif to modern sans to accessible) plus 60+ advanced configuration fields for authors who want granular control.
Semantic fiction blocks are first-class citizens. Verse formatting for poetry, conversation blocks for dialogue, written note blocks for letters, inset passages, attribution lines — these aren't workarounds, they're native block types that export correctly to every format.
Custom chapter ornaments and full-bleed title images are supported. Automated spine-width calculation takes the manual maths out of ordering print covers. DOCX and RTF output for editorial workflows and agent submissions.
And the writing side matches Scrivener. Full hierarchical binder with unlimited nesting. Four view modes: Standard Editor, Scrivenings (continuous scroll), Corkboard (index cards), Outliner (spreadsheet-style). Research ecosystem built into the project file: PDFs, images, character sheets, location profiles, worldbuilding templates. Named document snapshots. Anchored comments for editorial workflow. Every project is a local SQLite file on your own machine — ACID-compliant, crash-safe, and corruption-proof. Your work never touches a server unless you put it there.
Current Limitations
Template variety is not yet at Vellum's level. Vellum has been refining its visual theme library for years, and authors who want a wide catalogue of immediately-applicable preset styles will find more variety there. We're adding to it regularly, but we're not going to pretend parity that doesn't exist yet.
The community is newer and smaller. No mobile app yet.
Who Should Buy Deckle for Formatting
Authors on Windows or Mac who want Vellum-quality typographic output without owning a Mac. Self-publishers who need all three output formats from a single tool. Authors who also need a writing environment and don't want to manage a two or three-app workflow. Anyone writing complex, multi-POV, or world-heavy fiction that demands both deep organisation and professional output.
Reedsy Book Editor
Reedsy Studio occupies a specific and useful role: it's free, browser-based, and the output is better than most people expect from a $0 tool. It automatically typesets and formats your book as you write, generating a reflowable EPUB 3 compatible with all major distributors and a print-ready PDF. The export is simple. The template library is small. No drop cap customisation, no ornament configuration, no per-platform EPUB optimisation, no special backmatter library.
Best for: Authors on a zero budget who need a clean, basic output they can publish today. Not for: Authors who need professional print-on-demand typeset quality or deep back matter.
Scrivener Compile and Word/Google Docs
Let's be brief and honest. Scrivener's compile system is capable of producing acceptable output — but "acceptable" is doing a lot of work. The system has spawned an entire cottage industry of third-party courses devoted exclusively to teaching you how to use one feature of one app. When mastered, it can produce clean DOCX and a serviceable EPUB. It cannot produce typeset-quality PDF. Most serious self-publishers who use Scrivener for writing still use a dedicated formatter for output.
Word and Google Docs are fine for producing the DOCX you send to your editor. They are not formatting tools. Uploading a Word document directly to KDP and calling it your published book is possible — and visually, usually obvious. If you're currently formatting in Word, any of the tools above is a meaningful upgrade.
The Buyer's Decision Matrix
| Your Situation | Best Tool |
|---|---|
| Mac user, formatting only, willing to pay premium | Vellum |
| PC/Windows user, need EPUB + print PDF | Deckle or Atticus |
| Need writing + formatting + research in one app | Deckle |
| Need writing + formatting, linear writer | Atticus |
| Tight budget, basic needs, zero cost | Reedsy Book Editor |
| Nonfiction with footnotes, callout boxes, complex structure | Atticus |
| Literary fiction, typeset-quality print, high typographic standards | Deckle |
| Already have Scrivener, need formatting only | Deckle (any OS) or Vellum (Mac) |
| Publishing wide, need per-platform EPUB optimisation | Deckle |
| Chromebook user | Atticus or Reedsy |
Frequently Asked Questions
What software do self-publishers use to format their books?
The most widely used tools among serious indie authors are Vellum (Mac users), Atticus (cross-platform), and Deckle (cross-platform, combined writing + formatting). A meaningful percentage still use Scrivener compile or hire a professional formatter. Reedsy is popular among new self-publishers on a limited budget.
Is Vellum the best book formatting software?
Vellum produces some of the best EPUB output in the category and has the most mature template library. It is also Mac-only and the most expensive option. For Mac users building a backlist, it's still an excellent tool. However, Deckle now matches or exceeds Vellum in typographic depth, per-platform EPUB optimisation, and special pages coverage — while running on Windows and Mac and including a full writing environment.
What is the best Vellum alternative for PC?
Deckle is the strongest alternative for authors who want comparable or better typographic output quality on Windows or Mac. Atticus is the right alternative for PC authors who prioritise simplicity and cross-platform browser access over maximum typographic control.
Can I format my own book without hiring someone?
Yes — and for most books, you should. A professional formatter charges anywhere from $75 to several hundred dollars per book, depending on complexity. Any of the paid tools in this guide will produce professional-quality output for a one-time cost lower than a single formatting job.
What produces the best EPUB files for Kindle?
Vellum and Deckle both produce excellent Kindle EPUB files. Deckle specifically optimises EPUB output for Kindle's rendering engine as a distinct output from its Apple Books and Kobo files. Atticus and Reedsy produce EPUB files that meet Kindle's standards and will upload without problems for most books.
Is Atticus good for book formatting?
Yes, for the majority of self-publishers. Atticus produces professional-looking EPUB and PDF output, works on every platform, and includes a writing environment for $147. Its limitations become relevant when you need precise typographic control or a deep backmatter library — for straightforward genre fiction and nonfiction, most authors won't hit those limits.
How do I format a print-on-demand book?
Print-on-demand formatting requires a print-ready PDF built to your specific trim size, with correct margin and gutter settings, embedded fonts, and accurate spine width. Any of the paid tools in this guide produce KDP Print and IngramSpark-compatible PDFs. Deckle includes automated spine-width calculation. Reedsy supports the most common trim sizes for free.
Does Deckle really match Scrivener for organisation?
Yes — full hierarchical binder with unlimited nesting, corkboard, outliner, scrivenings mode, research folder, snapshots, labels/statuses. The organisational depth is equivalent, and in some areas (live word count, semantic blocks) it's more refined for fiction writers.
The honest summary: Vellum is still great if you're on Mac and willing to pay for the best EPUB experience available. But the self-publishing world has moved, and in 2025 Vellum is no longer the obvious default answer it once was — not when comparable or better output is available on Windows and Mac from Deckle, and not when tools like Atticus provide solid formatting plus writing for less than half the price.
For Windows and Mac authors, Deckle gives you the most per dollar: professional typeset-quality PDF, per-platform EPUB optimisation, the deepest special pages library in the category, and a complete writing and research environment included.
Looking specifically at alternatives to Vellum? Our Vellum alternatives guide goes deeper on the platform comparison.