Formatting Your Manuscript for Literary Agent Submission in Deckle

Querying agents and publishers has its own formatting convention, completely separate from how a self-published ebook or print book should look. Deckle's DOCX export can produce it directly, without you manually rebuilding a title page and header in Word yourself.

What You'll Need

• A finished (or submission-ready) manuscript, and your contact info and pen name (if any) filled in.

Step-by-Step

1. Fill in your book's metadata first, if you haven't already. Open Compile and switch to the Metadata tab: your name, title, and contact info are what populate the submission title page.
2. Open Compile, go to the Format tab, and choose DOCX.
3. Under Export Variant, choose Word. Standard Manuscript Format only applies to this variant, not the InDesign one.
4. Switch to the Options tab and turn on Standard Manuscript Format. This gives you a proper title page (your contact info and an approximate word count) and a running header reading "Surname / TITLE / page number," starting from your first chapter.
5. Export, and open the result to give it a final look before sending. Check that your contact details are correct and that the word count reads as expected.
6. Check the specific agent or publisher's own submission guidelines before sending. Standard Manuscript Format covers the universally-expected baseline (double-spacing, proper title page, running header, real Word styles), but always defer to a specific agent's stated requirements (font, exact spacing, synopsis length, etc.) over any default when the two conflict.

Common Mistakes

• Choosing the InDesign export variant by mistake. Standard Manuscript Format is Word-only. InDesign export skips the title page and header entirely, since it's meant for a typesetter's layout program instead.
• Sending a manuscript with the word count you'd use for marketing instead of what the title page shows. The title page's count is deliberately rounded to the nearest 500 (matching standard convention, e.g. "About 92,500 words"). That's expected and correct, not something to manually override.
• Forgetting to fill in contact info before exporting. The title page pulls from your project's Metadata tab. An empty or placeholder field there means an empty or placeholder title page in your actual submission.
• Assuming Standard Manuscript Format alone satisfies every agent's specific guidelines. It covers the universal baseline; some agents ask for additional specifics (a particular font, a synopsis attached, a different header format) that you'll still need to check for and adjust to individually.