Before exporting from Deckle, three things need to be right: only what belongs in your finished book should be sitting in your Draft folder, your design should be set in Styles, and your book's metadata should be filled in on Compile's Metadata tab.
What You'll Need
- An open Deckle project with your manuscript written in the Draft folder.
Step-by-Step: Preparing to Export
- Check what's in your Draft folder. Everything here exports: chapters, scenes, parts, the folders you use to group them, and any front/back matter pages you've created (Copyright, Dedication, Epigraph, Table of Contents, Foreword, About the Author, Also By, Glossary, or a Notes/endnotes back-matter page). The one exception is a document explicitly typed as a "Note": that's skipped even if it's sitting inside Draft.
- Move anything that shouldn't be in the finished book out of Draft. Your Research and Notes folders (the top-level containers, not the same as a Notes-type back-matter page, which is a real, exportable document type) are entirely excluded from every export format. Brainstorming, character notes, and reference material belong there, not in Draft.
- Set your design in Styles. Fonts, trim size, chapter header treatment, colors, and everything else: one set of choices that applies across PDF, EPUB, and DOCX.
- Fill in your book's metadata. Open Compile and switch to the Metadata tab: title, subtitle, author, publisher, language, publication year, fiction/non-fiction, an author photo, and contact info (used on a Standard Manuscript Format DOCX title page).
- Choose your export format and go through that format's own Format and Options tabs before exporting.
Common Mistakes
- Leaving an empty placeholder chapter or scene in Draft. Chapters, scenes, and parts are included in your export even with zero content. An empty one you meant to delete or fill in will still show up in the exported file, not get silently skipped.
- Treating the Language metadata field as decorative. It isn't. It drives automatic hyphenation and each EPUB page's actual language setting, not just a label on your title page.
- Overstuffing Draft with reference material that would be better off in Research or Notes. Both exist specifically so you don't have to keep brainstorming material mixed in with your actual manuscript content.
FAQ
Does everything in my Draft folder get exported?
Yes, with one exception: a document explicitly typed as a "Note" is skipped even if it's inside Draft. Everything else (chapters, scenes, parts, folders, and any front/back matter pages you've created) is included.
Do documents in my Research or Notes folders ever get exported?
No. Both are entirely excluded from every export format, regardless of what's inside them.
Will an empty chapter or scene still show up in my export?
Yes, chapters, scenes, and parts are included even with no content, so make sure to delete or finish any placeholders before exporting.
Should I set up Styles or fill in Metadata first?
Order doesn't functionally matter, since they're independent settings, but it's worth checking your Draft folder's actual contents before either, since that's the content both are being applied to.