T
he rain came in sideways that afternoon, rattling the long windows of the greenhouse like something trying to get in. Mira pressed her palm to the cold glass and watched the garden beyond turn silver and blurred — a watercolor version of itself, softer and less certain than the one she thought she knew.
She had been here before, in this exact posture, before her mother died. The memory came without bitterness now, only a kind of ache she had learned to live beside, the way one learns to share a room with something large and quiet.
The door at the far end of the greenhouse opened. Thomas stepped inside, shaking rain from his coat, and the smell of cold air entered with him.
Print book formatting
Your manuscript. Ready for print. Automatically.
Professional book formatting used to mean learning InDesign, wrestling with Word, or paying a formatter $500 or more a book. Storyloft does it for you — instantly, beautifully, and exactly right for Amazon KDP and IngramSpark.
The Hollow Mountain
Clara Vance
Chapter Three
The Glass Garden
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· · ·
"You came," she said, though she had known he would. He was the kind of man who always came when he said he would, which had once felt like love and now felt like something harder to name.
47
Export Ready
347 pp.
5
industry trim sizes, including custom
500+
pages previewed & exported instantly
Zero
separate apps required
1
✦ The formatting trap
Print formatting has always been the hard part.
Every author hits the same wall. The story is done. The editing is done. And then you discover that turning a manuscript into a book-shaped PDF is an entirely separate career path.
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Word documents don't make pretty books Margins that look right on screen come out wrong in print. Gutters, recto/verso page mirroring, bleed — Word just isn't built for it.
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Professional formatters charge $500–$1,500+ per book And every time you revise — every time — you pay again. Or you wait. It's a hidden cost that adds up fast.
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Vellum is Mac-only. Atticus is separate software. InDesign requires a design degree. The best tools all require you to leave your writing environment — and most still take hours of configuration to get right.
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The preview lied Almost every tool suffers from the same haunting problem: what you saw in the preview wasn't quite what came out of the printer.
✦ What You See is What You Get
The book preview is the PDF.
Most book formatting tools show you an approximation. Storyloft's live book previewer renders your manuscript exactly as it will print — the same engine, the same fonts, the same page breaks — before you export a single file.
Tweak your trim size, adjust your margins, toggle drop caps on or off — the preview updates in real time. No guessing. No "it looked different when it printed." What you configure is what ships.
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Amazon KDP Ready
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IngramSpark Compatible
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Lulu & POD Services
Everything your book needs
Professional book formatting, built in.
Every element of a traditionally typeset interior — automatically handled. No configuration required, but fully customizable when you want it.
Industry-Standard Trim Sizes
Choose from Pocket (4.25″×6.87″), Digest (5.5″×8.5″), Mass Market Paperback, Trade (6″×9″), and Textbook presets — or enter custom dimensions. Every size maps directly to KDP and IngramSpark requirements.
Live Book Previewer
See your formatted book as a real spread — left and right pages side by side, with running headers, page numbers, and chapter openings exactly as they'll appear. Handles manuscripts of hundreds of pages without breaking a sweat.
Drop Caps & Classic Typography
Enable drop caps on chapter openings with a single toggle. Storyloft intelligently applies them only to the first paragraph after each chapter heading — the way a professional typesetter would — not randomly throughout your text.
Running Headers & Folios
Left pages display your book title; right pages track the current chapter automatically. Page numbers sit at the outer edge of each spread, suppressed on front matter and chapter-opening pages — exactly as you'd find in any published novel.
Automatic Table of Contents
Your chapter structure generates a full, linked table of contents automatically. Page numbers are accurate to the final paginated layout — not estimates. No building it by hand. No updating it after every revision.
Front Matter — Done Right
Title page, copyright page, dedication, and custom sections are formatted using traditional publishing conventions: centered title pages, dense-but-readable copyright blocks, and clean dedication spreads. All in the right order by default.
Decorative Chapter Art
Add an ornamental image beneath each chapter title — aligned to match your heading style. It's the kind of design detail that signals a professionally produced book, and it takes exactly one setting to enable.
Margins, Gutters & Bleed
Inner and outer margins mirror correctly on recto and verso pages so your gutter sits properly in a spread. Add bleed for full-bleed covers and backgrounds. Enable printer's crop marks for professional print-shop handoff.
Endnotes
Endnotes are gathered automatically into a formatted back-matter section — clean, numbered, and properly styled. Editor links are stripped, back-references removed, and the section is excluded from chapter numbering. Non-fiction authors, this one's for you.
✦ Trim sizes
The right size for every book.
From pocket-sized thrillers to large-format literary fiction to textbooks, Storyloft includes every major print trim size used by KDP and IngramSpark — along with fully custom dimensions if your book demands something different.
Switching trim size is a single click. The previewer reflows your entire manuscript instantly. No reformatting, no starting over.
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Amazon KDP
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IngramSpark
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Custom Sizes
She turned toward the window. The rain had stopped. Light came through in long columns.
Pocket
4.25 × 6.87″
"You came," she said.
He nodded. The kind of nod that means something.
He nodded. The kind of nod that means something.
Mass Market
5.25 × 8″
Trade — Most Popular
The garden beyond the glass was silver now, every leaf edged with light.
Trade
6 × 9″
Thomas set his coat on the chair by the door. An old habit. A domestic one.
Digest
5.5 × 8.5″
Chapter 4: Structural Analysis
Textbook
7 × 10″
Buiilt like a real book
The typography details readers notice when they're absent.
Traditional book design is full of invisible decisions. Nobody notices them when they're right. They notice immediately when they're wrong. Storyloft gets them right automatically.
First-paragraph indent suppression
The first paragraph of every chapter starts flush left — no indent. Every paragraph after is indented. This is how every published novel you've ever read is formatted, and it's automatic in Storyloft.
Chapter numbers & recto openings
Chapters can be set to always open on a right-hand (recto) page — standard for literary fiction and many genre novels. A "CHAPTER n" label sits above each title, or you can turn it off for titled-only chapters.
Justified text with real hyphenation
Body text is fully justified with automatic hyphenation to prevent ugly gaps and overflow. Code, links, and long words use aggressive wrap rules. Your interior won't have rivers of white space.
Front matter doesn't get page numbers
Copyright pages, half-title spreads, and TOC pages are automatically clean — no folios or running headers intruding on your book's opening. This is what separates a designed book from a Word document.
Matched heading & body fonts
Your manuscript theme drives chapter title and body typography through the entire print layout. Heading typefaces contrast with body text just like a professionally typeset book — with a coherent type scale from H1 to body copy.
Tables, images & blockquotes
Tables print with visible borders and legible header shading. Images constrain to the text column. Blockquotes get decorative framing for pull quotes and epigraphs. Every element, handled correctly.
Storyloft’s book previewer renders your manuscript as a real paginated spread — not a rough estimate, not a styled approximation. It’s the same rendering engine that produces your final PDF, so there are no surprises. Flip through your chapters, check your margins, verify your front matter and table of contents, and export only when you’re completely satisfied with how it looks.
And it scales. Whether your book is 80 pages or 800, the previewer handles it. Bleed and crop marks show you exactly where a print shop would trim. Margin boxes visualize where your running headers and folios live relative to the type area. It’s the closest thing to holding a proof copy — without ordering one.
✦ The Previewer
See your whole book. Before you commit to a single export.
500+
pages rendered in the live preview
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Preview and PDF are identical — same engine
1x
Export when you're ready — not when you're guessing
✦ Start formatting now
Your book is ready to look like a book.
Stop paying formatters. Stop fighting Word. Stop treating print as a separate project. Storyloft handles it — inside the same workspace where you wrote every word.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Does Storyloft produce print-ready PDFs for Amazon KDP and IngramSpark?
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Yes. Storyloft exports print-ready interior PDFs that meet the technical requirements for Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, Lulu, and other major print-on-demand services. This includes correct bleed settings, embedded fonts, industry-standard margins, and trim sizes that match each platform's specifications. You can upload the exported PDF directly to KDP or IngramSpark without any additional processing.
- How is Storyloft different from Vellum or Atticus for print formatting?
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The core difference is that Storyloft is an all-in-one writing and publishing platform — you write, edit, and format your book in the same workspace, with no need to export into a separate tool. Vellum is Mac-only and requires importing your finished manuscript from another app. Atticus is cross-platform but is still standalone formatting software separate from your writing environment.
Storyloft also includes AI co-writing, cover design, and illustration tools alongside print formatting — features Vellum and Atticus do not offer.
- Can I format a book for print in Microsoft Word?
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Word can produce a basic PDF, but it isn't designed for professional book layout. Common issues include unpredictable margin behavior in print, no native support for recto/verso (left/right) page mirroring, difficulty managing gutters for bound books, and inconsistent bleed handling. Most professional formatters and self-publishing platforms recommend dedicated book formatting software over Word for print interiors.
Storyloft handles all of these details automatically — gutter mirroring, running headers, drop caps, correct bleed — without any manual configuration.
- What book trim sizes does Storyloft support?
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Storyloft includes five industry-standard trim size presets: Pocket (4.25 × 6.87″), Digest (5.5 × 8.5″), Mass Market Paperback (5.25 × 8″), Trade (6 × 9″), and Textbook (7 × 10″). All presets are compatible with Amazon KDP and IngramSpark specifications. Storyloft also supports fully custom trim sizes for non-standard dimensions. Switching trim size is a single click — the previewer reflows your entire manuscript instantly.
- What is the difference between a print-ready PDF and a regular PDF?
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A print-ready PDF meets technical requirements that a standard PDF does not: embedded fonts, bleed areas (extra content beyond the trim edge that prevents white borders after cutting), crop marks for print-shop trimming, correct color profiles, and minimum image resolution (typically 300 DPI). Storyloft exports print-ready PDFs that include all of these elements, sized to the exact trim dimensions required by KDP and IngramSpark.
- Does Storyloft automatically generate a table of contents?
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Yes. If your manuscript contains chapter headings, Storyloft automatically generates a formatted table of contents with accurate page numbers based on the final paginated layout. The page numbers reflect actual print pagination — not estimates — because the TOC is built from the same rendering pass that produces the PDF. You never need to build or update it manually, even after revisions.
- What is included in Storyloft's automatic book formatting?
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Storyloft's print formatting automatically handles: industry-standard trim sizes and margins; recto/verso page mirroring with correct gutter placement; running headers (book title on left pages, chapter title on right); page numbers with outer-edge placement; automatic table of contents with accurate page numbers; front matter including title page, copyright page, and dedication; drop caps on chapter openings; decorative chapter art; chapter numbering; endnotes for non-fiction; justified body text with automatic hyphenation; and bleed and crop marks for print-shop handoff.
All of this is applied automatically based on your manuscript structure — no manual typesetting required.
- How much does it cost to hire a professional book formatter?
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Professional book formatting services typically cost $500–$1,500 for a standard manuscript, with complex books — those with images, tables, or heavy design — running $2,500 or higher. Budget freelancers charge $50–$200 but offer limited customization. Most formatters also charge additional fees for revisions, meaning every update to your manuscript after formatting means paying again.
Storyloft's subscription eliminates this cost entirely — you can revise and re-export as many times as needed.
- Does Storyloft's print preview match the final exported PDF exactly?
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Normally, yes. Storyloft's live book previewer uses the same rendering engine as the PDF export, so in most cases the preview is a highly accurate representation of your final print file. Occasionally the final export may differ by a few pages due to rendering environment differences.
Importantly, when page counts do shift, Storyloft automatically updates the table of contents and endnotes to reflect the correct pagination — so your book's navigation is always accurate in the final file.
- Can Storyloft handle long manuscripts with hundreds of pages?
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Yes. Storyloft's previewer and PDF export engine are built to handle full-length manuscripts — including books with hundreds of pages. Long documents are processed efficiently to avoid performance issues. The table of contents, page numbers, running headers, and chapter tracking all remain accurate regardless of manuscript length.
- Do I need a separate app to format my book for print?
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No. Storyloft is an all-in-one platform — you write your manuscript, format it for print, preview it as a real book spread, and export a print-ready PDF without ever leaving the app. There is no need to export to Vellum, Atticus, InDesign, or any other formatting tool. Formatting happens automatically as you write, using your manuscript's structure to generate all layout elements.
- Does Storyloft support drop caps and traditional book typography?
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Yes. Drop caps are enabled with a single toggle and applied intelligently — only to the first paragraph after a chapter heading, which is the traditional publishing convention. Storyloft also handles first-paragraph indent suppression (the first paragraph of each chapter starts flush left, as in any published novel), justified body text, automatic hyphenation, and a consistent type scale across headings and body copy.
✦ Start formatting now
Your book is ready to look like a book.
Stop paying formatters. Stop fighting Word. Stop treating print as a separate project. Storyloft handles it — inside the same workspace where you wrote every word.