Where is your manuscript going?
Pick where your manuscript is going. The checklist and the copyable block below change with it.
- Page size
- US Letter, 8.5 x 11 in (A4 is fine outside North America)
- Font
- Times New Roman 12 pt, or Courier New 12 pt if the agent asks for it
- Line spacing
- Double (2.0) for body text
- Margins
- 1 inch on all four sides
- Alignment
- Left aligned, ragged right, hyphenation off
- Paragraph indent
- 0.5 inch first line, set in the Normal style
- Space between paragraphs
- 0 pt before and after
- Header
- Surname / TITLE KEYWORD / page number, right aligned, from page 2
- Chapter openings
- New page, chapter title about a third of the way down
- Scene breaks
- A centered # on its own line
- File
- .docx named Surname_Title.docx
Paste these into a note next to Word or Google Docs while you set up your styles.
Most confusion about book manuscript format comes from mixing two jobs. Standard manuscript format is a reading copy: it exists so an agent, editor or contest judge can read, mark up and estimate length without fighting the layout. A print interior is the finished product: it exists so a reader holding a paperback sees a real book. The settings point in opposite directions. Double spacing, ragged right and Courier-era margins look wrong in a printed book, and a justified 6 x 9 PDF looks wrong in an agent's inbox.
Submitting to agents, editors or contests
US Letter page, 12 pt, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, header with your surname. You send a .docx.
Self-publishing a paperback
Your trim size, mirror margins with a gutter, single-spaced book type, running heads. You upload a PDF.
Publishing an ebook
No page at all. Reflowable text built from heading and body styles. You upload a .docx or EPUB.
Standard manuscript format for agents and editors
There is no law behind standard manuscript format. It is a convention that settled over decades of typewritten submissions, and the version most agents expect today is close to the one writer William Shunn published online years ago. Agents and publishers do post their own guidelines, and when they do, theirs win over anything here. If a guideline is silent, these settings will never look out of place.
Body text
- 12 pt Times New Roman. Courier New is the older typewriter look and still accepted, but few agents ask for it now.
- Double spacing for every line of body text, set in the paragraph style rather than with extra returns.
- 1-inch margins on all four sides of a US Letter page.
- Left aligned with a ragged right edge. Justified text creates uneven word gaps that make line edits harder to mark.
- A 0.5-inch first-line indent on every paragraph, set in the style. Never press Tab or the space bar to indent.
- No extra space between paragraphs. The indent already tells the reader where a new one begins.
- One space after a period, and real italics for emphasis. Underlining for italics is a typewriter habit you can drop.
The title page
A novel manuscript gets its own first page. Top left, single-spaced: your legal name, mailing address, phone number and email. If you use a pen name, put it in the byline, not here. Top right: the word count, rounded to the nearest thousand for a novel ("approx. 87,000 words"). Halfway down, centered: the title, and one double-spaced line below it, "by" and your name as you want it on the cover. If you have an agent, their contact details go bottom left. Short stories skip the separate title page and start the text a few lines under the title on page one.
The running header
From page 2 onward, put Surname / TITLE / page number in the top-right header, for example Vane / LOWER LIGHT / 47. Use one or two keywords from the title, not the whole thing. The point is practical: if printed pages get separated on a desk, anyone can put them back in order. The title page carries no header and no number.
Chapter openings and scene breaks
Start every chapter on a new page with a page break, never a stack of returns. Drop the chapter title about a third of the way down the page, centered, then begin the text a couple of double-spaced lines below it. Inside a chapter, mark a scene break with a single # centered on its own line. A blank line alone disappears when a page ends on it, which is why the symbol exists.
Word count, "The End" and the file
Use your word processor's count and round it, because agents read it as a length estimate, not an audit. Typing "The End" or "END" centered after the last line is an old convention that tells the reader nothing is missing. It is optional and nobody rejects a manuscript over it. Save as .docx and name the file Surname_Title.docx unless the agent says otherwise. Send a PDF only when asked.
Planning to self-publish later? The same clean .docx is exactly what a book formatter needs. See how manuscript import works.
For the letter that goes with your pages, use our query letter template.
Manuscript word count by genre
Agents judge length before they read a line. These are the ranges most agents publish for a debut. A manuscript page in standard format holds roughly 250 words, which is where the page column comes from.
| Genre | Typical words | Manuscript pages |
|---|---|---|
| Literary and upmarket fiction | 80,000 to 100,000 | 320 to 400 |
| Thriller, mystery, crime | 70,000 to 90,000 | 280 to 360 |
| Romance (single title) | 70,000 to 100,000 | 280 to 400 |
| Category romance | 50,000 to 75,000 | 200 to 300 |
| Fantasy and science fiction | 90,000 to 120,000 | 360 to 480 |
| Young adult | 60,000 to 90,000 | 240 to 360 |
| Middle grade | 30,000 to 55,000 | 120 to 220 |
| Memoir | 70,000 to 90,000 | 280 to 360 |
| Narrative nonfiction | 70,000 to 100,000 | 280 to 400 |
Going far over the top of a range is the more common problem. A 150,000-word debut thriller usually gets a no on length alone. To check how a count turns into printed pages, see how many words fit on one page, or paste a chapter into the word counter.
Formatting a manuscript for a self-published print book
When you publish the paperback yourself, the manuscript stops being a reading copy and becomes the book. Nearly every standard-manuscript setting flips: double spacing becomes single, ragged right becomes justified, the US Letter page becomes a trim size, and four equal margins become mirror margins with a wider inside edge.
1. Pick a trim size first
Every other number depends on it. Most novels print at 6 x 9, 5.5 x 8.5 or 5 x 8 inches; nonfiction and workbooks go larger. These are the paperback trims the AIWriteBook formatter lays out for KDP:
- 5 × 8 in
- 5.25 × 8 in
- 5.5 × 8.5 in
- 6 × 9 in
- 6.14 × 9.21 in
- 7 × 10 in
- 8 × 10 in
- 8.5 × 11 in
- 8.5 × 8.5 in
2. Set mirror margins with a gutter
The inside margin, the gutter, has to grow as the book gets thicker, because more of the page disappears into the binding. KDP sets a minimum for each page-count band. The outside, top and bottom minimums are fixed. The table shows KDP's minimums next to the inside margin our formatter uses by default, which adds a little breathing room on top.
| Page count | KDP minimum gutter | Outside minimum, no bleed | Outside minimum, with bleed | AIWriteBook inside margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 to 150 | 0.375 in (9.5 mm) | 0.25 in (6.3 mm) | 0.375 in (9.5 mm) | 0.5 in (12.7 mm) |
| 151 to 300 | 0.5 in (12.7 mm) | 0.25 in (6.3 mm) | 0.375 in (9.5 mm) | 0.625 in (15.9 mm) |
| 301 to 500 | 0.625 in (15.9 mm) | 0.25 in (6.3 mm) | 0.375 in (9.5 mm) | 0.75 in (19.0 mm) |
| 501 to 700 | 0.75 in (19.0 mm) | 0.25 in (6.3 mm) | 0.375 in (9.5 mm) | 0.875 in (22.2 mm) |
| 701 to 828 | 0.875 in (22.2 mm) | 0.25 in (6.3 mm) | 0.375 in (9.5 mm) | 1 in (25.4 mm) |
Set the gutter for the final page count, not the draft. A late round of edits that pushes the book into the next band changes the inside margin of every page.
3. Bleed only if something touches the edge
A text-only novel needs no bleed. If any image, background or color block runs off the page, the whole interior needs it: the page grows by 0.125 in on the top, bottom and outside edge, so a 6 × 9 in book becomes a 6.125 x 9.25 in page, and the outside minimum rises with it.
4. Set book typography
Use a serif designed for long reading at 10 to 12 pt, with line spacing around 1.2 to 1.4 times the type size. Justify the text and turn hyphenation on, or justified lines will open up ugly gaps. Keep the first-line indent small, about 0.2 to 0.3 inch, and set the first paragraph of each chapter and each scene flush left.
5. Add running heads and page numbers
Print books usually carry the author name on left-hand pages and the title on right-hand pages. Leave both off chapter opening pages and blank pages. Page 1 is the first page of chapter one; front matter is either unnumbered or uses roman numerals.
6. Put front and back matter in order
The traditional order, which readers expect even if they could not name it:
- 1Half title (just the title)
- 2Title page
- 3Copyright page
- 4Dedication and epigraph
- 5Table of contents (optional in fiction)
- 6Chapters
- 7Acknowledgments, about the author, also by
Starting every chapter on a right-hand page is the traditional look and adds blank pages. Starting chapters on any page saves paper. Both are correct; pick one and keep it. For the step-by-step setup in Word and Google Docs, see our KDP formatting guide.
KDP prints paperbacks from 24 to 828 pages. Once you know the final count, the spine and full wrap size follow from it; the KDP cover calculator guide walks through that math.
Margin calculator for your trim and page count
Pick a trim, enter the printed page count and say whether anything bleeds. You get KDP's minimums and the margins the AIWriteBook formatter would use for the same book.
KDP minimums
- Inside (gutter)
- 0.5 in12.7 mm
- Outside
- 0.25 in6.3 mm
- Top and bottom
- 0.25 in6.3 mm
AIWriteBook default layout
- Inside (gutter)
- 0.625 in15.9 mm
- Outside
- 0.5 in12.7 mm
- Top, with running heads
- 0.66 in16.8 mm
- Bottom
- 0.5 in12.7 mm
- Text block width
- 4.875 in123.8 mm
Page size to set in Word: 6 x 9 in
Not sure of the page count yet? Manuscript pages are not print pages. How many pages a novel runs explains the conversion.
Get KDP-ready files from your manuscript
Upload your .docx and pick a trim. AIWriteBook sets the gutter for your page count, running heads and chapter openings, then builds a print PDF, a wrap cover with the right spine width, and an EPUB. Check every page in the preview first. See how it works.
Ebook manuscript format
An ebook has no pages, so most print settings do nothing or cause harm. The reader controls the font, the size and the margins. What survives is structure, and structure comes from styles.
Styles, not manual formatting
Every chapter title uses Heading 1 and every paragraph uses the body style. Bold, centered text that only looks like a heading will not make it into the linked table of contents.
A page break before each chapter
Insert a real page break before each chapter title. Stacked empty paragraphs show up as blank screens on some devices.
No headers, footers or page numbers
E-readers draw their own location and progress. Anything in the header or footer is either dropped or dumped into the text.
No tabs, spaces or blank lines for layout
Indents come from the paragraph style. Spacing comes from the style. A blank line between scenes vanishes on a page turn, so use a centered symbol.
If you are uploading to Amazon, the guide to publishing a book on Amazon covers the Kindle upload itself.
Mistakes that give a manuscript away
Sending a typeset book to an agent
A justified 6 x 9 PDF with a drop cap tells an agent you skipped their guidelines. Submit the plain Letter-size version, even if the print book is already designed.
Indenting with the Tab key
Tabs and spaces survive into every conversion and break both the print layout and the ebook. Set the indent in the paragraph style once.
Double returns between paragraphs
Blank lines between every paragraph double the page count of a submission and look like scene breaks in a book.
Using the agent gutter for print
Four equal 1-inch margins waste paper in print and still may not leave enough gutter for a thick book. Print margins depend on the page count.
Manuscript format questions
Double spaced when it goes to an agent, editor or contest; that is standard manuscript format. Single spaced, at around 1.2 to 1.4 times the font size, when it becomes a printed book. Ebooks have no fixed spacing, because the reader controls it.
Times New Roman at 12 pt is the safe default. Courier New 12 pt is the older typewriter convention and is still accepted. Avoid decorative or sans-serif fonts in a submission, and check the agent's guidelines, which always take priority.
No. KDP prints what you upload, so the paperback file has to be a finished interior: your trim size as the page size, mirror margins with a gutter that matches the page count, single-spaced justified text and running heads. The Kindle ebook is different again: a styled, reflowable file with no headers or page numbers.
About 320 pages in standard manuscript format, at roughly 250 words per double-spaced page. Printed, the same book is usually far shorter, because a book page holds more words; the exact number depends on trim size, font size and how chapters start.
A novel manuscript does: contact details top left, rounded word count top right, title and byline centered halfway down. A short story usually puts that information at the top of page one instead.
It is optional. The convention exists so a reader knows no pages are missing. Agents do not reject manuscripts for including it or for leaving it out.
Set the template up once in your word processor: modify the Normal style to the settings in the agent checklist above, add the header, and save the file as a template. Copy the settings block on this page to get every value in one place.
One manuscript, three formats
Write and revise in standard manuscript format. It is the easiest version to read, edit and send. When the book goes to print, the settings change on purpose, and when it goes to Kindle, most of them disappear.
Keep one clean source file with real styles and no manual spacing, and every version after it gets easier.
Planning the whole release? Start from our Amazon KDP guide.