What your Word file should contain (and what doesn’t matter)
Chapters should be clearly divided using titles or numbers, and these must be marked with the corresponding styles: Heading 1 (H1), Heading 2 (H2), Heading 3 (H3), etc. Don’t waste time in Word worrying about margins, headers, gutter space, or page numbers - the Path A option in this "factory" handles all of that automatically for the entire book in a matter of seconds.
The Word (.docx) manuscript you upload to Path A here in FormatBookForPrint.com does not need to look like the final Amazon KDP book. It simply needs to be structured in a way that the system can interpret correctly. The program identifies the start of each chapter by "reading" the Word styles (markdown) and then calculates the rest of the book’s layout - including trim size, inner margins (gutter), headers (with the title), and footers (with page numbers). It can also generate a table of contents (TOC) and will "render" a print-ready PDF layout of your book.
If you need to make last-minute adjustments, the editable manuscript viewer allows you to define chapter titles, highlight specific paragraphs, apply bold or italics for emphasis, include lists, or add quotations. If you want to include images, simply upload the high-quality original files, copy their corresponding tags from the image viewer, and insert those tags into your manuscript wherever you want the images to appear. This tells the program exactly where to "inject" each illustration. You can then generate a preview PDF, check where the text ends on a given page, and place your full-page image tags accordingly.
It is not worth spending an entire weekend adding page numbers, setting up alternating headers for even and odd chapters, or trying to force a page size that is “almost 6×9”. Amazon KDP and IngramSpark will look at the final print-ready PDF book layout, not your Word document. If it is already “locked” into a specific size, it often hinders more than it helps. A clean, simple manuscript saved as .docx is much better.
Regarding the inclusion of tables and charts: in the Path A you can add them as images. However, if nearly every page consists of a table, chart, infographic, or full-page diagrams, it is not ideal to bring that into this “factory” in Word format. In such cases, it is better to use a paginated PDF and format it in the Path B of this “factory” or create an image album with accompanying commentaries in the Path C.
For the introductory pages of your book - such as the half-title, title page, copyright page, and dedication - there is no need to manually format them at the beginning of your .docx file. Simply type out the titles and text as you wish them to appear in the book. The Path A offers a dedicated section with checkboxes, allowing you to select which pages to include, and you can even add decorative elements or your own logo. The program will then position them exactly as they would appear in a printed book. If you enable the automatic table of contents, it will number the chapters based on the actual page numbers in the final PDF, rather than the page numbers from your original Word file.
When you generate a preview, take a close look at the chapters: do they begin where they would in a professionally printed book? Is the title legible? If something looks off, you can correct it directly within the viewer - the manuscript editing workspace. Once you are satisfied, you can pay for the session to download the final, perfectly formatted and print-ready book layout in PDF format. If you also need to design the book cover, you can then proceed to the Path D. In this section of the “factory”, the system automatically pulls your book’s details and calculates the precise dimensions for your cover layout, based on the actual thickness of your book’s spine.
Do it in the factory
