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How plain text becomes a book that holds up: page breaks, embedded type, the formats each store wants, and the decisions that separate a designed page from a printed document. Written for people who would rather be writing. Every article opens with the short answer to its question, then gives the detail behind it: the sizes, the settings, the store rules and the steps, by hand or in bukpress.
Write the report as one Markdown file: a # title, then ## sections for each part, from the summary to the sources, with ### for sub-points. Use pipe tables for data, image links for charts, a numbered list for sources, and a page-break marker before sections that should start on a new page. Then export it to PDF with a converter that sets real pages, so sections and tables land where a reader expects them.
Read itPick one narrow promise on Friday night and outline it into five to eight sections. Draft all of it on Saturday without editing, from material you already have. Edit and lay it out on Sunday: cut, fix the headings, add a cover and export the PDF. An ebook of up to about 10,000 words is a weekend's work; a full-length book is not, so the scope is the decision that makes the plan work.
Read itBook layout design is deciding how the text sits on the page: the page size, the margins, the typeface and size, the line spacing, how chapters open, and where page numbers and running heads go. Decide them in that order, keep each one consistent across the whole book, and check the result as printed pages or a PDF, not in your writing app.
Read itDon't print the chat page: you get the interface, the prompts and awkward page breaks. ChatGPT already formats its answers in Markdown, so ask it for the final text as Markdown, copy it, tidy the headings and paste it into a Markdown-to-PDF tool. You get a typeset document with a title page, real headings, page numbers and breaks where you want them.
Read itA business case study follows a fixed format: a headline that names the result, a short summary, the customer and their situation, the challenge, the solution, how it was put in place, the results in numbers the customer has approved, a quote, and one next step. One to four pages is typical. Lead with the outcome, and support every number.
Read itTo write a user manual, define the reader and the tasks they need to complete, organise the manual around those tasks rather than around features, and write each task as numbered steps with one action per step. Add a quick start, troubleshooting, a glossary and an index or contents page. Then test it on someone who has never used the product.
Read itTo print a book at home, start from a PDF with embedded fonts and margins wide enough to bind, print double-sided at actual size, then bind. For up to a few dozen pages, print as a folded booklet and staple the spine. For longer books, print single sheets and use comb binding, a ring binder or glued perfect binding.
Read itA running head is the line repeated at the top of each page of a printed book, usually the book's title on left-hand pages and the chapter title on right-hand pages, or the author's name and the title in fiction. Running heads are left off chapter openings, blank pages and most front matter. Many short books and documents do fine without them.
Read itA drop cap is an enlarged first letter at the start of a chapter that drops down into the first few lines of text, with the lines wrapping around it. It is a decorative signal that a chapter begins. Two or three lines deep is typical. Drop caps suit print fiction and long-form non-fiction; they are fragile in ebooks and unnecessary in most documents.
Read itTo title chapters, first decide between numbers only, names only, or both, and use one style for the whole book. Fiction often uses numbers or short evocative names; non-fiction works best with titles that say what the chapter teaches. Keep titles short, similar in length and free of spoilers, and read them together as a contents page before you commit.
Read itA foreword is written by someone other than the author and vouches for the book. A preface is written by the author about the book: why and how it was written. An introduction is written by the author and is part of the book itself, preparing the reader for chapter one. Most books need at most one of the three, and many need none.
Read itA scene break is a visible mark between two scenes in the same chapter. In a submission manuscript, use a centred # on its own line. In a published book, use a centred ornament: three spaced asterisks, an asterism, or a small printed flourish. Never rely on a blank line alone, because it disappears when the break falls at the bottom of a page.
Read itTo write a book dedication, name the person or group the book is for, add a few words that say why if you want to, and stop. Most dedications run one line, rarely more than three. The page sits in the front matter after the copyright page, alone on a right-hand page, set small and with plenty of white space.
Read itTo write acknowledgements for a book, list everyone who shaped it, group them (professional help, early readers, sources, family), thank each group in a sentence or two with one specific detail, and end with the people closest to you. Most run one to two pages. Fiction usually puts them at the back; non-fiction can put them at either end.
Read itTo write an author bio, write in the third person, open with your name and the one credential that makes a reader trust you with this book, add one human detail, and end with where to find you. Keep three versions, of one sentence, about fifty words and about 150, because each place a bio appears wants a different length.
Read itMarkdown is a way of writing formatting as ordinary characters: a # before a line makes it a heading, two asterisks around a word make it bold, a blank line starts a new paragraph. A book uses about a dozen of these marks. You can learn them in an afternoon, and the file stays readable in any editor.
Read itA white paper follows a fixed format: a title page, an executive summary, the problem, background, the proposed approach, evidence, how to put it into practice, a conclusion with one next step, and references. Length follows the argument, not a page target. Lay it out like a report: numbered pages, clear headings, tables, and nothing that looks like an advert.
Read itDesignrr is a web-based tool that turns content you already have (a blog post, a Word or Google Doc, a transcript) into a designed PDF ebook or lead magnet, and it is good at exactly that. Its limits are specific: the cheapest plan exports PDF only, with EPUB and Kindle formats starting on the Pro plan; imported content usually needs its page breaks and spacing fixed by hand; and it has no trim size or bleed settings, so it is not a route to a print paperback. Its prices also differ between its public pricing page and its offer pages, so read the checkout before paying.
Read itThe reliable way to convert EPUB to PDF is Calibre, which is free: add the book, click Convert books, set the output format to PDF, choose a paper size and margins under PDF Output, and click OK. An online converter does the same for a single small file without installing anything. The conversion itself is easy, because an EPUB already knows its structure. What you are really doing is deciding on a page: size, margins and type size, none of which an EPUB has. Books protected by DRM will not convert.
Read itThe right ebook creator depends on what the ebook is. For a short designed PDF like a lead magnet, Canva is the fastest route. For a long text manuscript going to Kindle and the stores, you need something that exports a reflowable EPUB rather than a fixed PDF. Canva cannot do that. For an illustrated or heavily laid-out book, a design application is the honest answer. Most disappointment comes from using a PDF design tool for a book that needed to reflow.
Read itStandard manuscript format is a plain layout for submitting fiction and non-fiction to agents and editors: 12-point Times New Roman or Courier, double-spaced, one-inch margins, left-aligned, half-inch paragraph indents with no space between paragraphs, and a header on every page with your surname, a short title and the page number. The first page or a separate title page carries your contact details, the rounded word count, the title and your byline; chapters start on a new page and scene breaks are marked with a centred #. It is a working document for readers, not a typeset book. A self-published book needs typesetting instead.
Read itTypesetting is arranging a book's text on the page so it can be printed or published: choosing the typeface and size, setting line spacing and margins, breaking lines and pages, placing headings, running heads and page numbers, and fixing the faults that appear when text meets a page. Once it was done with metal type; now it is done in software (InDesign, LaTeX, Vellum or Atticus, or a Markdown pipeline), and a self-publisher either does it with one of those or pays a typesetter, typically a few hundred dollars for a plain novel and more for complex non-fiction.
Read itBook formatting software turns a finished manuscript into the files a store and a printer will accept: a typeset PDF for print and a reflowable EPUB for ebooks. Vellum is the best on Mac and Mac only; Atticus is the cross-platform equivalent and still rougher; Reedsy Studio is free and adequate; InDesign is overkill unless the book is illustrated; Kindle Create is free and Amazon-only. Most books need a tool that produces both formats from one source, because keeping two files in step by hand is where errors come from.
Read itThe reliable way to change an EPUB's cover is Calibre: add the book, click Edit metadata, replace the cover image, then convert or save to EPUB so the change is written into the file. The common failure is that an EPUB carries its cover in two places (the metadata reference and an actual image inside the book), and editing one leaves the other behind, which is why a reader or store can still show the old cover after you thought you replaced it.
Read itPrint on demand means a copy is printed only when someone orders it, so there is no stock, no minimum order and no upfront cost beyond producing the files. KDP Print gives the best royalties on Amazon and the simplest setup; IngramSpark reaches bookshops and libraries, which Amazon-only printing cannot; Lulu suits direct sales from your own site. Most self-publishers use KDP Print for Amazon and IngramSpark for everywhere else, and the printing cost per copy (driven mainly by page count and whether it is colour) is what decides a workable price.
Read itWork out your break-even first: royalty per sale divided by your click cost gives the conversion rate you need, and if that number is above about 10% the campaign cannot work. Start with Sponsored Products, manual keyword targeting, a small daily budget and low bids, and give it two weeks before judging. Ads amplify a book that already converts: a weak cover, description or price will lose money faster with traffic, not less.
Read itYou own the copyright automatically from the moment the work is fixed in a tangible form: writing it is the act that creates it, and no registration, form or fee is required for the right to exist. Registration is a separate, optional step that matters only if you might sue: in the United States it is a precondition for filing an infringement action and for statutory damages. Everyone should still put a copyright page in the book.
Read itBudget roughly one finished hour of audio per 9,000 words, and six to eight hours of work per finished hour if you narrate it yourself. Hiring a narrator costs per finished hour and removes almost all of that work. Synthetic narration is now accepted by the major stores and is obviously synthetic to listeners. Fiction and memoir usually justify a human; practical non-fiction often does not.
Read itFive to eight readers from your actual audience, given the second draft rather than the first, and asked specific questions rather than 'what did you think?'. Ask where they stopped, where they were confused and what they skipped: readers are reliable about their own experience and unreliable about how to fix it, so take the symptom and ignore the prescription.
Read itFor non-fiction, write the promise in one sentence, turn it into eight to fifteen chapter titles that are statements rather than topics, then put three or four beats under each. For fiction, outline what changes rather than what happens. The outline is finished when every chapter obviously needs the one before it, not when it is detailed.
Read itDecide the length and the shape before you start, write to a small daily quota at a fixed time, and finish the draft badly rather than polishing as you go. Most unfinished books die in the middle third, where the novelty is gone and the end is not yet visible, and the defence against that is a structure written down in advance, not discipline.
Read itFinish the draft, get it edited, decide your identifier and your price, produce a print PDF and a reflowable EPUB from one source, design a cover that survives a thumbnail, upload to Amazon KDP directly and use a distributor for everywhere else, then sell direct alongside both. The two decisions that are expensive to undo are exclusivity with Amazon and which format your manuscript lives in, and both get made early by accident.
Read itCreate a KDP account, click Create, fill in the title and metadata, upload a reflowable EPUB and a cover around 1,600 × 2,560, set territories and price, and submit. It reviews in under 72 hours. The upload is the easy part: what makes it go wrong is arriving without the EPUB validated, the description written, or the categories chosen, and two of those fields are awkward to change once the book has reviews.
Read itIf you own a Mac and only need formatting, Vellum: its defaults are better and its output needs less checking. If you are on Windows or Linux, Atticus, because Vellum will not run at all. Atticus also costs less and puts the writing and the formatting in one place, at the price of a rougher tool. Both are one-off purchases, and neither is an editor, a store or a printer.
Read itCalibre is a library manager and format converter, and it is excellent at both: free, open source, and the fastest way to turn one ebook format into another or get a file onto a Kindle. It is not a typesetter. It converts the layout it is given rather than designing one, so a messy source produces a messy book and its print PDF is not something to sell. Use it to convert, check and read; use something else to produce.
Read itCalibre or an online converter will do it in a minute, and a simple prose PDF converts acceptably. Anything with columns, tables, footnotes, headers or images in the margins does not, because a PDF stores where glyphs sit on a page rather than what they mean, and the structure an EPUB needs was discarded when the PDF was made. If you have the original manuscript, export a fresh EPUB from that instead. Converting is what you do when the source is genuinely gone.
Read itIf Compile is what broke you, move to a plain-text editor and export from the file instead (iA Writer, Obsidian or VS Code). If the complexity is the problem, Ulysses or iA Writer. If you want writing and formatting in one purchase, Atticus. If sync is the problem, anything that stores plain files in a folder. Scrivener's corkboard has no real equivalent, so if that is why you stayed, no alternative will feel right.
Read itScrivener if the book has a complicated structure you need to move around; Ulysses or iA Writer if you want to write in plain text and be left alone; Word if your editor works in Word; Obsidian if the book comes out of notes you already keep. All of them are for writing, none of them make a finished book, and choosing between them matters far less than finishing a draft.
Read itUpload to Amazon KDP directly and use Draft2Digital for everywhere else. KDP is the largest ebook audience and there is no reason to reach it through a middleman; Draft2Digital handles Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and the library systems from one file for about 10% of retail. The only real decision is whether you go exclusive with Amazon, which forecloses the other half entirely.
Read itIf you are on Windows, the closest equivalents are Atticus and Jutoh; if the price is the problem, Reedsy Studio and Calibre are free and Atticus is roughly a third of Vellum's cost. If you write in plain text, a Markdown-based exporter removes the formatting step entirely rather than replacing the application.
Read itKindle Create is free, genuinely easy, and produces a good ebook for Amazon. Its limitations are real: it saves to a proprietary .kpf that no other store accepts, its print output is limited, and the formatting lives in the tool rather than in your manuscript. Use it if Amazon is your only channel; avoid it if you will sell anywhere else.
Read itYes, entirely. Writing, typesetting, the cover, an ISBN, distribution and the storefront can all cost nothing: write in plain text, export the PDF and EPUB, use a store-assigned identifier, and upload to Amazon KDP and a free storefront. The only things worth paying for are a proofread, a cover if you cannot design, and nothing else.
Read itA non-fiction proposal is a business case with eight parts: overview, the market, comparable titles, your platform, the chapter outline, one or two sample chapters, the specifications, and a short covering letter. It is sold on the argument that this book will find readers: the sample chapters prove you can write, and everything else proves the book is worth publishing.
Read itWrite a glossary: it is a sorted list of terms, it takes an afternoon, and it works in every format. Only build a page-referenced index if the book will be printed and readers will consult it out of order. In a reflowable ebook page numbers do not exist, so the index becomes a list of links or nothing at all.
Read itFor non-fiction, put the reader's problem or outcome in the title and the specifics in the subtitle: the title is a search query as much as a name. For fiction, the title's job is tone and memorability rather than description, because nobody searches for a novel by its subject. In both cases test it at thumbnail size, spoken aloud, and against what already ranks.
Read itA typo fix is a re-upload: same ISBN, same listing, nobody told. A meaningful revision that changes what the reader gets is a new edition: new ISBN, the words "Second Edition" on the cover, and a new record. The line is whether somebody who owns the old one would be misled by being sold it. If yes, it is a new edition.
Read itEdit in four separate passes, in order: structure, then scene or section, then line, then proofread. Doing them simultaneously is why self-editing feels impossible: you cannot judge whether chapter six belongs while fixing a comma in it. Then hire a professional for the pass you cannot do on your own work, which for almost everyone is the proofread.
Read itAsk individually before launch, put a short request on the last page of the book itself, and email buyers once a fortnight after purchase. The back page is the highest-yielding of the three because it reaches every reader at the moment they have just finished. Never pay for reviews, trade them, or offer anything in exchange: every store treats that as fraud.
Read itTraditional publishing buys your rights and pays an advance in exchange for editing, a cover, sales representation and physical bookshelves. Self-publishing keeps the rights and roughly ten times the per-copy royalty, and hands you every job the publisher would have done. The deciding question is not which pays more per copy; it is whether your book needs a bookshop.
Read itEight weeks out: finish the files, write the metadata, line up early readers. Four weeks: set up the store listings and the direct storefront, start telling people it is coming. Launch week: publish, email your list, ask for reviews. The month after: fix what the reviews found and keep selling: most self-published books earn more in month three than week one.
Read itExport the Markdown as a reflowable EPUB 3 with your headings as the document structure, a navigation document generated from them, the typefaces embedded, and the images sized for a small screen rather than for paper. Pandoc will do it from a command line, bukpress will do it in a browser, and both produce the same kind of file: a zip of XHTML that the e-reader lays out for whatever screen it is on.
Read itUse a model for the structural work (outlining, summarising your own notes, drafting a passage whose shape you already know, tightening prose you wrote) and write the parts that carry the book yourself. The output arrives as Markdown, so the manuscript is already in the format a typesetter wants. What it still needs is your judgement on every claim, a disclosure where the store asks for one, and an export.
Read itSell direct from your own site for the margin and the email addresses, and list the same book on Amazon for the discovery. Those two cover most of what any author needs. Go wide to Apple, Kobo and Google Play through an aggregator when the book is fiction or has a long shelf life, and choose Amazon exclusivity only if you have worked out what you are giving up.
Read itIn almost every case the file is large because its images are stored at far more resolution than a printed page can use. Downsample images to 300 ppi at the size they actually appear, save photographs as JPEG and line art as PNG, and subset your fonts. That routinely takes a 60–80 MB export under 10 MB without a visible difference on paper.
Read itCompile to PDF directly when the book is plain prose and the default layouts are close enough; set the page size and margins in the Page Settings pane before anything else. When you need control over page breaks, running heads or an image-heavy interior, compile to Markdown or DOCX instead and typeset from there: Scrivener is a superb drafting environment and a blunt typesetter.
Read itA book description is an advertisement, not a summary. Its job is to make a reader want the book, which means opening with the tension or the promise in the first two lines (everything a store shows before the fold) and spending the rest on who the book is for and what they get, rather than on what happens in it.
Read itBook metadata is the machine-readable description of your book (title, subtitle, author, language, identifier, categories, keywords and description), and it lives in three separate places: inside the EPUB, inside the PDF, and in the store listing. Getting it right is the cheapest discovery work available, and getting it inconsistent is what makes the same book look like three different books.
Read itA typeset book uses curly quotation marks, a real apostrophe, en dashes in number ranges and em dashes for parenthetical breaks, none of which are the characters on your keyboard. Write with straight quotes and hyphens if you like, but the export has to convert them, because straight quotes in a printed book are the single fastest way to look self-published.
Read itMarkdown gives you one construct, the `>` block quote, for three different jobs. A block quote is someone else's words inside your argument, an epigraph is a quotation that opens a chapter, and a pull quote is your own sentence enlarged for the page. Write all three with `>` and separate them by where they sit and how they are styled, not by inventing syntax.
Read itPrice a self-published ebook between $2.99 and $9.99 on the major stores, because that band pays a 70% royalty and everything outside it pays 35%. Sell the same book direct from your own site at a higher price (you keep around 90% there) and let the store price be the discovery price rather than the one you optimise.
Read itA paperback cover is a single image containing back cover, spine and front cover side by side, sized to the trim plus 3mm of bleed on all four outer edges. The spine width is your page count multiplied by the printer's paper thickness (around 0.0572mm per page for white paper and 0.0596mm for cream), so the cover cannot be finished until the interior page count is final.
Read itAn accessible book is one where the structure is real rather than visual: headings marked as headings, images carrying alt text, the language declared, and the reading order matching the order a person reads in. Most of that comes free from writing in Markdown. The failures come from headings faked with bold text, images with empty alt attributes, and text baked into pictures.
Read itThere is no footnote syntax in standard Markdown. The `[^1]` form is an extension, supported by some renderers and ignored by others, and it produces a note at the foot of the page only in tools that paginate. For a book that ships as both a PDF and an EPUB, numbered endnotes in a back-matter section are the method that works everywhere, because they are ordinary text and ordinary links.
Read itJustify body text when the measure is wide enough to absorb the spacing (roughly 60 characters or more) and when hyphenation is switched on. Use ragged right for narrow columns, for anything with short lines, and for screens. Justified text without hyphenation is the single commonest typographic fault in self-published books, and it is what produces those pale rivers running down a page.
Read itPandoc converts a .docx to Markdown in one command and gets the structure right about 90 percent of the time. The remaining 10 percent is the part that matters: direct formatting that was never a real heading, smart quotes, tracked changes, embedded images and Word's own list numbering. Budget an hour of cleanup, once, and you never do it again.
Read itThe unavoidable cost of self-publishing is zero: the major ebook and print-on-demand platforms charge nothing to list and take their cut from sales instead. A realistic budget for a book you want to be taken seriously is between $500 and $2,500, and roughly two-thirds of that should go to editing, which is the one job nobody can do for their own manuscript.
Read itSend a PDF and an EPUB together, delivered as a download link from a platform that handles payment and delivery in one step. Do not email attachments: they bounce on size and land in spam. Do not bother with DRM on a direct sale; it inconveniences honest buyers and stops nobody, and a personal note on the title page does more.
Read itFront matter is everything before chapter one: half title, title page, copyright page, dedication, epigraph, contents, and sometimes a foreword or preface, in that order. Back matter is everything after the last chapter: appendices, notes, glossary, acknowledgements, an about-the-author page, and whatever you want the reader to do next. Neither is decoration; both are conventions readers use without noticing.
Read itA widow is the last line of a paragraph stranded alone at the top of a page. An orphan is the first line of a paragraph left alone at the bottom. Both are bad breaks, and so are a heading at the foot of a page, a split table and a broken code block. Every one of them is fixed the same way: give the typesetter permission to move the break, or edit the text until the break lands somewhere harmless.
Read itMost published chapters run between 1,500 and 5,000 words, with 2,500 to 3,500 the commonest band across fiction and nonfiction alike. But the number is downstream of the decision that matters: a chapter is one complete movement of the book, and it ends when that movement does. Length is what you measure afterwards to check the pacing, not what you aim at while writing.
Read itVS Code is a genuinely good place to write a book, because a manuscript is plain text and VS Code is very good at plain text: Git history, search across chapters, no proprietary format, no cloud dependency. What it will not do is produce the book: its Markdown preview is a web page, and printing a web page gives you a document, not a typeset volume.
Read itUse a single `#` for the book's title, `##` for every chapter and `###` for the sections inside them, and never skip a level. Those three marks are the only structure a Markdown file has, and everything downstream (the running hierarchy on the page, the printed contents, the EPUB's navigation) is read straight off them.
Read itChoose one serif with a generous x-height for the body text, set it at 10.5 to 12 point with about 1.4 line height, and pair it with a single contrasting face for titles. Two families is the ceiling. Check the licence allows embedding before you fall in love with anything.
Read itSet margins so that a line of body text holds 55 to 75 characters including spaces. On A4 at 11pt that means margins of roughly 60 to 80 points a side, not the 20 to 40 a word processor defaults to. Line height then follows from the measure: the longer the line, the more space it needs beneath it.
Read itUse fenced blocks, keep every line under about 80 characters, and let the typesetter hold each block on one page. Monospace type is wider than body type at the same size, so a listing fits fewer characters on a line than prose does. The fix is shorter lines in the source, not smaller type in the PDF.
Read itUse LaTeX if the book has serious mathematics, numbered cross-references or a layout you need to control to the point. Use Markdown for everything else (which is most books) because it reaches a well-set page in a fraction of the time and the file stays readable. Pandoc lets you write in Markdown and borrow LaTeX only where you need it.
Read itFor a PDF that will be read on screens and printed at home, A4 is the right default: it is what most of the world's printers hold, and on a screen the page size barely matters. A trim size like 6×9 inches only becomes necessary when the book goes to a print-on-demand service as a bound paperback, and Amazon KDP accepts A4 as a trim size too.
Read itA dark or coloured page is a screen decision, not a print one. It works for a PDF that will be read on a laptop or tablet (a lead magnet, a guide, a portfolio), and it fails on paper, where it costs ink, hides in the gutter and prints as a grey nobody chose. If the book will be printed, keep the page white or a light cream.
Read itMarkdown works for poetry only if the renderer keeps a single line break as a line break, because verse is made of lines and standard Markdown joins them. Get that one behaviour, then the rest is convention: a blank line between stanzas, a heading for each title, a page break after each poem, and a PDF rather than an EPUB where the shape of the poem on the page is part of the poem.
Read itA recipe is a heading, a short headnote, a table of ingredients with quantities in their own column, a numbered method and, if you have one, a photo, followed by a page break after it so the next recipe starts fresh. Markdown has a block for each of those, and a cookbook is just that pattern repeated with the discipline to never vary it.
Read itKeep the handbook as a folder of Markdown files, one per section, under version control, and publish it as a numbered, dated PDF each time it changes, with an EPUB for phones. The wiki can stay for day-to-day reading; the exported book is the thing HR can say a given person received on a given date.
Read itThere are five practical routes from a Markdown file to a PDF: printing from a browser or editor preview, a VS Code extension, an online converter, Pandoc with a LaTeX engine, or a hosted typesetting tool. They differ almost entirely in how much control you get over the page, and the page is the whole problem.
Read itMarkdown has no page break because it describes structure, not pages, so every method is really an instruction to whatever renders it. The three that work are a raw HTML div with a CSS page-break rule, a LaTeX \newpage command through Pandoc, or a renderer that assigns a meaning to a plain-text marker.
Read itBecause original Markdown treats a single newline as a space and only breaks a paragraph on a blank line, a deliberate choice for wrapped plain-text email in 2004. The workarounds are two trailing spaces, a backslash, an HTML break tag, or a renderer that treats one Enter as a real break.
Read itA table that crosses a page loses its header because most Markdown-to-PDF pipelines emit a plain HTML table with no thead, and repeating a header row requires the renderer to know which row is the header. Fix the markup first, then the renderer.
Read itBecause the font was referenced rather than embedded. A PDF can either carry a copy of the typeface inside the file or just name it and hope the reader's machine has it, and when it does not, the reader silently substitutes something else, which changes the line breaks and the page count along with the look.
Read itUse PDF when the page is fixed and matters: print, handouts, workbooks, anything with a layout the reader must see as you set it. Use EPUB when the text should adapt to the reader's screen and type size, which is every e-reader and almost every ebook store.
Read itPage numbers are not Markdown: they are a property of the page the file is rendered onto. The working method is to turn them on in the renderer, in the footer, and to suppress them on the cover and any other full-bleed page. Anything that tries to type "12" into the manuscript itself will be in the wrong place the moment the text reflows.
Read itA printed table of contents is a page you write: a list of chapter titles, in order, with a page break before the first chapter. An EPUB does not need that page: its table of contents is generated from the heading structure and lives in the reader's navigation. Get the headings right and both fall out of the same manuscript.
Read itTreat the cover as a separate full-bleed image, sized to the page, placed as page one of the PDF and, for an ebook, as the file's native cover. Do not fake it with a large heading and a JPEG dropped into the first paragraph; that produces a title page with a picture on it, which is a different object and reads as one.
Read itExport the Markdown as a reflowable EPUB with your typefaces packaged in it, add a 1,600 by 2,560 pixel cover, and upload that EPUB to KDP. Amazon converts it to the format the Kindle actually reads. You do not need Calibre, a .mobi file, or Amazon's old .kpf toolchain unless something in the preview is specifically broken.
Read itNo, not for most books. You need InDesign (or an equivalent layout application) when the page is a designed object: overlapping elements, wrap-around images, a magazine-style spread. You do not need it to produce a typeset novel, a guide, a workbook or a technical book whose content is the point. Those are a manuscript plus page rules, and a layout canvas is the slow way to apply them.
Read itUse Canva for the cover, for a one-page lead sheet, and for any document that is really a designed poster with a few sisters. Do not use it to typeset a book. Past a couple of dozen pages you are doing frame-by-frame layout with no manuscript underneath, and every edit becomes a layout job.
Read itWrite the prose and the listings in the same Markdown file, in fenced code blocks, and typeset them as two different things: body text at a readable measure, code in a real monospace face that is embedded in the PDF, at a size that does not wrap a 72-character line into noise. The structure is chapters as `##`, listings kept short enough to fit on one page, and a command the reader can run without guessing at the elided bits.
Read itYou need an ISBN to sell a printed book through most retailers and libraries. You do not need one to sell a PDF from your own website, and you do not need one for a Kindle ebook on Amazon KDP. If you use a free ISBN a platform assigns, that number is tied to that platform, so it cannot come with you if you also publish the same edition somewhere else.
Read itKeep chapters as separate files while you write, named so they sort in book order, then concatenate them into one manuscript with a page-break marker between each file. Do this as a last step, not as a working habit: the combined file is what you typeset; the per-chapter files stay the thing you edit.
Read itA series looks like a series when the interior type, sizes, colours, margins and page-numbering, and the cover's layout architecture, are the same file of decisions applied to every book. Save that combination once (as a kit, a template, or a written spec) and start book two by applying it, not by opening book one and approximating.
Read itMost of the gap between an amateur page and a professional one comes down to six things: line length, type size, line spacing, margins, how many typefaces you use, and whether the heading sizes form a clear hierarchy. None of them require taste to get right; they have known good ranges.
Read itPandoc is the best tool available for documents with citations, cross-references or mathematics, and for any book whose production is automated by a build. It stops being the pragmatic choice when your requirements are visual rather than structural, because every visual change is made by writing LaTeX or a template.
Read itKeep it under about fifteen pages, make the first page deliver something useful on its own, structure it so it can be skimmed in ninety seconds, and produce it properly: a document that looks like a word-processor export undermines the expertise it is meant to demonstrate.
Read itSix stages: mark up the manuscript by structure, add the front and back matter readers expect, design it once, export the formats each channel needs, check the output against a proof list, then upload. The writing is the long part; the pipeline itself is roughly a day.
Read itTreat each exercise as a self-contained unit that fits on one page or spread, leave real physical space for answers rather than a thin line, and keep the source in plain text so the workbook can be regenerated whenever the course changes instead of being re-laid-out by hand.
Read itObsidian's Export to PDF prints the note the way your current theme draws it on screen, which is why the result looks like a screenshot of an app rather than a book. To get a real book you have to decide first whether you are exporting one note or assembling a manuscript. They are different problems with different fixes.
Read itAs a working figure, a typical trade paperback runs about 250 to 300 words a page, and a typeset A4 page at 11pt with generous margins runs about 450 to 500. Anything more precise than that requires knowing your type size, line spacing and margins, because those three settings can move the same manuscript by 40 percent.
Read itA screen shows about 96 pixels per inch and print wants 300, so an image needs roughly three times the pixels you see on screen to print sharply. Size images by the width they will occupy on the page (a full-column image on A4 needs about 1,900 pixels across), and choose the format by what the picture is rather than by habit.
Read itKDP is two products behind one dashboard. The Kindle ebook wants a reflowable file (EPUB is the format to give it), plus a cover image around 1,600 by 2,560 pixels. The paperback wants a print-ready PDF built at a specific trim size with margins that widen as the book gets longer, and a separate one-piece cover including the spine.
Read itExport as Markdown & CSV rather than PDF: the PDF export prints Notion's screen styling, while the Markdown export gives you the text in a portable form. Then expect a cleanup pass (hashed filenames, URL-encoded image paths, callouts flattened to blockquotes and databases split off as CSV) before you have a manuscript.
Read itA print-ready PDF has pages at the finished size, every font embedded, images at 300ppi, nothing important within a few millimetres of the trim, and bleed on anything meant to run off the edge. Half of that list also matters for a PDF nobody will ever print, and the other half only exists because paper gets cut.
Read itMake one cover at 1,600 by 2,560 pixels (a 1:1.6 ratio, RGB, saved as a high-quality JPEG under about 5MB) and it will satisfy every major ebook store. A print cover is a separate job entirely, because it is one spread covering back, spine and front at the physical size of the book.
Read itRun EPUBCheck before uploading anywhere: it is the same validator the stores run, and it names the file and line for every problem. Errors block ingestion and must be fixed; most warnings are advisory, with the exception of remote resources and missing accessibility metadata, which some stores treat as fatal.
Read itWrite in Google Docs if other people need to comment on the draft while you write it, in Word if an editor or publisher will hand you tracked changes, and in Markdown if the same manuscript has to become several finished formats without being reformatted each time. Most people who finish books use two of the three, in sequence.
Read itA blog archive is raw material, not a manuscript. Choose the third of it that serves one argument, put it in an order a reader can follow rather than the order you wrote it, rewrite every reference to time and place, and add enough new connective material that it reads as a book instead of a folder of posts.
Read itIt just hasn't been set yet. Paste it into bukpress and export the finished file today.
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