Author Tools: Formatting Your Book With Scrivener

Author Tools – things to help you get your writing done

More help for Scrivener users! Katrina Archer at Fiction University shares her tips on how to use Scrivener to format your script.

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Formatting Your Book With Scrivener

June 16, 2016
By Katrina Archer, @katrinaarcher

Part of the Indie Authors Series

Are you about to indie publish a book but can’t figure out how to get the formatting right? Do you already use Scrivener and don’t have the budget to shell out for a high end design app like InDesign or to splurge on Vellum? Then Scrivener’s Compile settings may be the solution for you. While not for the faint of heart, you can turn out a nicely formatted book for both print and digital entirely within Scrivener. The focus here will be on print, because it’s typically trickier, but the same techniques can be used for ebooks. (Note: this tutorial uses features available in the Mac OSX version of Scrivener. YMMV with Windows.)

Set Up Folders for Your Front And Back Matter

The first thing to do is get organized (boring, but you’ll thank me for it later). Each edition of your book may have different front and back matter, for example, to list different ISBNs or calls to action. In the Binder, add folders for each edition. I usually place my back matter folder beneath the main manuscript folder, whereas Scrivener’s manuscript format template provides an existing folder for front matter. In the examples below, I’ve created folders for ePub, Print, and Kindle editions. Within each folder, I’ve added files specific to the edition in question.

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