MyClawn Book Formatting › How it works
How it works: from your Word file to files you can upload
Four steps, one of them yours. This page describes each one plainly, including what the program decides by rule and what is checked by judgement.
1. You upload the manuscript
One file: Word, OpenDocument, RTF, Markdown or plain text, up to 30 MB. No account. A PDF is not accepted, because it is a picture of finished pages and its text cannot be set again cleanly.
A few seconds later you see your title page and the start of your first chapter, typeset. Beside it: how many words and chapters were found, how many pages the book will have at the chosen size, and how wide the spine will be. Switch between the three styles and four trim sizes and look again.
2. The structure is checked
A typesetting program needs to know what each paragraph is: chapter heading, first paragraph, scene break, dedication, ordinary text. Careful manuscripts say so through Word's heading styles. Most do not: the heading is typed as normal text, a scene break is an empty line.
After you order, every chapter heading, every part title, the front and back matter and each possible scene break is checked, by the way it looks and by the lines around it. Notes you wrote with the order are followed first. Your manuscript's own title page and contents are recognised and replaced, so nothing is printed twice.
Upload your Word file and look at your own first chapter, typeset for print, before you pay anything. One book $39 per book · Three books $99 for three books. Refund within 14 days if it misses.
Show me my book3. The book is typeset and proofed
The whole book is set by fixed rules: margins for your trim size and page count, justified and hyphenated text, chapter openings, running heads, page numbers, no stranded lines where they can be avoided. Because the inside margin depends on the page count, the book is set, counted and set again when the count crosses one of KDP's thresholds.
Then the proof pages are looked at: the title page, the contents, every chapter opening, pages around scene breaks and a sample of ordinary pages. What looks wrong is corrected and the book is set again. The EPUB is built from the same checked structure and validated.
4. You get the files
- Paperback interior PDF
- EPUB
- Cover template for your page count, as PDF and PNG
- Check report: chapters, margins, fonts, and the comparison that shows no text was lost
- One-page KDP upload guide
This usually takes a few minutes, up to about 10 for a long book. You get an e-mail when the files are ready. If something is not right, say what, and it is corrected: two rounds of changes are included, and another trim size or style within 30 days is free.
Questions
Do you change my text?
No words are changed. Typographic marks are: straight quotes become curly, double hyphens become dashes, three dots become an ellipsis, double spaces become single ones.
What if my manuscript has a mistake in a chapter title?
It is set as you wrote it. Send a corrected file within your two rounds of changes.
Who can see my manuscript?
It is processed to make your files and for nothing else. The privacy page describes storage and deletion.
Upload your Word file and look at your own first chapter, typeset for print, before you pay anything. One book $39 per book · Three books $99 for three books. Refund within 14 days if it misses.
Show me my bookMore about Book Formatting
Sources (checked 2026-11-12): kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GVBQ3CMEQW3W2VL6