Most comparisons of book formatting software are affiliate roundups that rank whichever tool pays best. This one is written by a working indie author who has shipped books through every platform below, and it will tell you when the answer is a tool we do not sell.
Prices checked August 2026. We build one of these tools, so read the disclosure below and judge accordingly.
| Tool | Price | Windows | Print PDF | EPUB | Writing tool | Checks the file |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vellum | $249.99 one-time | No, Mac only | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Atticus | $147 one-time | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| BookReady | $59 one-time | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Scrivener | ~$60 one-time | Yes | Via compile | Yes | Yes | No |
| Reedsy Studio | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Kindle Create | Free | Yes | Amazon only | KPF, not EPUB | No | No |
| Microsoft Word | Included / $70 yr | Yes | Manual setup | Not reliably | Yes | No |
"Checks the file" means the tool validates your export against the print platforms' actual requirements (trim size, bleed, gutter, embedded fonts, image DPI, total ink coverage) and tells you what will be rejected before you upload. Most formatting tools produce a file and stop there.
Vellum is the tool other formatting tools get compared to, and it earned that. You pick a style, it applies genuinely tasteful typography, and the print interior looks like it came from a publishing house. Drop caps, ornamental breaks, and running heads all just work.
Atticus was built explicitly as the cross-platform answer to Vellum. It runs in a browser, so it works on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chromebook, and it combines a real writing environment with formatting. If you want to draft and format in the same place, this is the pick.
This is ours, so weigh it accordingly. BookReady is not trying to be a writing app. You bring a finished manuscript, pick a trim size and a style, and it produces a print-ready PDF/X-1a and an EPUB 3. The part that is genuinely different is that every export runs through the same compliance engine our scanner uses, so the file is checked against KDP, IngramSpark, B&N Press and Draft2Digital requirements before you download it.
It handles trim sizes from 5×8 up to 7×10 plus A5 and large print, and boxed sets and ARC editions are included. Formatting is free, you pay only when you export.
Scrivener is a writing application first. Its Compile feature can produce print PDFs and EPUBs, and it is genuinely powerful, but Compile is the part of Scrivener that people find hardest. Many authors draft in Scrivener and then format in something else.
Reedsy Studio is a free browser-based editor that exports print PDF and EPUB. The output is clean and perfectly publishable. The trade-off is control: you get a small set of templates and very little ability to change them.
Kindle Create is free from Amazon and fine if Amazon is your only channel. It produces a KPF file for Kindle rather than a standard EPUB, so you cannot take that file to Kobo or Apple Books, and its print options are limited.
Microsoft Word can absolutely produce a publishable print interior. Set the page size to your trim size, use mirrored margins with a gutter, use section breaks so chapters open on a right-hand page, and embed fonts on export. The risk is that Word will cheerfully export a PDF that a printer rejects, so check the file before you upload it. Our compliance scan is the free part of what we do, and it works on a PDF from any tool, including Word.
Ignore feature lists for a second and answer three questions.
Run the PDF you already have through our compliance scan. It works on exports from Vellum, Atticus, Scrivener, Word, or anything else, and it takes about 30 seconds.
Check my PDF free →18 checks across KDP, IngramSpark, B&N Press and Draft2Digital. The check is free.