The formatting checklist to run before you upload.
Formatting errors are the most visible, most review-punished and most preventable failures in self-publishing. Run this audit before any store sees your files — each item is a rejection or a one-star review pre-empted.
Manuscript preparation
| Styles, not hand-formatting | Headings on real heading styles; body text on one consistent style; zero blank-line spacing, zero tab indents. |
|---|---|
| One space after periods | Two-space habits from typing class become visible gaps on e-readers. |
| Scene breaks as characters | Use a centred marker (***), never blank lines — they vanish or multiply in reflow. |
| Find-and-check pass | Double spaces, straight-vs-curly quote consistency, orphaned headers from deleted chapters. |
Structure and navigation
| Navigation TOC | Generated from heading styles, tested on-device — stores reject or bury books with broken navigation. |
|---|---|
| Front matter, minimal | Title page, copyright page, then the book. Long front matter eats the retail sample readers use to decide. |
| Back matter, working | Review request, your other books, email-list link — checked as live hyperlinks, not decoration. |
| Chapter starts | Each chapter opens on a new page via style-driven page breaks, not typed returns. |
Images, fonts and final checks
Images: inserted inline (never floating), sized for screens, under each store's file-size thresholds — and remember many readers see them in greyscale. Fonts: resist embedding; e-readers override fonts by design, and the book must survive that. Then the last gate: each store's own previewer (Kindle Previewer especially), on phone-sized as well as tablet-sized screens, before pressing publish anywhere. The full store-by-store detail lives in our formatting & platforms guide — or we do the whole audit for you, validated against all four stores.
Asked and answered
What's the most common formatting mistake?
Manual formatting in Word — spacing with blank lines, hand-styled headings, tab indents. Conversion turns it all into chaos. Clean paragraph styles fix 80% of problems before they exist.
Do I need different files for different stores?
One clean EPUB serves all four major stores; print needs a separate fixed PDF interior. What differs is validation quirks and metadata — check each store's previewer.
Is professional formatting worth it?
For a book you intend to sell: usually. It's the cheapest production step (from $250) and the one readers punish most visibly when wrong.
Or skip the checklist and send us the manuscript.
Get your free quotevalidated for KDP, Apple, Google & Kobo · from $250