Book Writing Toolbox
Write your book directly in a real rich-text editor, preview it instantly with professional typesetting, and download when it's ready
Your draft is written and saved in your browser only. Preview, Pre-flight Check and export send your chapters, images and book details to our server, which passes them to our typesetting service to build the PDF or EPUB. They are processed in memory for that one request and not kept. The only thing we store is a file you separately choose to pay to save.
Front Cover
The cover someone sees first — a real full-bleed page, the literal first page of the downloaded PDF.
Title shown: "Untitled Book" -- edit these from the Title Page section.
About Book Writing Toolbox
Write your book directly in a real rich-text editor, preview it instantly with professional typesetting, and download when it's ready
Watch: Book Writing Toolbox in Action
- Which languages and scripts can the book and manuscript PDFs print?
- Latin (all accented letters, including Polish, Czech, Turkish, Romanian and Vietnamese), Greek (including polytonic), Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, Devanagari (Hindi, Marathi, Nepali) and Thai. Hebrew and Arabic are set right to left. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Kannada, Malayalam, Sinhala, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, Georgian, Armenian and Ethiopic are not available in PDFs yet. The check runs before the preview or download starts, so nothing is used or charged, and the message names exactly which text could not be drawn. EPUB and Word files leave the font to the reading app or Word, so any script works there.
- Do I have to pick a specific publishing platform, or can I skip that?
- You can leave it on "Use default" — the tool behaves the same way it always has, using KDP's real trim sizes and margin rules as the baseline. Picking a specific platform (IngramSpark, Barnes & Noble Press, Lulu, or an ebook-only platform) is worth doing once you know where you're actually submitting, since it switches the trim size list, margin math, and ISBN guidance to match that platform's own real requirements instead of KDP's.
- What's the difference between the preview and a real download?
- Preview and the Pre-flight Check are unlimited, and use the exact same rendering the paid download does — the only difference is a visible watermark, so you can check pagination, margins, and layout as many times as you want before spending anything. A Book Writing Toolbox subscription ($29.99 a month, 7-day trial) removes the watermark from previews and downloads, so the clean, submission-ready file is included.
- Is the EPUB or the manuscript file included in the subscription?
- Yes. The clean book PDF, the manuscript file (PDF or .docx) and the EPUB are all included in the Book Writing Toolbox subscription: $29.99 a month, with a 7-day trial. Previews are unlimited and watermarked for everyone. The $1 Day Pass and the $4.99 plan do not cover it.
- Can I work on more than one book at once?
- Yes — the small library icon next to your book's title ("My Books") lists every book you've started on this device, lets you switch between them, and start a new one without losing progress on the others. Everything autosaves locally as you go, so switching between books is instant and nothing is deleted until you explicitly delete a project yourself.
- If I pick a custom trim size, will it definitely work on my target platform?
- Custom size is accepted exactly as you type it, with no independent check against that platform's real acceptance rules — it's meant for a size that platform genuinely supports but isn't in this tool's own list yet. The Pre-flight Check will tell you whether your dimensions happen to match a known real KDP size, but for any other platform, it's worth a quick check against that platform's own current trim size list before a final submission.
- What happens if I leave the ISBN field blank?
- It depends on the platform you've selected. KDP, Barnes & Noble Press, and Lulu will each assign you a free ISBN automatically at submission — it just only works on that one platform, so buy your own if you want the same ISBN to work everywhere. IngramSpark has no free option at all, so you'll need to buy a real ISBN (from Bowker, a local ISBN agency, or as a paid add-on through IngramSpark itself) before submitting there. Kobo doesn't need one — it assigns its own internal identifier if you leave it blank.
- Is my book's content ever saved on your servers?
- No. While you're writing, your draft autosaves only to your own browser's local storage and is never uploaded anywhere. Previewing, running the Pre-flight Check, and downloading do send your content to a server briefly, since real typesetting and EPUB generation genuinely can't happen inside a browser alone — but that content is only held in memory long enough to generate the file you asked for, then discarded. Nothing is written to a database or kept afterward.
- Can I switch which platform I'm targeting after I've already started writing?
- Yes, at any point — your chapters, cover images, and everything else you've written stay exactly as they are. Switching platforms only re-checks your current trim size against the new platform's real list: if your size isn't one it supports, it switches to Custom (keeping your existing dimensions as a starting point) or to that platform's own default, whichever fits.
How to use Book Writing Toolbox
Start at the top of the page: pick which publishing platform you're actually targeting — Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, Barnes & Noble Press, Lulu, or an ebook-only platform like Draft2Digital, Apple Books, or Kobo Writing Life. "Use default" is fine if you're not sure yet or are just exploring. This one choice does real work behind the scenes: it filters the trim size list down to sizes that platform actually supports, changes the margin math the book is typeset with to match that platform's real requirements, adjusts the ISBN guidance (a platform-issued ISBN versus one you have to buy yourself), and hides fields that platform's own submission flow doesn't use. Picking an ebook-only platform switches the page to Ebook only mode automatically, which hides the print-specific sections (Spine, Back Cover, trim size) since they don't apply.\n\nFrom there, work through the sidebar sections in whatever order makes sense for you — nothing has to be done in sequence. Book Identifiers is where your ISBN and e-ISBN live (leave blank if you don't have one yet; what happens next depends on the platform you picked). Front Cover, Spine, and Back Cover are where you upload your own cover art and set the spine text, blurb, and barcode — Cover Preview shows how all three connect into one real wraparound, watermarked so it's not a usable substitute for the real thing. Publishing Metadata covers the ONIX fields real retailers and distributors read (language, audience, territorial rights where that platform uses them). Manuscript Format generates a real Shunn Standard Manuscript Format file if you need something for a literary agent or publisher submission, separate from the retail book itself.\n\nThe actual writing happens in the chapter list at the bottom of the sidebar — add chapters, drag to reorder, and write in a real rich-text editor with bold, italic, underline, headings, lists, tables, images with alt text, and scene breaks. Toggle front and back matter sections (dedication, foreword, acknowledgments, appendix, and more) on or off as your book needs them. Preview renders an actual typeset PDF at your chosen trim size and font so you can see real pagination, not an approximation. Pre-flight Check does not use a trial use and has no limit — it runs a real render and a real EPUB build to check page count, margins, ISBN, cover resolution, and EPUB file size against your selected platform's actual requirements, so you can catch problems before spending anything. When it's ready, Download produces the clean, watermark-free book PDF (uses one trial use), while EPUB and the manuscript file each have their own watermarked preview and their own path to a clean copy.
When to use it
This is built for someone actually writing a full book from scratch and taking it somewhere real — a KDP paperback and Kindle edition, a wider-distribution IngramSpark title, a submission-ready manuscript for a literary agent, or a straightforward ebook release. It's the right tool when you want to write directly in the editor and have the platform-specific formatting (trim size, margins, ISBN handling) handled correctly for wherever you're actually publishing, rather than guessing at one generic set of rules and hoping it happens to fit.
When not to use it
If you already have a finished manuscript as separate files (chapters as individual Word docs, say) and just need them combined into one PDF without re-typing anything into this editor, Document Assembler or Merge PDF will get you there faster. If you need real-time collaboration with a co-author or editor working from a different device at the same time, this doesn't support that — your draft autosaves locally to the browser you're writing in, not to a shared cloud document. And this doesn't design your cover art for you — you'll need to supply your own front, spine, and back cover images from wherever you create or commission them.
Tips for best results
Run the Pre-flight Check before starting your subscription — it catches real, specific issues (a page count below KDP's minimum, a cover image below the recommended resolution, a missing ISBN) using the same render the paid download uses, so you're not paying to discover a problem you could have caught before downloading. If you're not sure yet which platform you'll end up submitting to, start with "Use default" and switch once you've decided — switching later re-checks your trim size against the new platform's real list and moves you to Custom automatically if your current size isn't one it supports. If you're writing more than one book, use My Books (the small library icon next to the title) rather than starting over in the same slot — switching between books never loses either one's progress.
Limitations
PDFs can print Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, Devanagari and Thai text; Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other scripts are stopped with a clear message before anything is used (EPUB and Word files accept any script). Drafts autosave to the browser you're writing in (via IndexedDB), not to a cloud account — switching devices or browsers means starting that specific book over, though My Books lets you keep several books going at once on the same device. The trim size list and margin math are built from each platform's own published requirements, individually checked against that platform's real documentation — but self-publishing platforms do change their requirements over time, so it's worth a quick check against the platform's own current submission guidelines before a final, paying submission, especially for anything beyond the most common trim sizes. Custom trim sizes are accepted as typed, with no independent verification that a given platform will actually accept that exact size.
Privacy
While you're writing, everything stays local — your draft autosaves directly to your browser's own storage and is never sent anywhere. Previewing, running the Pre-flight Check, and downloading are different: those genuinely send your book's content to a server to typeset it into a real, properly paginated PDF or build a real EPUB, since that's not something a browser can do on its own the way it can merge or compress a file locally. That processing happens in memory for the length of that one request — your content is used to generate the file you asked for and is never saved, logged, or stored afterward.
Next: Compress PDF
Keep the final file a reasonable size