INTERIOR FORMATTING IN WORD

One Candle Press
Aug 12
7 min read

Updated: Aug 13

PART ONE

Page Setup, Front Matter, and Body Text

One Candle Press

There is formatting, and then there is formatting.

This is for the INTERIOR formatting you do when your manuscript itself is finished.

Interior formatting is not horrifically difficult. We'll battle this, this monster.

YES, there are programs and pieces of software that will do it for you. But it is nice to know how it works before you leave all the details to software you may or may not have purchased.

Before we begin: These directions use Microsoft Word for Windows and assume a 6 x 9-inch, text-only novel with no interior bleed. A book containing images or backgrounds that run to the edge of the page needs different dimensions.

Gather everything first

You will need:

1. Your completed and fully edited novel.

2. Your front matter: title page and imprint (if you have one), optional endorsements, copyright information, disclaimer, ISBN, credits, acknowledgments, dedication, and your plan for the table of contents.

3. Your chosen body font and size.

4. Any bonus sample chapters you intend to place at the end of the book. We will deal with those in Part Two.

Possible book fonts include Centaur, EB Garamond, High Tower Text, and Palatino Linotype. EB Garamond often works well at 12 point; Palatino Linotype is usually readable at 11 or 12 point. Palatino is elegant and readable, but try it before committing. Every font changes the page count.

Amazon's Endure font is also available and is designed to reduce page count. It is practical. Elegant? Not particularly.

GOOD NEWS: You do not need to list your KDP categories and keywords inside the book. Enter them in the KDP book-details screen. Putting a category-and-keyword list inside a novel does not improve its metadata and looks amateurish.

First: Set the trim size

Start with the finished manuscript in Microsoft Word.

5. Go to Layout.

6. Choose Size, then More Paper Sizes.

7. Under Paper size, choose Custom Size if Word offers it.

8. Enter 6 inches for Width and 9 inches for Height.

9. Keep Portrait orientation.

10. Leave First page and Other pages set to Default Tray.

11. Choose Apply to: Whole document, then click OK.

Six by nine is the most common U.S. paperback trim size. Setting it first is important because changing the page size changes the page count - and the page count determines KDP's minimum inside margin.

YAY ... wait.

Next: Set mirrored margins

Go to Layout > Margins > Custom Margins. You can also click the tiny diagonal arrow at the bottom-right corner of Word's Page Setup group.

Under Multiple pages, choose Mirror margins. The preview will show facing left- and right-hand pages.

Enter your Top, Bottom, Inside, and Outside margins. Leave Word's separate Gutter box at 0. In KDP language, the Inside margin is already the gutter; adding a value to Word's Gutter box can accidentally create two gutters.

KDP's current minimum margins for a no-bleed paperback are:

Page count	Inside minimum	Outside minimum
24-150	0.375 in	0.25 in
151-300	0.5 in	0.25 in
301-500	0.625 in	0.25 in
501-700	0.75 in	0.25 in
701-828	0.875 in	0.25 in

Those are minimums, not design commandments. A comfortable 6 x 9 novel might use 0.75 inch at the top, bottom, and outside, with 0.9 to 1 inch inside. If the final page count crosses into another KDP range, check the inside margin again.

Choose Apply to: Whole document, then click OK.

Break out the sparkling cider. That is the first major hurdle.

Set the general layout

Open the Layout tab in the Page Setup dialog and use these settings:

1. Section start: New page

2. Different odd and even pages: checked

3. Different first page: checked

4. Header from edge: 0.5 inch

5. Footer from edge: 0.5 inch

6. Vertical alignment: Top

7. Apply to: Whole document

Important: Do not set the whole document's Section start to Odd Page. That can add unwanted blank pages throughout the book. Insert an Odd Page section break before each chapter that must begin on a right-facing page.

Document Grid and Asian Typography

On the Document Grid tab, choose No grid and leave Text direction set to Horizontal. Leave the Asian Typography tab alone for an English-language novel.

Just walk away. Really. Walk. Away. Click OK.

Set the body-text style

Do not use the Font button at the bottom of Document Grid. Set the novel's body text through Word's Normal style:

8. Go to Home > Styles.

9. Right-click Normal and choose Modify.

10. Choose your body font and size - for example, Garamond 12 point.

11. At the bottom-left of the Modify Style window, choose Format > Paragraph.

In the Indents and Spacing tab, use:

12. Alignment: Justified for a conventional novel interior. Choose Left only if you intentionally want a ragged-right edge.

13. Outline level: Body Text

14. Left indent: 0

15. Right indent: 0

16. Special: First line

17. By: 0.25 or 0.3 inch

18. Spacing Before: 0 point

19. Spacing After: 0 point

20. Line spacing: Single or approximately 1.15, depending on the font and the look you want

Do not use 2.0 here: Double spacing is standard for an editing or submission manuscript. This document is being formatted as the finished printed book.

On the Line and Page Breaks tab, keep Widow/Orphan control checked. Leave Keep with next, Keep lines together, and Page break before unchecked for ordinary body paragraphs. Leave Tight wrap set to None.

Leave Asian Typography alone. Click OK to close Paragraph, then OK again to save the Normal style. Do not choose Set As Default unless you want these settings applied to unrelated future Word documents.

Build the front matter

Now you can begin assembling the actual document. Use page breaks - not repeated taps of the Enter key - between front-matter pages.

A workable order is:

21. Title page

22. Optional endorsements page

23. Copyright page

24. Contents page - leave it blank for now

25. Acknowledgments

26. Dedication

27. Odd Page section break

28. Chapter One

Insert a regular page break after each front-matter item you use. At the end of the dedication, do not add an ordinary page break first. Go directly to Layout > Breaks, scroll to Section Breaks, and choose Odd Page.

That Odd Page section break starts Chapter One in a new section on the next right-facing page. If necessary, Word inserts a blank left-hand page automatically. In a printed book, odd-numbered pages are on the right and even-numbered pages are on the left.

About that invisible page 1

The Odd Page section break does not hide the numeral 1. It controls where Chapter One begins. The Different First Page setting allows the first page's header and footer to remain blank.

Chapter One is still page 1, even when the numeral is not printed. The following page displays 2. We will set that numbering, along with headers and footers, in Part Two.

Leave the title page simple for now

Type WIP or your current title on the title page and leave the elaborate formatting alone. A title page is a one-off page. Later, you can highlight the text and experiment with font, size, capitalization, spacing, and placement without pulling your hair out or changing the body of the book.

Front-matter examples

You don't have to have this all figured out at first if you're not ready but here:

Examples:

My Really Cool Book

A Cool Book Mystery Series Book One

AUTHOR

ENDORSEMENTS

Copyright Notice

My Really Cool Book, A Cool Book Mystery Series Book One

First edition copyright © 2026 by AUTHOR. The information contained in this book is the intellectual property of AUTHOR and is governed by United States and International copyright laws. All rights reserved. No part of this publication, either text or image, may be used for any purpose other than personal use. Therefore, reproduction, modification, storage in a retrieval system, or retransmission, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, for reasons other than personal use, except for brief quotations for reviews or articles and promotions, is strictly prohibited without prior written permission from the publisher.

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting AUTHOR’s and publisher’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Scripture quotations are from the HERE YOU PUT THE name of the translation and permission from the translator.

Cover and Interior Design: One Candle Press (because we’re tooting our horn right now)

Editor: Miss Jane Marple

PUBLISHED BY: One Candle Press

_______________________________________________

My Really Cool Book, A Cool Book Mystery Series Book One/Author Name

p. 23cm × 15cm (9in × 6 in.)

ISBN-13: XXX-X-XXXXXXX-XX (paperback)

If you have a second edition, that needs to be also entered under copyright information, ie, "Second edition, author revised, October 2026 (next sentence) First edition, February, 2012, Big Name Publisher, Inc.)

(last)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My many thanks to the illustrators. formatters, and my editor, Miss Jane Marple with whom I have had the privilege to work with, all amazing people. Thanks to my beta and ARC readers, So-and-So, Another So-and-So, and etc.

And whoever or whatever else you want to say had a hand in it. God included.

And to those I’ve forgotten, my apologies.

Without all of you, this novel would never have been written.

DEDICATION

To my husband, the ultimate prayer warrior (or person of interest, etc.)

STOP HERE ...

At this point, the document is 6 x 9, the margins mirror correctly, the front matter is assembled, Chapter One begins in its own right-facing section, and the body-text style is ready.

Save the file. Then, if you want to preserve it as a master, use File > Save As before you begin formatting a specific novel.

GUESS WHAT? THERE WILL BE PART TWO