DocumentationExporting
Exporting
The five files the studio writes, which shop takes which, and the ink and press options that change what a PDF costs to print.
Everything runs in the browser tab. Your manuscript is never uploaded to be converted.
The formats
| Format | For | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| A printer | Fixed pages, embedded fonts, the trim and bleed the press asks for. What KDP, IngramSpark and Lulu take for a paperback | |
| EPUB | Shops | A reflowable ebook — the reader chooses the type size. Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books and every library system |
| DOCX | An editor | Word, with your styles mapped to Word styles so an editor can track changes. A handoff format, not a finished book |
| HTML | The web | The whole book as one page. For a sample chapter on your own site |
Most books need two: a PDF for print and an EPUB for the ebook.
Two kinds of PDF
The Read on setting decides which:
| Setting | Result |
|---|---|
| A press | Chapters open on a right-hand page, with a blank leaf inserted to reach one — the bound book’s convention |
| A screen | No blank pages before chapters: a document read on a tablet has no right-hand page |
Send the press file to a printer, the screen file to a reader. They differ only in the blank pages and in whether bleed is carried.
Checked against
Pick the shop you are publishing to, and the book is checked against that shop’s published rules as well as its own facts.
No particular shop is a real answer. An author writing a review copy or a file for their own reader is not preparing a submission.
Eleven shop profiles are carried, each with the date its rules were last read:
| Profile | Takes |
|---|---|
| KDP Paperback, KDP Hardcover | |
| IngramSpark, Lulu, B&N Press, PublishDrive | |
| KDP Kindle, Apple Books, Google Play Books, Kobo via Lulu, B&N Press | EPUB |
Ink and paper
PDF only. This is a cost decision, not a design one — colour is billed on every copy sold, not once.
The panel shows a price per page beside each option. Those figures come from Amazon KDP’s printing cost table for Amazon.com paperbacks, last verified against it on 7 August 2026:
| Ink | KDP’s rate | A 300-page 6 × 9″ paperback |
|---|---|---|
| Black ink | $1.00 + $0.012 a page | $4.60 a copy |
| Standard colour | $1.00 + $0.0255 a page | $8.65 a copy — about 1.9× |
| Premium colour | $1.00 + $0.065 a page | $20.50 a copy — about 4.5× |
IngramSpark’s rate card lands in the same band. The familiar “colour costs three to five times more” describes premium colour; standard colour is closer to twice.
Choosing black ink flattens every colour in the book to its grey for that file only. The EPUB keeps its colour.
Writing several files at once
Write several files at once expands to a checklist:
- PDF for a press
- PDF for a screen
- EPUB
- DOCX
- HTML
Tick what you need. One file is written on its own; several arrive as a zip.
While it writes
The button is replaced by a progress indicator showing the phase, the time elapsed, and — in a bundle — which file is being written. It can be cancelled.
A book of a few hundred pages takes seconds. War and Peace takes longer, and the indicator says where it is.
What you get
The file is saved wherever you choose. Your book is not uploaded and no copy of it is kept on a server — the studio reports only that an export happened, and which format it was, so we know which ones people actually use.