From Scrivener to a store-ready book

Scrivener is made for writing a long book in pieces. When it's time to publish, compile the project into one Word file and upload it to PenStranding. These are the Scrivener settings that matter, and what the studio does with what it finds.

The short version

1. In Scrivener, choose File › Compile.
2. In Compile for, choose Microsoft Word (.docx), and pick a format such as Manuscript (Times).
3. Make sure each chapter's title comes out in the text: with Assign Section Layouts, give your chapters a layout that shows the title, or the chapter number and the title.
4. Set the separator between scenes to a line of asterisks or a #, in the format's Separators pane.
5. If your book has front or back matter in the Binder, tick Add Front Matter and Add Back Matter.
6. Compile, then upload the Word file on your edition's page. The import report says how many chapters it found.

You don't need to reorganise your Binder: in the Novel template, Scrivener compiles folders as chapters and the documents inside them as scenes. The compile format's section layouts decide how each one looks in the Word file, and they replace the formatting you gave your text in the editor (the As-Is layout keeps it). The look doesn't matter here: the studio sets every edition in its own design.

Chapters and parts

Each chapter has to start with its title, so the studio knows where one ends and the next begins. There are two ways, and a book should keep to one of them:

• Word's Heading 1 style on every chapter title, the surest: give each chapter title that style in Word before you upload. It's the way for titles without a word like Chapter, such as The Ferry alone.
• A line such as Chapter 1, Chapter 7: The Ferry, Prologue or Epilogue at the start of every chapter, found without any style, as long as the other titles don't have Heading 1 either.

Parts work the same way: a line such as Part One or Book Two, or Heading 1 on the part titles as well as the chapters'.

Scene breaks

Scrivener puts a separator between the documents it compiles, and it can be an empty line, a page break or characters of your choice. Choose characters for scenes, such as * * * or #: the studio reads a line of asterisks, hashes or similar marks as a scene break, and shows it the way you choose in each format's settings: as written, as * * * or • • •, as a blank line or as your book's emblem. An empty line between two paragraphs counts as a scene break too, unless the text has an empty line after every paragraph, so a visible mark is the surer choice.

Front and back matter

Scrivener adds the front and back matter you keep in the Binder when you tick Add Front Matter and Add Back Matter. The studio recognises a title page, a copyright page (one with ©, "All rights reserved" or an ISBN), a dedication, a foreword or a preface, and back matter such as Acknowledgements, About the Author and Also by. It can also write the copyright page for you in the edition's language, and make the Also by page from your other books. Leave out a table of contents: the studio makes its own from the chapters, and leaves out one it finds in the manuscript.

Notes, italics, pictures and the rest

• Italics and bold come in as Scrivener writes them into the Word file.
• Footnotes and endnotes come in as the book's notes when they reach the Word file as footnotes or endnotes (the format's Footnotes & Comments pane sets how). Print puts each note at the bottom of its page; ebooks gather them at the back, linked to their marks and back.
• Comments and inline annotations are for you, not the reader, and Scrivener leaves them out when it compiles unless you include them. Included, they reach Word as comments, which the studio doesn't read, unless the format writes annotations into the text, where they'd come in as part of the book.
• Pictures come in where they stand, with their captions (Word's Caption style) and their descriptions (Word's alt text).
• Lists, block quotations, tables and sub-headings (Heading 2 and 3) come in as they are, and so do poems whose lines you broke with Shift+Return.

After the upload

The import report lists what the studio found, the chapters and the word count, and what it changed or left out. If a chapter is missing, give its title what the others have, Heading 1 or a line such as Chapter 12, and upload again. Every upload is kept as a version of the manuscript and the next build uses the newest, so you can keep writing in Scrivener and compile again whenever the text changes.

Scrivener's own ebook and print files

Scrivener can compile an ePub ebook and a PDF itself, with its own front matter, metadata and contents. An ePub from Scrivener can be uploaded to PenStranding too, as EPUBs from any program can. What the studio adds is the rest of publishing: print interiors checked against KDP's rules, covers with the barcode, every edition of the book in other languages, and a paste-ready kit for each store. The comparison of formatting tools sets it beside Vellum, Atticus, Reedsy Studio and Kindle Create.