Ceeryo

Book formatting

Format Your Novel Manuscript

Built for fiction: chapter and scene-break detection, preserved italics, drop caps, and genre-tuned interior themes.

Fiction has its own formatting grammar: chapters (numbered, or 'Prologue'), scene breaks marked with *** or a blank gap, italics for emphasis and internal thought, em-dashes and smart quotes. Ceeryo's parser is built around exactly that grammar — it reads the novel you wrote in Word, maps its structure, and re-typesets it under one of three genre-tuned themes with drop caps, ornamented scene breaks, and running heads. The result screen shows the detected chapter list so you can verify the structure at a glance, then download the print PDF and EPUB.

Print PDF + EPUB together Minutes per book Try without signing up

Last updated: October 16, 2026 · Reviewed by the Ceeryo team

You'll confirm chapters, title and front matter before anything is set. Your words never change — only the typography.

Real output

What the typeset pages actually look like

Chapter opener and body page from each interior theme — rendered from the engine's real output at 6×9, not mockups.

Marlowe interior theme — chapter opener and body page spread at 6×9 trim
MarloweLiterary · historical · general fiction
Colette interior theme — chapter opener and body page spread at 6×9 trim
ColetteRomance · women's fiction · saga
Vantage interior theme — chapter opener and body page spread at 6×9 trim
VantageThriller · crime · sci-fi

How it works

From manuscript to book in four steps

The fastest way from a finished Word manuscript to print-ready files — no templates, no desktop app, no per-page fiddling.

  1. Step 1

    Upload your manuscript

    Drop in the .docx manuscript you have finished writing. Your file is processed only to typeset it and is never used to train models.

  2. Step 2

    Chapters are detected

    Chapter openings, scene breaks and italics are found automatically, without changing a word of your text.

  3. Step 3

    The book is typeset

    Trim size, margins and gutter, running heads, drop caps and chapter openers are set as a real book interior.

  4. Step 4

    Download print PDF + EPUB

    A print-ready interior PDF at your chosen trim size plus a clean EPUB, checked against the geometry KDP enforces.

In short

A novel formatter must understand fiction's structure — chapters, scene breaks, italics — not just page layout. Ceeryo detects all three from your Word manuscript (Chapter One lines or Heading 1; *** or blank-line breaks; run-level italics) and typesets a print interior plus EPUB with genre-appropriate design.

How should I mark scene breaks in my manuscript?

Either convention works: a line containing only *** (or #, or ⁂), or two-plus blank lines between paragraphs. Ceeryo converts both into the theme's typographic separator — ornaments in the literary and romance themes, spaced dots in the thriller theme — and leaves the following paragraph unindented, as trade convention requires.

Fiction-first parsing

It reads like an editor, not a converter

Generic converters see paragraphs; this parser sees a novel: it distinguishes 'Chapter Seventeen' from a sentence that mentions one, catches Prologue/Epilogue/Interlude, keeps your italics run by run, and treats the gap you left between scenes as the scene break you meant.

  • Chapter labels and inline titles ('Chapter 7: The Keeper's Ledger') both parsed
  • Roman numerals, spelled-out numbers, and digits all recognized
  • Italic and bold preserved exactly — the thing converters most often lose

Features

Why authors choose Ceeryo

Structure report

See the detected chapters (and count) before you download — trust, verified.

Genre themes

Marlowe for literary, Colette for romance, Vantage for thrillers and sci-fi.

Both editions

Print interior PDF and EPUB from the same manuscript.

Use cases

Where Ceeryo works best

Debut self-publisher

First novel, first interior — done in an evening.

NaNoWriMo to paperback

From draft file to proof copy without new software.

Backlist refresh

Give an older title a professionally typeset second edition.

Why not do it by hand?

Ceeryo vs. doing it manually

Typesetting a book by hand in Word or InDesign takes days and rarely passes KDP's checks the first time. Here's the difference.

Approach
Manual copy-paste
Ceeryo
Time to typeset
Days in Word or InDesign
Minutes per book
Chapters & scene breaks
Styled one by one
Detected automatically
Margins & gutter
Guessed, often rejected by KDP
Computed from your page count
Your wording
At risk of accidental edits
Never changed — typography only
Output
One format at a time
Print PDF + EPUB together

Output quality

What the finished book files look like

Every run produces a preflight-checked print PDF and a clean EPUB — never a rewrite of your words. Here's what you get.

  • Drop caps on chapter openings (literary and romance themes)
  • Scene-break ornaments matched to the theme
  • Italics preserved run-by-run
  • Recto openers, running heads, drop folios

Frequently asked questions

My chapters are just 'ONE', 'TWO' — will they be found?+

Style them Heading 1 in Word and they will be. The parser accepts 'Chapter'-prefixed lines in any numbering style, standalone section names like Prologue, and any paragraph styled Heading 1.

Does it touch my prose?+

No. No rewriting, no 'AI improvements', no changed punctuation. Structure in, typography out.

What about poetry or verse sections?+

Verse keeps its line breaks as you typed them. For a whole collection, choose "Poetry" as the kind of book in the review, so no line is ever joined to the next.

Typeset your novel

Upload the manuscript, check the detected chapters, download both editions.