How long does book formatting take?
Updated
Automated typesetting: about a minute — a full-length novel typesets in under 60 seconds with Ceeryo. Human formatters: typically 1–3 weeks including revision rounds. Doing it yourself in Word: most authors report days of fighting page breaks and margins.
The spread is wider than people expect because the work is different in kind. A human formatter hand-fits pages and schedules you into a queue; the calendar time is mostly waiting and revision cycles.
Desktop apps like Vellum or Atticus are fast once learned — but the first book includes the learning: importing, styling, previewing, exporting, checking. Budget an evening or two.
Automated typesetting moves the work to a server: upload the manuscript, and chapter detection, typography, gutter math and preflight run in seconds. The practical limit becomes how long you spend proofreading the result — which you should do regardless of who formatted it.