I’m not quick to believe hype. I’d heard about Vellum book formatting software for several years, but I had already been working with a couple of formatters in my indie writing business. Those formatters cost $60-150 per book, and I was okay with that. Then I started using Scrivener to write my books–and found that I could convert my stories to epubs that way, too.
Now that I’ve switched to Vellum for book formatting, though, I’m hooked. Here’s what got me there.
First, why did I need another book formatting program?
As it turned out, there were plenty of reasons:
- Every time I published a new book, I had to pay a formatter. Ca-ching.
- Every time I wanted to update a book or make a change, I had to contact the formatter–and then wait. (When I’m hot to make a change, I hate waiting. Being honest here!)
- Sometimes formatting changes cost extra dollars, too.
- I use Scrivener for my write life to organize my books, and I highly recommend the program. But I converted a couple of my novellas to epubs using Scrivener, and they weren’t perfect. Scrivener is GREAT for writing and organizing research notes, but eBook conversion can be tricky. (Good news on this front, though! See how Vellum and Scrivener now work together in my review of Vellum, below.)
Enter Vellum 2.2.2 3.6!
I began using Vellum years ago now. Vellum is a mac-based program (though PC users can “rent a Mac” here for the purpose of using Vellum: MacinCloud). When there’s an update, Vellum sends it seamlessly. (And oh hey! While revising this post, I received an update with a feature that allows you to easily reuse back matter.)
I’ve re-formatted most of my old books with the software, and all of the new ones, and I plan to continue with future books as well. Vellum formatting software has been everything I’d been told and more.
Here is my review of Vellum book formatting software:
- Using Vellum is easy. Upload your Microsoft Word document and you’re almost there.
- Your book’s table of contents is built automatically. In other words, no tedious hyperlinking for you to do!
- Want to make changes to your book and re-upload it to Amazon, etc. in a hurry? Want to add sneak peeks of other books to your file? Again, very easy to do. And fast. Features are drag and drop and flexible.
- Templates are built right in, so you can simply convert pages in your book to copyright, dedication, acknowledgments, about the author, etc.
- Book collections are SO easy! Check out this boxed set that I created for my Otter Bay series using Vellum: The Otter Bay Novel Collection.
- Buy links to your other books are easy to create and fold into your book’s back matter.
- You can also insert your affiliate link for various distributors (Kobo, BN, iTunes) and Vellum will roll it into your store link. This is actually one of my favorite features of Vellum! (Pro Tip: Do NOT include your Amazon affiliate link in the back of your eBooks, as this is a violation of Amazon’s policy.)
- Scrivener and Vellum have teamed up by creating a new one-click export. Now you can export a file from Scrivener that plays nice with Vellum :)–pretty much a win-win situation, if you ask me.
- And here’s another lovely and professional-looking feature: Vellum book formatting software includes professional fonts, ornaments, and even drop caps for you to use in your books.
- Here’s a screen shot of one of my book pages from inside the Vellum dashboard. On the left you’ll see the text I imported. The right side shows how the page looks to a reader. Isn’t it pretty? 🤓
- The ornament you see below “Chapter 1” is only one of many that Vellum offers. I use one ornament for my romances and a different one for my cozy mysteries, just to give the reader a different experience.
Book Formatting Options
Vellum isn’t your only option.
DIY – You could go the truly DIY route, which is what I did when I first moved from traditional publishing into indie publishing. It’s possible to simply upload a Word doc to Kindle–and I did many times. But to make sure that your book’s text looks clean (without wingdings and weird spaces!), please follow the instructions in this post in which I teach you how to apply styles in your manuscript using Microsoft Word.
Hire a Formatter – Prior to using Vellum to format books (and after going the DIY route using a Word doc), I hired graphic designers to format my manuscripts. I don’t regret that at all because both did fantastic jobs. As well, both were willing to make some changes as they arose, which I really appreciated.
Vellum – Best Book Formatting Software
As I mentioned, I’d been hearing about Vellum book formatting software for years. I didn’t think too seriously about purchasing the program, though, until I attended a popular professional writers conference and heard from other authors just how easy Vellum would make my writing life.
I was not asked for a review of Vellum, and it won’t actually teach you how to write a book (lol). But the thing is, I tried it for formatting and love it because it produces a professional product that is easy for me, a non-techy, to create. I’ve tried several other formatting processes through the years (see above), but have found Vellum to be the best option to date, as it saves time and money and lets me stay in control. (And let’s face it–indie authors tend to like to take control of their own businesses, am I right?)
The Vellum company tagline is Create Beautiful Books–and they really do.
You can buy an eBook-only formatting version of Vellum, but do yourself a favor and grab the full version for only fifty bucks more. My copy of Vellum has already paid for itself several times over. (Really, it has!) I have used Vellum to format books for print (both POD and offset), and for eBooks.
As it turned out, what I’d heard wasn’t hype at all, but good, solid reasons for writers to add Vellum book formatting software to our indie author toolkits.