You need more than writing chops to make a good first impression on any publisher: you need to demonstrate a little understanding of standard manuscript formatting requirements common across the publishing industry.
As a publisher receiving and reviewing submissions from aspiring authors, it's shocking how few seem to read our manuscript submission formatting requirements. Or if they've read them, they don't seem to have a clue how to follow the parameters. Or they think it doesn't apply to them. or they think it doesn't matter.
If you want to increase the likelihood that prospective publishers (or agents!) will want to take you on, it is worth investing some time being sure you know how to work with your word processing program to present a properly formatted manuscript.
Formatting? What's that?
So glad you asked!
Most publishers don’t want to see all kinds of fancy fonts and little design details, since they’ll probably change all of these anyway for the final book. What they do want is that you submit your manuscript according to their guidelines, which you can usually find on their website. These generally include information on what kind of font and font size they prefer, line spacing, alignment, and page size. They like to keep things simple for readability.
Below is an excerpt from our submission requirements at Ingenium Books.
"Ensure your manuscript is properly formatted for submission. Be sure your manuscript includes:
- a title page (with manuscript working title, author name, word count)
- completed table of contents
- chapter headings that begin on new page
- double spaced
- page numbers
- 12-14 pt serif font (like Times New Roman or Palatino) for body text..."
Sure, you can try to manually build your table of contents, go through and manually insert page breaks before each chapter heading, etcetera, but that's not very efficient for you and it won't fool your publisher.
This is where a different type of formatting comes in: using the Styles tool in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Here's what it looks like in a Microsoft Word document, opened on a desktop of a Macbook Pro.

Tips to format your manuscript for submission
Learning how to use the Styles feature is easy, and you’ll find plenty of tutorials online.
We're not going to conduct a detailed how-to lesson on the styles pane here -- each word processing program is a little different and the same program is also different depending on whether you're writing on a PC or Mac, online or desktop. However, here are some extra tips to keep in mind when you use this feature for preparing your manuscript for submission:
1. Create a template before you start writing.
When you have a template ready as soon as you start writing, you can focus on the writing part without having to think too much about what each heading should look like. You can always add new styles as you go along and realize you need to add one for bullet points or captions or text excerpts.
2. Reuse your template for other books.
Once you’ve created a template, you don’t need to create a new one every time you write a new book. You can simply edit the different styles if needed.
3. Create a distinct style for artwork notes.
If you’re going to be using artwork in your book, you’ll likely need to commission or source it once you’ve finished your manuscript. In the meantime, you need to add artwork notes to indicate what kind of illustrations you want and where they need to go. If you use a distinct style for these, it will be easier for the publisher and editor to see at a glance what needs to be commissioned or sourced.
4. Ask the publisher if they have a style template.
The publisher may already have a style template you can use, especially if your book is part of a series. And if they have a template you can use, it will help you get an idea of how they like to structure their books.
5. Remember to edit your styles to fit with the publisher’s submission guidelines.
If your publisher doesn’t have a style template, you’ll have to use your own template. Once you’ve finished your manuscript, though, remember that most publishers don’t want to see a manuscript that looks like a ransom note. So, look at their submission guidelines and then simply edit your styles accordingly.
For example, if they want all headings to be in 12-point Times New Roman, edit the styles for each heading level you’ve used and it will automatically change each of those headings to 12-point Times New Roman throughout your manuscript.
6. Keep a reference sheet of the styles you’ve used.
If you’ve created your own template, keep a reference sheet of the different styles you used: title, body text, heading 1, heading 2, caption, and so on. You can then send this to the publisher or the designer when needed, so they know what design features to create for your book.
Use the Styles pane
Using the Styles pane to format your manuscript has to major benefits: efficiency and better writing.
1. It saves time and money.
An editor can do this formatting for you, for an additional fee. Or you can do it yourself once you’ve written your manuscript, which can be a tedious process. Formatting as you write, though, will take only as much time you need to click on the relevant style in the drop-down menu, so doing it this way is more time and cost efficient.
At some stage, your manuscript will need to be formatted using the Styles tool anyway. You need to do this to upload your final book to KDP, if you're self publishing. And if you’re going to have your book professionally typeset and printed, your book designer or typesetter will need the document formatted this way as well, since they can then simply import the file to the design template they’ve created in their software—typically, Adobe InDesign. It will automatically change the headings, body text, captions, and so on to what they’re supposed to look like.
2. It can help you in your writing.
How does formatting help you in your writing when what’s actually important is what you write?
a. It helps you keep your manuscript—and your thoughts—organized.
When you’re writing a memoir or a novel, you’re probably not going to use many different styles: chapter headings and body text are likely all you’ll need. But as soon as you introduce different subsections in a chapter, for instance in a self-help book, a business book, or a textbook, you’re going to need different levels of subheading. When you plan your book outline, you include the subsections you want to cover, which each can get its own subheading. Then, as you write, applying the right style for each subheading helps you keep track or where you are and whether you need to break down that section into further subheadings or simply make better use of bullet points or paragraphs.
b. It helps you gauge how much to write.
Sometimes you might be limited to a certain number of pages for a subsection, a chapter or the entire book. This is especially the case with illustration-heavy books where you work with page spreads, such as textbooks and children’s books.
When you apply styles that correspond with the font sizes of the final design you visualize, it gives you an idea of how many words to use on each page. If you fill up the page with words, there will be no space for any kind of artwork. So, if you need to discuss a diagram, for instance, being able to see how much space the text takes up will help you keep things concise.
Do yourself and your next publisher a favour
You'll save yourself oodles of time and trouble. Your editor will thank you. And a properly formatted manuscript is going to go a long way to showing your potential publisher you know your way around the program you'll both be working in for a while.
However, what will really impress them is if you create less work for them. Mastering styles will do just that.