What's the easiest Compile setting for an editor?

The plain manuscript format: double-spaced, 12pt, indented paragraphs, chapters on new pages. Do not customise it — editors want plain text, not design.

Should I format my book in Scrivener?

You can, and Compile will do it. For a book you are publishing, Vellum or Atticus will produce a better result in a fraction of the time.

Why does my Compile output look wrong?

Almost always a mismatch between section types and section layouts. Check which section type each document is assigned before touching the format settings.

Can I skip Compile entirely?

For editorial work, largely yes — export a plain DOCX or bring the project across directly. Compile matters when you want Scrivener itself to produce a finished output.

What format do agents want?

Standard manuscript format — double-spaced, 12pt serif, indented paragraphs — as a DOCX, unless the agency's guidelines say otherwise. Follow their guidelines exactly; it is treated as a proxy for professionalism.

A simpler alternative to Scrivener's Compile

Compile is Scrivener's output engine, and it can produce almost any format — which is exactly why it is difficult. For most purposes you do not need that power: you need a clean manuscript for an editor, or a file a formatting tool can typeset. Both are simpler than a Compile preset, and you can leave Compile alone.

What do you actually need out of Scrivener?

Find your row. Three of the four do not require you to master Compile at all, which is the point of this page.

What you need it for	Simplest route	Why
Sending to an editor or beta reader	Compile to plain manuscript DOCX	Editors want double-spaced plain text, not design. This is the easy preset.
Editorial work elsewhere, then back	Export the project, or DOCX	Structure travels; you return to the binder afterwards.
A properly typeset ebook and paperback	Clean DOCX into Vellum or Atticus	They are formatting specialists and vastly easier than a bespoke Compile preset.
A quick PDF to read on paper	Compile to PDF with defaults	Do not tune it. You are reading it, not publishing it.
Submitting to an agent	Compile to standard manuscript format	Double-spaced, 12pt, indented paragraphs. Follow the agency's guidelines exactly.

Free. No card. Private.

A separate free preview: A free outside view of your own pages

A separate editorial preview of one extract; it does not read the whole book or do the specialist job this page describes. Send up to 5,000 words. You get back what the draft appears to be doing to somebody who wasn't there when you wrote it, the strongest thing in it named, the exact place a reader starts to drift, and three revision priorities in order.

Or see how it works first

A separate editorial preview of one extract; it does not read the whole book or do the specialist job this page describes. An AI-assisted read of your own pages. Not a human edit, not a line edit, and not a scored report.

Why Compile is hard, and it is not you

Compile separates what your text is — a chapter, a scene, front matter — from how it should look in a given output. That separation is genuinely powerful: one project, many outputs, no reformatting.

It is also two conceptual layers stacked on each other, which is why so many capable people bounce off it. The forum posts are not evidence of a user problem; they are evidence of a hard interface for a hard idea.

The practical response is to use it for the simple things it does easily and to stop trying to make it a typesetting program.

The three-word rule

Editors want plain.

Double-spaced, 12-point, indented paragraphs, chapters starting on new pages, page numbers. No decorative fonts, no drop caps, no design. Scrivener's default manuscript preset does this out of the box, and fighting Compile to make it prettier is work that makes the editor's job harder.

The same is true for beta readers, except they mostly want an ePub or PDF for a phone or e-reader — ask which, and compile with defaults.

For an actual published book, use a formatting tool

If the output is a real ebook and paperback, the honest advice is to let a formatting specialist do it.

Vellum at $249.99, Mac only, produces the best-looking output available and does it in minutes.

Atticus at $147, one payment, works on Windows, Mac, Linux and in a browser.

Either will take a clean DOCX and typeset it properly, and the time saved against building a bespoke Compile preset is measured in days. Vellum and Atticus exist because Compile is hard; that is not a controversial statement in this industry.

About Your Book Pro

Your Book Pro is a book-writing platform built in Britain. Start with an idea, notes, half a draft, a podcast, or a finished manuscript, and use our purpose-built AI tools for planning, feedback, editing, proofreading, cover designs, and to create print-ready files. Writing is totally free: you can type, upload or speak your book as much as you like, and use only the editing tools you need with Plus, or go unlimited with Pro.

Produce world-class drafts at the fraction of the cost of hiring a human editorial team.

Every account starts with 1,000 welcome credits, and a plain export of your own words is free.

On output specifically: the export here produces a clean manuscript with heading hierarchy and chapter order intact, with presets for the main formatting tools — Vellum, Atticus, Word, Novlr, Reedsy Studio and Dabble — giving tailored output and guidance for getting it in. They are presets, not native integrations, and we would rather say what they are.

Before anything is processed, the import diagnostics show you what was found: chapters detected, headings it was unsure about, footnotes, images, duplicated content. That check is the difference between a clean handoff and an afternoon of repair.

The Scrivener round trip is the flagship:.scriv in,.scriv out. It exists because Scrivener is a mature writing environment that people have built years of work inside, and asking them to abandon it would be both rude and wrong. Bring the project here, run the editorial passes, take it back.

And a plain export of your own words is free forever, on every plan. A formatted DOCX or publisher-ready PDF is an artefact and comes out of a credit pack — $15 per 1,000 credits.

Upload a Scrivener project

See the export presets

Email me my free review link

Questions people ask

What's the easiest Compile setting for an editor?: The plain manuscript format: double-spaced, 12pt, indented paragraphs, chapters on new pages. Do not customise it — editors want plain text, not design.
Should I format my book in Scrivener?: You can, and Compile will do it. For a book you are publishing, Vellum or Atticus will produce a better result in a fraction of the time.
Why does my Compile output look wrong?: Almost always a mismatch between section types and section layouts. Check which section type each document is assigned before touching the format settings.
Can I skip Compile entirely?: For editorial work, largely yes — export a plain DOCX or bring the project across directly. Compile matters when you want Scrivener itself to produce a finished output.
What format do agents want?: Standard manuscript format — double-spaced, 12pt serif, indented paragraphs — as a DOCX, unless the agency's guidelines say otherwise. Follow their guidelines exactly; it is treated as a proxy for professionalism.