Format Your Manuscript Like a Professional
Most agents and editors can spot an unprofessionally formatted manuscript in three seconds. Wrong font, single spacing, busy title page, decorative chapter headings, page numbers in the wrong place — and the manuscript is set aside before a single sentence is read.
This isn’t snobbery. It’s signal. A correctly formatted manuscript tells the reader, before they begin, that the author has done their homework and respects the reader’s time. An incorrectly formatted one says the opposite.
Industry standard is unfussy:
- 12-point Times New Roman or similar serif font
- Double-spaced, one-inch margins all round
- Indented paragraphs (no extra space between them) for fiction; block paragraphs for some non-fiction
- Header with surname, book title, and page number
- A clean title page with title, author name, contact details, and word count
- New chapters starting on a new page, with the chapter heading positioned roughly a third of the way down
That’s it. No decorative fonts, no coloured text, no bold flourishes, no inserted images unless the manuscript requires them.
The same principles apply, with adjustments, to manuscripts going to a printer. There the question is interior design and typesetting — different work, but the same principle: the book should look like a professional made it, because professionals will.
Most formatting issues come from writers using Word’s default settings without thinking about them. A single afternoon of cleaning up a manuscript’s formatting can change how it’s received before anyone reads a word.
Find this resource in the library
Tier: The Collective
What’s in the full resource: Full industry-standard settings for fiction and non-fiction submissions, title page and header conventions, common formatting mistakes with fixes, and a pre-submission checklist.
Access: The Formatting Guide is available to all Collective members.
