Manuscript Studio

Importing a manuscript

Bring an existing draft into Manuscript Studio from Word, Markdown, plain text, HTML, EPUB, ODT or RTF — and how chapters are detected.

If your book already exists, you do not have to retype it. ⬆ Import a manuscript on the bookshelf takes a file and turns it into a book with chapters.

What you can import

DOCX · Markdown · TXT · HTML · EPUB · ODT · RTF, up to 25 MB.

Legacy .doc is not supported — open it in Word and save as .docx first. The app tells you this rather than failing vaguely.

Importing is available on every plan and does not cost credits. Creating the book still counts against your book cap.

How chapters are found

The importer splits your document on its top heading level.

  • If your file has Heading 1 per chapter, you get one chapter each.
  • If it opens with a single Heading 1 (the book's title) above a run of Heading 2 chapters, the lone heading is understood as the title, not a chapter.
  • Numbering like Chapter 7: or Chapter IV — is stripped from the chapter name, unless that is the entire title.
  • Anything before the first heading becomes an untitled opening section.

Headings inside a chapter are kept as body headings.

What survives

Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, headings, blockquotes, lists, links, tables and embedded images all come through. Formatting is rebuilt into the editor's own clean structure rather than carried across verbatim, which is what stops a Word document's invisible junk following your book into print.

Images embedded in a DOCX or EPUB come through. Images that were linked to a file on your disk do not — there is nothing in the file to bring.

After importing

You land on the premise screen. Fill in the title, author and description if the import did not supply them, set the print format, and the book behaves exactly like one written here from scratch — codex, consistency, narration and all.

What to watch for

  • Check the chapter split before you write. It is far easier to merge or split chapters on the first day than after you have drafted around them.
  • A document with no headings at all imports as one long section. Add headings in your word processor and re-import; that is quicker than splitting by hand.
  • Manuscript Studio's own backups round-trip. A backup archive (Back up your work) imports cleanly, with chapter titles and formatting intact — so a backup is a genuine escape hatch, not just a pile of files.