Vellum
Create beautiful books.
Overview
Vellum is a popular book layout and formatting tool for macOS that is renowned for its simplicity and the beautiful, professional results it produces. Authors can import their manuscript from a Word document, and Vellum automatically builds a complete book, including a title page, table of contents, and chapter headings. It offers a live preview of how the book will look in various e-book readers and in print, making it easy to create polished books without design expertise.
✨ Key Features
- Import from Word (.docx)
- Instant creation of professional interiors
- Live preview for e-book and print formats
- Multiple built-in 'Book Styles'
- Easy-to-use formatting tools
- Generates e-books for Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, etc.
- Creates print-ready PDFs for services like KDP and IngramSpark
- Automatic table of contents generation
🎯 Key Differentiators
- Extreme ease of use and beautiful, professional output
- Live preview of the final book
- Focus on doing one thing (book formatting) exceptionally well
Unique Value: Vellum makes it incredibly simple for any author to create a beautifully and professionally formatted book for both digital and print, without any design skills.
🎯 Use Cases (5)
✅ Best For
- Indie romance and sci-fi authors quickly formatting their books for rapid release schedules
- First-time authors creating a professional-looking print edition of their book
- Authors creating a consistent look and feel across a series of books
💡 Check With Vendor
Verify these considerations match your specific requirements:
- Windows users (it's Mac-only)
- Creating highly complex, custom layouts (e.g., textbooks, magazines)
- Writing the book from scratch (it's primarily a formatting tool)
- Users on a very tight budget
🏆 Alternatives
While other tools can format books, Vellum is widely considered the easiest to use and produces the most aesthetically pleasing results with the least amount of effort. Its main drawback is being Mac-only.
💻 Platforms
✅ Offline Mode Available
🛟 Support Options
- ✓ Email Support
- ✓ Dedicated Support (NA tier)
🔒 Compliance & Security
💰 Pricing
✓ 14-day free trial
Free tier: Free to download and use all features; payment is required to export final book files.
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