When the book leaves Spleen

A manuscript for an agent and a paperback for a printer need very different pages. Spleen makes both, then gets out of the way.

The editor is not the destination

For most of its life, a book can stay close to the person writing it. It can be untidy. Chapters can move. Notes can sit beside the sentences they are questioning. The page only has to work for one person.

Then the book leaves.

It may go to an agent, editor, or publisher as a manuscript. It may go to a printer as the inside of a paperback. Those sound like two versions of the same job, but they need almost opposite things.

The manuscript should look ordinary. The paperback should look like a book.

Plain is a kindness

An agent does not need to see the font you chose for writing or a carefully designed page. They need a manuscript that is easy to read, mark, and discuss, with the information they expect in the places they expect it.

Spleen's Word export is deliberately plain. It uses 12 point Times New Roman, double spacing, one-inch margins, and indented paragraphs. Every chapter begins on a new page. Scene breaks become #, and END appears after the last chapter. From the second page, the header carries a surname, a shortened title, and the page number.

You can choose A4 or Letter. Letter is there for submissions in the United States; A4 suits the places where that is the normal paper size. The words remain the same. Only the sheet around them changes.

None of this is meant to make the manuscript beautiful. It is meant to make it familiar. When someone has a pile of manuscripts to read, familiar is considerate.

It is still worth reading the submission instructions. If an agent or publisher asks for something different, their instructions matter more than a general standard.

A title page that can answer back

The title page has a different job. It gives the title, byline, and an approximate word count, but it also needs to tell the reader who sent the manuscript and how to reply.

That becomes slightly less simple when someone writes under a pen name. The book should keep that name on the byline. The contact block should use the writer's own account name.

Under Account, Personal Info, Spleen has a place for an author email address, phone number, and postal address. They are all optional. If you do not add a separate contact email, the manuscript uses the address you sign in with. Those details go into your Word export and nowhere public.

It is a small piece of the file, but it is the part that lets the journey continue. A manuscript without a way to reply has left the writing app without quite arriving anywhere else.

A paperback is a different object

A file for a printer should not look like a submission manuscript. It needs a trim size rather than office paper, a wider margin beside the binding, embedded fonts, and left and right pages that understand they will face each other.

The Print PDF export builds that interior. You can choose 5 × 8, 5.5 × 8.5, or 6 × 9 inches. It can add a copyright page, ISBN, dedication, and contents. The first chapter starts on a right-hand page and begins the page count at 1. Later chapters do the same. Running heads carry the author on the left and the title on the right.

It uses Literata, the same family as the default editor page, but the resemblance stops there. The export has to lay out a finished book, not recreate the screen. It is the inside of the paperback only. The cover remains a separate job.

That distinction caused some of the less visible work. The Literata files used by the app are variable fonts, but the PDF tools could not reliably put those into a print file. The export now carries static font files of its own. Justifying a line with one italic phrase also created ugly gaps, so the renderer had to learn how to measure and space the words itself.

A print PDF ought to feel inevitable when you open it. Getting there is mostly a matter of finding all the ways a page can refuse to behave like paper.

Files made for what happens next

Spleen still has PDF, EPUB, HTML, Markdown, and Spleen Archive exports. They each answer a different need. The Word manuscript and Print PDF are part of Library because they go further than taking the current text and putting it in another container. They give it a particular shape for the next step.

You should still open the file and check it before sending it anywhere. Look at the title page, chapter order, scene breaks, and any front matter. An export can arrange the project you gave it. It cannot know that “Chapter draft” was meant to be renamed.

The important part is that the book can leave Spleen without carrying Spleen with it. The manuscript belongs in the reader's familiar Word window. The paperback interior belongs with the printer. The writing app has done its job when it can let go.