I’m trying to use Scrivener to prepare a manuscript for publishing on Amazon. I have spent hours trying to figure out how to set mirrored margins. I have looked at the user manual and have tried to find help at this site to no avail. Do I really have to export to Word and use that to prepare my manuscript for printing? This seems to be such a basic requirement. Can someone help? It’s 2026 and I’m not finding any comments later than 2011 in this forum.
What?? 
. . . . . . . . .
To access this panel / compile format designer, you need to double click the compile format you are currently using, in the list, left side of the compile panel.
Opt for “duplicate and edit” if prompted.
With the option I pointed to checked, the margins will go from this
to this
. . . . . . . . .
It depends what you want to do. Scrivener is mostly intended to handle the composition process, the content development.
If you need precise typesetting, yes, you’ll want to use a third party app, likely.
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Which should not be Word because it is not a typesetting app.
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Thank you for your response, but I can’t find the screen you reference in the screen shot. I searched for Compile Format Designer and found nothing. When I double click on the format I want to compile to (PDF) nothing happens. I have this screen and nothing more. (BTW, I am using a Macbook.)
And, if Scrivener is intended to handle the composition process but not the printing process, then I submit it is not worth the effort. In the end, I want to prepare a manuscript for publication. Having to export to Word and then clean up the manuscript is annoying. I might as well just use Word.
Addition to the original post: After trying to post I got an error message saying I can’t upload an image because I’m a new user of this forum. I am very frustrated with Scrivener at this point.
Okay, so you’re on the Mac; click on the File menu item and right at the bottom, you should find an item called Compile… that should take you where you need to go. (I have a vague memory that the name of the item can be configured somewhere, but it should be the last item on menu.)
Then everything else is pretty much the same: edit your chosen format and head to Page Settings
I suspect some may disagree.
As well as handling the composition and the printing, it’s also good for keeping your story outline , notes, research, character sketches, location details etc.
Compiling your work into a PDF is as simple as picking a suitable format as a starting point then tailoring it to what you want.
Well, you don’t have to do that. You can print straight from the Compile… screen; there’s a dropdown right at the top.
I think the problem (one of many) that folk have with Word is that it mixes presentation with the actual process of writing, which means the writer (unless they’re extraordinarily disciplined) tend to spend equal amounts of time writing and formatting. And if you decide you want to change the formatting later on — then you may have a bit of a fight on your hands.
Scrivener focusses on the composition while delegating the final presentation to a separate process. Some people like it, some don’t; there’s no right or wrong answer.
Yes, I could do the whole thing in Word and save myself a few minutes, but for me, that’s like trimming your toenails with garden shears: it’s doable, but it’s not a pleasant experience.
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Not much help for your current dilemma, but I’ve been using Affinity Publisher/Layout since it came out to upload my 25+ print novels to Amazon and Ingram Spark. I do my covers in Affinity also.
I write in Scrivener, and output a Word document to get the text into Affinity, but that’s were Word use ends for my print products.
I also use the Word document for upload to Amazon and D2D e-book platforms, among others.
Your frustration is misdirected. Scrivener is a software – in my opinion and to my knowledge the best – for writing, with a focus on long-form texts. It is aimed at professional writers or writers who achieve to become professional ones. It has never been advertised as layout software because it isn’t a layout software.
Because of that Scrivener comes with a lot of output (“Compile”) options which dedicated layout software, word processors, and others like e-book composers, can process.
If you don’t see or don’t know or at least never have used any of the many, many, many features that Scrivener holds over classical word processors like Word, then the only difference between the two would be the hassle you are facing now and then indeed it is not worth your effort.
Let me try again: If you actually use print outs from Word as the printing template for your book (as opposed to: using Word’s common docx format as an intermediate to get processed by a typesetting/publishing software) then people can tell that you did. It will give your book an amateurish look.
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How I wish I could upload a screen shot of what I get when attempting to compile. I made another attempt at uploading a screen shot but received the message, “An error occurred: Sorry, you can’t embed media items in a post, yet. Most likely you just made an account, and new accounts have restricted permissions (this is to help control spam). You should find these restrictions lifted with ease, after you browse the forum a bit more.)”
What I get when trying to compile to PDF is not what you present. I am grateful for your help, but it’s getting me nowhere. I am using version 3.5.2 on a Macbook. I have no page setting options as you show. I single click, double click, right click – nothing gives me the screen you show.
As for using Scrivener, I appreciate the tools and abilities and I use them. However, when preparing a file for publishing on Amazon (I have published 8 books) I have to resort to Word for preparing a PDF for submission with gutter margins and different header and footer on verso and recto pages as I cannot get the options you show in your screen shot. I have used word processing software since the early days of Word (I’m an old guy). I’ve used both Microsoft and Apple applications. Sometimes you have to have human help to resolve problems.
I assume as soon as someone from support reads this thread they will grant you permission to upload screenshots. They probably would have already if it wasn’t for the long weekend.
I will try with an screenshot of one step earlier:
When you click the Compile icon or menu item this is what you should see. I suppose that’s as far as you got, right?
The double click mentioned before refers to the one format in the left column that you use. If your format is under “My Formats” a double click should open the screen both @Vincent_Vincent and @Rayz have posted a screenshot of. (Please note that @Vincent_Vincent is on Windows and everything looks slightly different to the Mac version of Scrivener. For example on the Mac the screen is not named “Compile Format Designer”.)
If the format you use is listed under “Scrivener Formats” a double click should lead to this prompt:
The inbuilt formats cannot get changed so it is mandatory to create a duplicate of them first which you can customize as you wish.
Is this the double click that is not working for you?
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Good luck with that. Scrivener was never intended to completely handle the printing/formatting process, but if you take the time to learn it, it can do quite a lot of the formatting before completing it in another program.
By abandoning Scrivener because it wasn’t specifically designed for something it wasn’t intended to handle, you are giving up on the tremendous value it brings to the writing and composition process that it was specifically designed for: the organizational functions of the Binder and Inspector. Try doing any of that in Word. To compensate for Word not having a Binder or the Inspector that Scrivener has, you’ll need OneNote; but that’s running a separate program instead of having everything (Manuscript, Research, webpages, Notes, Character bios, Setting material, etc.) in one Project.
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You should be able to post screenshots now. Let me know if you can’t.
The advice you have been given has been good. In addition, might I suggest:
- Section 23.2.3 Creating a New Format
- Section 24.20 Page Settings
- 24.20.4 Setting Margins, which specifically discusses asymmetrical margins.
You don’t say whether this manuscript was developed in Scrivener or elsewhere. I ask because we sometimes see support questions from people who have a complete, publication-ready manuscript from Word or some other software, and come to Scrivener hoping to do the final layout. That approach is exactly backward, and almost guaranteed to lead to frustration. The Compile command is very capable, but it is the most complex part of Scrivener, has a steep learning curve, and after all that it was never intended to replace dedicated layout software.
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