Vellum 4.1.6 EDiSO — Mac version

Tap the Preview button and your book reflows instantly—no waiting on a separate build step. That immediacy sits at the heart of Vellum 4.1.5, the ebook and print formatter from 180g. It’s a native Mac app that slots into a workflow alongside a word processor or plain-text editor, picking up where a manuscript leaves off.

From manuscript to finished book

Import a document and Vellum creates a title page and table of contents without fuss. You can add copyright-page text right inside the app, then choose a style. Apply it once and every chapter follows suit—even chapters you add later. The tool also handles widows and spread balancing, so you spend less time tidying pages and more time on the words. When you’ve got several titles ready, bundle them into a boxed set from the same window.

Check it on any screen

Device previews let you flip through how the book will look on a phone, a tablet, or a printed page before you share it. Changed a paragraph? Regenerate the ebook files and you’re sorted. It’s the kind of repeatable, close-to-the-text control that makes sense next to the other tools you already keep on your Mac.

Finished manuscript, ready for Kindle and Kobo

Self-publishing authors with a finished manuscript tend to be the sweet spot. You've done the hard work in a word processor. Now you want something that takes that file and turns out a proper Kindle or Kobo edition without you learning CSS or hunting a freelance formatter. Vellum fits that gap.

Small press teams get a lot from it too. One person can hold the style decisions and regenerate all the output files when a last-minute typo gets spotted, rather than emailing a typesetter and waiting two days. The boxed-set feature makes bundling a series trivially quick.

Writers who publish both digital and print editions benefit most of all. Picking a trim size and letting the app sort margins, headers and page numbers means you're not juggling two separate layout projects. You tweak the text once and both editions stay in step.

It's less suited to someone who needs elaborate textbook layouts with callout boxes, margin notes or complex tables. Vellum prizes a clean reading experience over design gymnastics. If your book is mostly running text with the odd image, you're in the right place.

Beginner slip-ups and how to dodge them

A common one: importing a manuscript still full of manual formatting from a word processor. Extra line breaks, tabs used for indents, spaces typed to centre a heading—all of that confuses Vellum's style engine. Strip the document back to plain body text before you import. Let the app's chosen style do the heavy lifting.

Another mistake is ignoring the device previews. A chapter that looks fine on a 13-inch Mac screen can show awkward page breaks on a phone-sized Kindle preview. Flip through at least one chapter on each device size before you finalise. The preview updates instantly, so there's no excuse not to.

Some newcomers add chapter after chapter without ever setting the trim size for print. Then they pick a size later and wonder why the page count ballooned. Choose your trim size early—even roughly—so you see a realistic print preview from the start.

Lastly, people sometimes treat the copyright page as an afterthought. Vellum lets you fill it in right inside the app, but the text lands at the front of every ebook. Leaving placeholder lorem ipsum there is a quick way to look unprofessional when a reader samples the first few pages.

Click the preview to jump straight to that paragraph

The instant preview isn't just for checking—it's also a fast navigation tool. Click any paragraph in the preview pane and the editor jumps to that spot in your manuscript. It's faster than scrolling through a long chapter list when you spot a typo during a read-through.

Hold down the Option key while picking a style and Vellum applies it to every chapter in the book at once. Helpful when you're trying out three different looks and don't want to click through each chapter individually.

When you regenerate ebook files after edits, Vellum remembers your previous output settings. You don't have to reselect Kindle, Kobo or Apple Books targets each time. One click, same formats, updated text.

The boxed-set feature preserves each book's individual styling rather than forcing them into one look. If your series already has formatted editions, you're bundling finished work, not starting again. That saves an afternoon of re-checking each title's chapter headings.

• macOS: Big Sur (11) or newer
• Mac architecture: Apple Silicon and Intel 64-bit