How to format a book in Google Docs, and where it stops

Google Docs can produce a paperback interior that Amazon KDP will accept, and an EPUB for the Kindle store, without an add-on. It has page sizes, section breaks, different headers on odd and even pages, page numbers that restart where you tell them, and a switch that stops a paragraph leaving one line stranded at the top of a page.

What it does not have is a sense that a book is made of spreads. Docs lays out pages one at a time: one left margin for every page in a section, whichever side of the spread it prints on, and chapters that start on whichever page comes next. The work of formatting a book in Docs is mostly working around that, and the workarounds are cheaper than they sound.

Before anything: switch to pages

If your document is in pageless format, almost everything below is unavailable. Google’s help pages say so for page setup, for headers, footers and page numbers, and for the paragraph controls that prevent stranded lines. Go to File > Page setup, choose Pages at the top, and keep it that way.

While you are there, check where your chapters live. If you wrote them in Docs’ document tabs, the download dialog defaults to “Current Tab”, and you have to choose Tab > All Tabs to get the whole book. An author who downloads chapter twelve as their manuscript finds out at the proof stage.

The page size problem, and the size that solves it

Docs’ Paper size list is fixed. It offers Letter, Tabloid, Legal, Statement, Executive, Folio, A3, A4, A5, B4 and B5, and there is no field for your own width and height. So the most searched version of this question, a 6 × 9 book in Google Docs, has no native answer.

Three of those sizes are also standard KDP paperback trims: Letter (8.5 × 11), A4 (8.27 × 11.69) and Statement, which is 5.5 × 8.5 inches. That last one is a conventional trade paperback size for novels and memoir, sitting in the dropdown under a name nobody associates with books. A5 (5.83 × 8.27) is not on KDP’s standard US list; KDP accepts custom paperback trims between 4 and 8.5 inches wide and 6 and 11.69 inches tall, but a standard size is the simpler choice. The trim size guide covers which size suits which kind of book.

If it has to be 6 × 9, add-ons in the Google Workspace Marketplace set any dimension. Read the permissions before installing one: DocSize, which lists KDP presets, asks to “see, edit, create, and delete all your Google Docs documents”. That is a lot of access to grant for one setting on one manuscript.

The page size has to match the trim you choose on KDP. A 5.5 × 8.5 interior uploaded against a 6 × 9 trim is not a formatting choice; it is a rejected file.

Margins without a gutter

A printed book has an inside margin, the gutter, on the binding edge: on the left of a right-hand page and on the right of a left-hand one. KDP sets a minimum for it that grows with the page count, because a thick book curves further into its spine:

Page count	KDP minimum inside margin
24–150	0.375″
151–300	0.5″
301–500	0.625″
501–700	0.75″
701–828	0.875″

The outside, top and bottom margins must be at least 0.25″ without bleed.

Docs has top, bottom, left and right. Since 2019 they can differ by section, but never between facing pages, so there is no way to say “wider on the binding side”. You could in principle put a section break on every page and alternate the margins, and it would last until the first edit reflowed the text.

The workaround is to make the margins symmetric and give both sides the inside value. Take an 80,000-word novel at Statement size. At roughly 285 words a page it runs to about 280 pages of text, and with front and back matter it lands near 310 pages, in KDP’s 301–500 band, so the inside minimum is 0.625″. Set left and right both to 0.75″ and every page clears it whichever side it falls on. The line is 4.0 inches long. A properly mirrored layout with 0.75″ inside and 0.6″ outside would give 4.15 inches, about two characters a line more. That is the whole cost.

The part that bites is the band, not the symmetry. Docs’ Tools > Word count shows the page count, and that number moves every time you change the font, the size or the spacing. A book at 298 pages needs 0.5″; a half-point increase in type size that takes it to 312 needs 0.625″, and Docs will not tell you that the margin you set last week no longer qualifies. The word count tool estimates the page count at each trim before you start, and the margins guide has the reasoning behind the bands.

Chapters, headers and page numbers

One chapter, one section. Before each chapter title, insert Insert > Break > Section break (next page), and format the title with Heading 1. The section break is what lets each chapter opening behave differently from the pages after it; the heading style is what lets an ebook, or any tool you hand the file to later, know it is a chapter.

No running head on the opening page. Click into a header and tick Different first page. Google describes it as applying to “the first page of the document or section”, so with one section per chapter, every chapter opening loses its header. It loses its footer too, so if your page numbers live in the footer, chapter openings go unnumbered. That is a common convention in printed books, not a requirement.

Book title on one side, author on the other. In the header, choose Options, apply to the Whole document, and tick Different odd and even. Odd pages are right-hand pages, so put the title in the odd header and your name in the even one, or the other way round. The conventions are in running heads and page numbers.

Page numbers. Insert > Page elements > Page number > More options lets you number the whole document, a section, or start from a chosen number.

That last control is where a Docs file can quietly break KDP’s guidelines. KDP’s submission guidelines ask for page numbers in sequence, “with even numbers on left pages and odd numbers on the right”. The first page of your PDF is printed as a right-hand page. If your front matter runs to six pages and you restart numbering at 1 for chapter one, chapter one starts on the seventh page, a right-hand page, and all is well. If the front matter runs to five, chapter one falls on a left-hand page carrying an odd number, and so does every odd number after it.

Docs has no section break that jumps to the next odd page, so the fix is manual: add or remove a page in the front matter until chapter one falls on an odd physical page. The same limitation means chapters start on whichever side comes next. Starting every chapter on a right-hand page is a convention, mostly of more formal editions; plenty of trade paperbacks open chapters on either side, and nothing at KDP requires it. Padding chapters with blank pages to force it runs into one of the common failures KDP lists: “excessive blank pages”.

Stray lines and justified text

Docs does handle the stray lines. Under Format > Line & paragraph spacing, Prevent single lines stops a paragraph leaving its first line alone at the bottom of a page or its last line alone at the top. Turn it on for the body text, and turn on Keep with next for headings, so a chapter title is never the last line of a page.

What Docs does not have is hyphenation. Its help pages describe alignment, spacing, and those keep controls, and nothing that breaks a word across lines. That matters if you justify the text, as most novels are set: with no hyphens available, every line is stretched to the margin by widening the spaces, and on a 4-inch line some of those spaces get very wide. It is the usual cause of the rivers of white you see in justified text without hyphenation.

Two honest options. Set the body left-aligned: a ragged right edge is less traditional in a novel and entirely legitimate, and it has no spacing problem. Or justify it, then read the PDF page by page and rewrite the worst lines. On a 300-page book the first option is the one people finish.

Writing the files

The paperback. File > Download > PDF Document (.pdf). Open the PDF in a viewer, not in Docs, and check three things: the page size in Document Properties is 5.5 × 8.5 inches; every font listed is embedded, which KDP’s guidelines require (“Embed all fonts and images in your native file prior to submission”); and the page count is at least 24 and in the margin band you planned for. KDP also accepts DOCX for books without bleed, but a PDF fixes what you checked, where a DOCX is converted again on Amazon’s side. The print-ready PDF checklist covers the rest.

The ebook. Make a copy of the document first. An EPUB reflows to the reader’s screen, so page size, margins, headers and page numbers mean nothing there, and the copy you formatted for print carries choices you do not want in the ebook. From the copy, File > Download > EPUB Publication (.epub), or download Microsoft Word (.docx) and upload that; KDP takes both, and says most DOCX files convert well. Then open the file in Kindle Previewer before uploading, as KDP recommends. Docs’ EPUB export dates from 2016, and reviews at the time found it at its best with plain text; a book of tables and images is the one to check most carefully.

The cover. Last. The spine width comes from the final page count, so the cover cannot be finished until the interior is. The spine width calculator turns the count into a cover size.

If you would rather not work around it

Everything above is the price of formatting a book in a tool that thinks in pages. It is a fair price for a straightforward novel and gets steeper with every image, every chapter that must open on the right, and every late change to the type that moves the page count across a band.

Nueel is the tool we make, so weigh this as a pitch. It runs in Chrome on a Chromebook as well as on Windows and Mac. Download your manuscript from Docs as a .docx, import it, and the Heading 1 titles become chapters. The book is then set in spreads: mirrored margins, an inside margin that follows the page count as it moves, hyphenated justification, and the file checked against KDP’s published requirements before it is written. The free preview on the home page typesets your first chapter without an account, and pricing is public.

Whichever way you go, the decision that matters is the one Docs does not show you: the page count that comes out of the typesetting, and the gutter and the spine that follow from it.

Sources

• Google Docs Editors Help, Change page settings — Page setup, pages versus pageless, per-section settings, Set as default. Read 8 October 2026.
• Google Docs Editors Help, Use headers, footers, page numbers & footnotes — Different first page per section, Different odd and even, Link to previous, page numbering options, unavailable in pageless. Read 8 October 2026.
• Google Docs Editors Help, Edit and format a document — Keep with next, Keep lines together, Prevent single lines, alignment; no hyphenation control described. Read 8 October 2026.
• Google Docs Editors Help, Use document tabs — downloads default to the current tab. Read 8 October 2026.
• Google Docs Editors Help, Word count — pages, words and characters. Read 8 October 2026.
• Google Workspace Updates, New formatting tools in Docs (May 2019), More header and footer options (July 2019) and Export Google Docs files as EPUB (March 2016) — next-page and continuous section breaks, per-section margins, odd and even headers, EPUB export. Read 8 October 2026.
• Google Workspace Marketplace, DocSize and Size Matters listings — custom page sizes by add-on, permissions requested, “a handful of fixed page size presets”. Read 8 October 2026.
• doc-size.com, Google Docs page size reference — the eleven native paper sizes and their dimensions (an add-on vendor’s page; Google does not publish the list). Read 8 October 2026.
• Amazon KDP, Set trim size, bleed and margins — standard trims, inside margins by page count, outside minimums. Read 8 October 2026.
• Amazon KDP, Print options — custom paperback trim limits. Read 8 October 2026.
• Amazon KDP, Paperback submission guidelines — accepted file types, embedded fonts, page number sides, 24-page minimum, excessive blank pages. Read 8 October 2026.
• Amazon KDP, Supported eBook formats — DOCX, EPUB, Kindle Previewer. Read 8 October 2026.

Common questions

Can you format a book for KDP in Google Docs?

Yes, for a text-only book without bleed. Google Docs has the pieces KDP checks: a paper size that matches a KDP trim (Statement, 5.5 × 8.5 inches), margins, section breaks, separate headers on odd and even pages, page numbers and a setting that prevents single lines at page breaks. It downloads a PDF, which KDP accepts. What it lacks is mirrored margins, hyphenation and a way to start chapters on a right-hand page, so you work around those rather than set them.

Can Google Docs do a 6 × 9 page?

Not natively. Docs' Page setup offers a fixed list of paper sizes, and 6 × 9 is not among them. Third-party add-ons from the Google Workspace Marketplace set any width and height, but the one we checked, DocSize, asks for permission to see, edit, create and delete all your Google Docs documents. Without one, Statement (5.5 × 8.5) is the size in the list that matches a standard KDP paperback trim.

Does Google Docs have mirror margins or a gutter setting?

No. Page setup has top, bottom, left and right margins, and since 2019 those can differ by section, but not between left-hand and right-hand pages. The workaround is to set the left and right margins both to at least KDP's inside minimum for your page count, which costs a slightly narrower line and nothing else.

Can Google Docs export an EPUB for Kindle?

Yes: File > Download > EPUB Publication (.epub). KDP accepts EPUB files that meet its Kindle Publishing Guidelines, and accepts DOCX as well, which Docs also downloads. Either way, open the result in Kindle Previewer before you upload, as KDP recommends.

Is there a Google Docs book template?

There is no setting a template can carry that you cannot make in five minutes: Statement paper size, symmetric margins, Heading 1 for chapter titles, and Page setup's Set as default so new documents start that way. The parts a template cannot carry are the ones that depend on your page count, chiefly the inside margin.