Is Reedsy Studio really free?

The formatting is. Reedsy's pricing page lists import, export to PDF and EPUB, unlimited books and unlimited devices in the free tier. The paid parts are two optional add-ons, Craft ($4.99 a month: unlimited history, goals, stats) and Outlining ($7.99 a month: boards and notes for planning). Neither adds formatting features.

Is Reedsy Studio the same as the Reedsy Book Editor?

Yes. The Reedsy Book Editor was renamed Reedsy Studio in 2025. The app still lives at editor.reedsy.com, and older tutorials that say Book Editor describe the same formatter.

What trim sizes does Reedsy Studio support?

Four: 6 × 9, 5.5 × 8.5, 5 × 8 and a pocket size of 4.25 × 6.87 inches. The first three are standard KDP paperback sizes. The pocket size is not on KDP's list, and only 5.5 × 8.5 and 6 × 9 are KDP hardcover sizes.

Can I change the font in a book exported from Reedsy Studio?

Only by choosing another template. Reedsy's FAQ says you can pick small, medium or large type and a different font theme, and that it does not offer any other size or style customization. The font settings in the editor's sidebar change how the text looks while you write, not the exported book.

Can I get my manuscript out of Reedsy Studio?

Yes. The Back Up button on the book's Exports page emails you the manuscript as a Word file, and the PDF and EPUB are yours to keep. What does not travel is the design: the templates exist only inside Reedsy.

Reedsy Studio: how far the free book formatter gets you

Reedsy Studio, which was called the Reedsy Book Editor until 2025, formats a book in the browser for nothing. You import a Word file, choose one of three templates and one of four trim sizes, and export a print PDF and an EPUB 3 that the main stores accept. Reedsy’s FAQ says every function you need to write and format a book “is free, and always will be”, and its pricing page backs that up.

For a straightforward novel, that is often enough. The useful thing to know is that you can tell in advance whether your book is one of those novels. Reedsy’s help pages publish what you cannot change, and the list is short and specific. Read it before you import, not after the proof copy arrives.

What you get for nothing

Everything below is in the free tier, as Reedsy’s own pages describe it on 8 October 2026:

	Reedsy Studio, free tier
Import	.docx or .odt, up to 50 MB
Templates	Three: Reedsy (Lato and Merriweather, for non-fiction), Classic (Crimson), Romance (Crimson, decorative chapter titles and an ornament)
Trim sizes	6 × 9, 5.5 × 8.5, 5 × 8, 4.25 × 6.87 inches
Print	PDF/X-1a:2001, plus a second PDF for screen reading
Ebook	EPUB 3
Books, devices	Unlimited
Collaboration	Invite by email; tracked changes and comments
History	30 days of past versions
Getting out	Back Up emails the manuscript to you as a Word file

The print file is the right kind. PDF/X-1a is the press-oriented PDF that print-on-demand services are built to accept, and Reedsy’s print version strips the links and converts images to CMYK, which is what a printer wants. The copyright page and the table of contents are generated for you. Chapters can open with numbers, titles, drop caps or images. Scene breaks and endnotes go in from the Insert menu, and endnotes can be printed at the foot of the page, where they become footnotes in the paperback and move to the end of the chapter in the EPUB.

The paid tiers are about writing, not formatting. Craft ($4.99 a month) adds unlimited version history, custom goals, advanced stats and dark mode. Outlining ($7.99 a month) adds unlimited planning boards and notes. Both come with a 30-day trial and no card. If you only want the book formatted, you never meet them.

The book it suits

A novel, set in one of those trims, with ordinary chapters and few or no images, published as a paperback and an ebook. Thriller, romance, literary fiction, a memoir told in prose: if the manuscript is mostly paragraphs and the chapters start with a number or a title, the Classic template at 5.5 × 8.5 will produce a book a reader opens without noticing the formatting.

That is a lot of books, and it costs nothing to find out whether yours is one of them. Import it, export it, and look at the PDF page by page.

What you cannot change

This is the part most reviews summarize as “limited customization”. Reedsy’s own FAQ is more precise, and the precision is what you need:

Type. “You may choose small, medium, or large for your book’s font size,” and a different font theme. Then: “we do not offer any other size or style customization at this time.” No choice of typeface beyond the template’s, no leading, no margins.
Images. “All images added will be sized in the same way and cannot be adjusted.” A memoir with a full-width photograph on one page and a small portrait on the next gets two images the same size.
Chapter titles. “You can not remove chapter titles.” The workaround Reedsy suggests is moving the material to the back matter.
The copyright page. It “can not be disabled”. You can edit its text, but a book that wants its copyright notice somewhere else, or set differently, cannot have it. What goes on that page is covered in the copyright page.
Indents. Set “to reflect industry standards for fiction”, with block quotes and soft breaks for the exceptions. Fine for a novel, awkward for a cookbook or a manual.
Layout. Fixed-layout ebooks are not supported, and Reedsy points illustrated books to a designer.

None of this is hidden; it is in the help center. The trap is somewhere else. The editor’s sidebar has its own font size, line height and theme, and changing them changes the screen you write on. The FAQ says these settings “only control how you visualize the text in the tool — they do not affect your exported books.” An author who spends an evening tuning the sidebar has tuned nothing that will be printed.

Four trim sizes, checked against KDP

The trim list deserves a closer look than it usually gets, because it decides which books can be made at all.

KDP’s list of paperback trims includes 5 × 8, 5.5 × 8.5 and 6 × 9, so three of Reedsy’s four sizes are standard paperbacks. The pocket size, 4.25 × 6.87, is not on KDP’s paperback list; it is a mass-market size, and you should confirm your printer takes it before you design around it.

The hardcover is narrower still. KDP prints hardcovers at 5.5 × 8.5, 6 × 9, 6.14 × 9.21, 7 × 10 and 8.25 × 11. A novel formatted at 5 × 8 in Reedsy cannot become a KDP hardcover at the same size, so the hardcover means a second edition at a different trim, with a different page count and a different spine. If a hardcover is in the plan, start at 5.5 × 8.5 or 6 × 9.

Missing from the list entirely: 5.25 × 8 and 5.06 × 7.81, two common trims for genre fiction, and everything larger than 6 × 9. Trim sizes explains what each one is used for.

What a free formatter does not decide for you

Here is where the free page and a paid one differ, and it is not in the feature table.

A printed page is judged on things a template either handles or does not: whether justified lines open up into rivers of white space, whether a paragraph’s last line is stranded alone at the top of a page, how the inside margin grows with a thick book. Reedsy’s pages do not describe controls for hyphenation, widows and orphans, or margins, and with no margin setting there is nothing for you to adjust if the gutter looks tight on a 400-page paperback. KDP’s own minimum inside margin rises with the page count; how that works is in formatting for KDP. Read the exported PDF at full size before you upload it, and look specifically at the last lines of pages and at the gaps between words in justified text. Why justified text needs hyphenation shows what to look for.

This is the real meaning of “few designs”. Three templates is a small number, but the larger limit is that you cannot fix what a template gets wrong for your book. You take the page it gives you.

Why it is free

Reedsy is a marketplace before it is software. Its home page lists more than 2,700 editors and a thousand designers for hire, and its fees page states a 20% commission on those collaborations, split between the professional (10%) and the client (10%). Studio is how most authors meet Reedsy, and an author who outgrows a template is a plausible client for a typesetter.

That is a reasonable business, and it does not make the formatter worse. It explains its shape. A free tool that handles the plain novel well and leaves the unusual book to a professional on the marketplace is doing what it was built to do.

It also means less lock-in than you might fear. The manuscript comes back out as a Word file from the Back Up button, and the PDF and EPUB are ordinary files. What stays behind is the design. Leave Reedsy and you leave the template, so the second tool lays the book out from scratch.

Two smaller costs, both from Reedsy’s pages: Studio runs only in the browser and only online (its FAQ says offline use is on the roadmap), and the free tier keeps 30 days of history. A typo fix a year after publication is no trouble, because the book is still there to re-export. Restoring last spring’s version of chapter twelve is a Craft feature.

Reedsy Studio beside the other options

Tool	Price	Output	The trade
Reedsy Studio	Free	Print PDF, EPUB 3	Three templates, four trims, almost no typographic control
Kindle Create	Free	KPF for KDP; EPUB for reflowable books, unsupported outside Kindle	No margins, fonts or line spacing to change; paperbacks cannot have footnotes, endnotes or tables
Atticus	$147 once	PDF, EPUB, DOCX	More themes and controls, drafting built in
Vellum	$249.99 once ($199.99 ebooks only)	PDF/X-1a, EPUB	The best-regarded page; Mac only
Nueel	$139 once	Print PDF, EPUB, Word	Our product; 20 designs, file checked against the store before export

Atticus and Vellum prices as their sites published them on 5 September 2026.

Against Kindle Create, Reedsy wins on reach: its EPUB goes to Apple Books, Kobo and Google as well as Amazon, and its PDF goes to any printer, where Kindle Create is built around a KPF for KDP and calls its own EPUB export unsupported outside Kindle. Kindle Create’s paperback also cannot carry footnotes or endnotes, which Reedsy’s can.

Against the paid tools, the question is whether you have hit one of the limits above. If you have not, paying buys you little. If you have, it is usually the only fix. The full ranking, with how we judged each tool, is in the best book formatting software; and if Vellum is the one you want but you are on Windows, see Vellum for Windows.

Nueel is the tool we make, so weigh this as a pitch. It has 20 book designs, and in each of them the typeface, the margins, the chapter openings and the hyphenation can be changed and the whole book recomposes. The free preview typesets your first chapter from your Word file, without an account and without the file leaving your browser. That makes it a fair side-by-side with Reedsy’s export of the same chapter.

How to decide in an afternoon

Read Reedsy’s formatting FAQ and check your book against it: trim, images, chapter titles, copyright page.
If nothing on that list bites, import the manuscript and export the PDF at your trim.
Read the PDF at 100%, every page of at least one chapter, looking at word spacing and the last line of each page.
If you plan a hardcover, check that your trim is 5.5 × 8.5 or 6 × 9.

If the PDF passes, publish it and keep the money. If it does not, you will know exactly why: one of the items on Reedsy’s own list, the thing you wanted to change and could not. That is the moment a paid tool earns its price, and an afternoon is a cheaper way to reach it than a proof copy.

Sources

Reedsy, Reedsy Studio, write a book, format a book and pricing: free tier contents, Craft and Outlining add-ons, 30-day trial, real-time collaboration, EPUB 3 and print-ready PDF. Read 8 October 2026.
Reedsy, Studio FAQ: prices of the add-ons, the three templates and their typefaces, the four trim sizes, PDF/X-1a:2001, the print and screen PDFs, editor settings not affecting exports, endnotes, offline use, fixed layout. Read 8 October 2026.
Reedsy help center, formatting options, finding the Studio app and backing up a book: font size and style limits, image sizing, chapter titles, copyright page, indentation, .docx/.odt import up to 50 MB, Word backup. Read 8 October 2026.
Reedsy, home page and fees: marketplace size, 20% commission split 10% and 10%. Read 8 October 2026.
Amazon KDP, set trim size, bleed and margins and prepare your eBook and paperback with Kindle Create: paperback and hardcover trim lists, KPF output, Kindle Create’s paperback limits. Read 8 October 2026.
Vellum and Atticus prices from vellum.pub and atticus.io, read 5 September 2026.

Common questions

Is Reedsy Studio really free?: The formatting is. Reedsy's pricing page lists import, export to PDF and EPUB, unlimited books and unlimited devices in the free tier. The paid parts are two optional add-ons, Craft ($4.99 a month: unlimited history, goals, stats) and Outlining ($7.99 a month: boards and notes for planning). Neither adds formatting features.
Is Reedsy Studio the same as the Reedsy Book Editor?: Yes. The Reedsy Book Editor was renamed Reedsy Studio in 2025. The app still lives at editor.reedsy.com, and older tutorials that say Book Editor describe the same formatter.
What trim sizes does Reedsy Studio support?: Four: 6 × 9, 5.5 × 8.5, 5 × 8 and a pocket size of 4.25 × 6.87 inches. The first three are standard KDP paperback sizes. The pocket size is not on KDP's list, and only 5.5 × 8.5 and 6 × 9 are KDP hardcover sizes.
Can I change the font in a book exported from Reedsy Studio?: Only by choosing another template. Reedsy's FAQ says you can pick small, medium or large type and a different font theme, and that it does not offer any other size or style customization. The font settings in the editor's sidebar change how the text looks while you write, not the exported book.
Can I get my manuscript out of Reedsy Studio?: Yes. The Back Up button on the book's Exports page emails you the manuscript as a Word file, and the PDF and EPUB are yours to keep. What does not travel is the design: the templates exist only inside Reedsy.