Draft2Digital's Free Formatter or LiberScript

The Verdict

Draft2Digital's formatter is free, quick and good enough for many novels: upload a Word file, pick a template and download an ebook and a print PDF. LiberScript costs money but gives you far more control over the design, lets you keep editing the book after formatting, and adds a critique, planner and collaboration tools. Choose Draft2Digital's formatter if you want clean, simple files at no cost. Choose LiberScript if you care about how your interior looks, plan to revise often, or want writing and formatting in one place.

How Each Tool Works

Draft2Digital's formatter is built into its publishing dashboard and runs in the browser. You upload a manuscript, usually a Word document, enter your book details and check the chapters it detects. Then you choose one of its templates, preview the result and download your files: an EPUB for ebook stores and a PDF for print. Draft2Digital lets you use the formatter even if you do not distribute through it.

LiberScript is a browser workspace for the whole path from manuscript to publish-ready files. You can draft in its editor or import a DOCX, EPUB, PDF, Markdown or plain text file, and it detects chapters plus front and back matter. Its Design tab offers themes and detailed controls, with a paginated preview at your trim size, and it exports EPUB, print-ready PDF and DOCX files.

At a Glance

Templates vs Design Control

Draft2Digital's templates are attractive and genre-flavored, with matching chapter headings and scene breaks. For a straightforward novel, picking a template can produce a perfectly professional ebook in minutes. The trade-off is limited customization: you choose a template rather than adjusting individual elements, so if you want a different font, spacing or heading style, you are largely limited to what the templates offer.

LiberScript starts from a theme and then lets you change the details. You can set body and heading fonts, sizes and line spacing, style chapter openers, add drop caps and epigraphs, choose how scene breaks look, start chapters on right-hand pages and control headers and page numbering. You check the result in paginated spreads at your trim size, switching between print and ebook views. If you have a clear idea of how your book should look, that control matters.

Back Matter and Series Features

Draft2Digital's formatter is especially handy for series authors. It can add back matter pages automatically, such as an "Also by" list of your books, an about the author page and a newsletter signup page, and keep them consistent across titles. When you add a new book to your Draft2Digital account, those pages can reflect it.

LiberScript detects and styles front and back matter from your manuscript, such as a dedication, acknowledgments, about the author and also-by pages, but you write and update them yourself. Nonfiction authors get automatically numbered footnotes and a generated bibliography, which template formatters rarely handle well.

Print Files

Draft2Digital's formatter produces a print-ready PDF you can upload to print services, using its print options for trim size. For a standard paperback novel, it is usually sufficient.

LiberScript exports a print-ready PDF at your chosen trim size, built from the same design you previewed, for KDP Print, IngramSpark and other printers. Because you control margins, headers, chapter starts and spacing, you can fine-tune page count and the look of each spread before you export. Each printer sets its own margin requirements, so check them against your page count.

Editing After Formatting

This is a practical difference that grows over time. With Draft2Digital's formatter, the source of truth is your Word file. To fix a typo found after formatting, you correct the Word file and upload it again, then regenerate your files.

In LiberScript, the manuscript and the design live together. You fix the sentence in the editor, glance at the preview and export again, and the ebook and print files stay in step because they come from the same text. Authors who keep refining up to launch, or who update back matter as a series grows, save a lot of re-uploading.

Beyond Formatting

Draft2Digital's formatter does one job. It does not check your prose or help you plan your writing.

LiberScript adds tools for the stages before formatting. Its critique flags overused adverbs, passive voice, filler words, clichés, repeated phrases and show-versus-tell moments, tracks pacing and dialogue balance, adds a grammar and spelling check and gives each pass a readiness score. A planner turns a word goal and target date into a daily pace and keeps your story beats in order, and sticky notes sit beside your chapters without ever being exported. You can invite unlimited collaborators, such as an editor or co-author. LiberScript's Cover Studio is rolling out gradually, so plan to make your cover separately for now.

Cost

Draft2Digital's formatter costs nothing to use. If you also distribute through Draft2Digital, its usual distribution terms apply to sales, but the formatting itself is free.

LiberScript's passes cost $3.99 for a day, $9.99 for a week, $29.99 for a month, $99.99 for a year or $299.99 for Lifetime, with no automatic renewal. Every pass includes the editor, critique, design tools and unlimited exports with no watermark. An author formatting one book might buy a week; an author publishing several books a year might choose a longer pass.

For a broader comparison of formatting options, from free tools to professional software, see our guide to choosing a formatting tool by book type.

A Quick Test Before You Decide

Because Draft2Digital's formatter is free, it costs nothing to try it first. A simple test tells you whether templates are enough for your book.

1. Clean up your Word file: use heading styles for chapter titles, remove manual spacing and tabs, and mark scene breaks consistently.
2. Run it through Draft2Digital's formatter and try two or three templates.
3. Open the EPUB on a phone and an e-reader, and page through the print PDF.
4. List what bothers you. If the list is empty, you are done. If it includes fonts, spacing, chapter openers or awkward page breaks you cannot change, a tool with design control is worth paying for.

Moving Between Them

Switching is easy in either direction, because both start from a standard manuscript. A book formatted with Draft2Digital can be imported into LiberScript from the original Word file or the EPUB, and LiberScript detects the chapters again. A LiberScript book can be exported as a DOCX if you want to run it through Draft2Digital's templates for distribution. Keep a clean master copy of your manuscript either way, so you are never locked into one tool.

Who Should Choose Which

Frequently Asked Questions