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Export & publishing
Getting the book out — what goes in the file, how it is laid out, and which format lands on your disk.
The Compile & Export window #
Everything is in one place: a live preview of the actual pages on the left, what goes into the file in the middle, and how it is made down the right.
The preview is not an approximation. It is the exported PDF, same pagination and same page count, which is why it tells you how long the book is before you export anything.
Choosing what goes in #
Your book appears as acts, chapters and scenes, each with a checkbox — the whole novel, three chapters for a workshop, or a single scene for one reader.
Front matter is its own column, and so are your characters, settings and charts, for when you want a series bible rather than a manuscript.
Style: the page design #
Style sets trim size, margins and typography. The industry sizes are there — trade paperback, digest, mass market, large print — along with screenplay, two classic manuscript looks, and Chicago, MLA and APA for academic work.
The Outline and Characters styles hand you a document of that material instead of a manuscript, which is how you get a printable outline or a character bible.
File formats #
Word and PDF, a print-ready PDF with bleed, EPUB, straight to the printer, plus HTML, Markdown and plain text. Fountain appears when the project is a screenplay.
Charc Backup is the whole project in one file — everything, restorable. It is the one to take if you want a copy of your work you can keep.
E-reader preview #
Before exporting an EPUB it is worth seeing it as a reader will. The preview shows your book in a device frame — phone, tablet or e-reader — reflowing at that screen size rather than on a fixed page.
It is a reading check, not a layout one: an ebook has no fixed pages, so what matters is whether chapter openings, scene breaks and images survive being reflowed.
Presets #
A preset is the entire configuration in one click: what is included, the style, the file type and the processing. Set things up the way you like and Save keeps it as your own.
Include and Processing #
Include decides what the file carries: chapter numbers and subtitles, scene titles, synopses, headers and footers, endnotes, footnotes and a bibliography.
Processing handles the conventions a publisher asks for — straight quotes, italics as underline, double hyphens turned into real em dashes — plus your own find-and-replace rules.
