What is a manuscript?

A manuscript is the working text of a book: everything the author has written, before it is designed and laid out as a finished book. The word originally meant handwritten, but today manuscripts are almost always word-processor documents.

Manuscripts go through stages. The first draft gets the story or argument down; later drafts restructure and revise it. Then come editing passes — developmental, line, copyedit and proofreading — before the final text is typeset into a print interior and converted into an eBook.

If you are submitting to literary agents or traditional publishers, follow standard manuscript format unless their guidelines say otherwise. Conventionally that means a plain serif font at 12 point, double-spaced lines, one-inch margins, indented paragraphs, page numbers, and a header with your name and title, with each chapter starting on a new page. Always check the specific agent's or publisher's submission guidelines.

For self-publishing, format matters less in the manuscript because you will lay it out later — but clean, consistent styles (proper headings for chapters, real italics, no manual spacing with tabs or repeated line breaks) make conversion to a print PDF and EPUB much smoother.

Keep backups of every version, and keep a note of word count; it guides your editing costs and your printed page count.