Vellum

Name: Vellum
Price: 199.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: 180g

Book formatting for indie authors, bought once, books unlimited

Price: $199.99 once

PerpetualUpdates included, forever

Buy direct

Price read 22 Sep 2026 on vellum.pub, the page Buy direct opens.

The catch

Buying Ebooks then upgrading to Press costs $19.99 more in total than buying Press up front

The full picture

Mac only, and it is a formatter rather than a writing app - you bring finished text. Design control is deliberately limited to Vellum's own styles, so if you want real typographic freedom you want InDesign or Affinity Publisher. The upgrade arithmetic is worth doing before you buy: Ebooks at $199.99 plus the $69.99 upgrade is $269.98 against $249.99 for Press bought outright, though within 30 days of buying Ebooks you can ask support for a price exchange instead. Prices exclude tax.

Pays back in: 9 months
Seats: No Mac count statedNo stated Mac count: you install the licence on another Mac by requesting an activation link from inside Vellum on that machine, using your purchase email.
Developer account: None needed

Buy once

$199.99Rent 5 years

$1,380

$1,180 kept over five years, and you still have the app.
Against Adobe InDesign at $276 a year, single-app plan at US$22.99/mo on the annual, billed-monthly rate. Also replaces Book formatting services.

What it looks like

Vellum: The full three-pane Vellum window at 1800x1014: left sidebar with the book title 'The Secret Garden', author, and the numbered chapter list; centre editing pane with the chapter heading, formatting bar and manuscript text; right preview pane set to 'Kindle: Fire' showing the rendered chapter on a device. Word count and the Generate button in the toolbar. — The full three-pane Vellum window at 1800x1014. Vendor site (vellum.pub @2x tour asset)

Vellum: Same window, 1800x1014, with the right pane switched to 'Print: 5.25 x 8 in' — a typeset print interior page with a script chapter ornament, drop-cap paragraph and page number. Shows the print-interior half of what Vellum Press buys. — Same window, 1800x1014, with the right pane switched to 'Print. Vendor site

Vellum: Same window, 1800x1014, with the Styles browser open: left sidebar listing Saved Styles / Popular / Serif / Sans Serif / Script / All Styles, the centre pane showing style cards (Cinder, Decorum selected, Directive) each with a live sample of the book, and the print preview still on the right. This is the 'preset book styles' claim in the listing, shown. — Same window, 1800x1014, with the Styles browser open. Vendor site

Images belong to their developers.

What you’re buying

Vellum is what most self-published authors end up using, and it earns that by being narrow. You bring a finished manuscript, pick one of its book styles, and it produces typeset EPUB files for each store plus a print-ready interior PDF — chapter headings, ornaments, drop caps, series pages, box sets, the lot. Nobody has to learn a layout program or hire anyone.

You can download it and build, style and preview an entire book without paying. Money only changes hands when you want publishable files out of it. Vellum Ebooks is $199.99 for unlimited ebooks; Vellum Press is $249.99 and adds paperback interiors. It is a real one-time purchase — the developer's own purchasing FAQ says so in those words — and updates have been free throughout. Tax goes on top.

The trap is the upgrade path. If you buy Ebooks and later need print, that upgrade is $69.99, which puts you at $269.98 where buying Press up front would have been $249.99. If there is any chance of paperbacks, buy Press.

Who should not buy it: anyone who wants control of the typography, because Vellum's styles are good and they are the only styles you get. And if you are formatting one book, once, and never again, paying someone to do that single interior is probably cheaper than $200.

What owners report

Points that recur across the discussions below. A report of what users say, not our verdict: we don’t review software.

Praised

Owners consistently describe finishing a book in ten to fifteen minutes and count the time saved, not the looks, as what the price buys
Several say the output passes for traditionally published work because Vellum already knows the conventions - drop caps, half-title, copyright page, series pages
Repeat publishers say it reliably produces a separate valid file for each store, so retailer conversion problems stop happening

Criticised

Mac-only comes up in every venue, with Windows and Linux authors either giving up on it or buying a Mac specifically to run it
First-time authors repeatedly say the price is hard to justify for a single book, and are pointed at Draft2Digital, Sigil, Calibre or Jutoh instead
The fixed set of styles draws a recurring complaint that Vellum-formatted books have started to look like each other, and that there is no room to move outside the presets

KBoards Writers' Cafe · 4 Aug 2016What does vellum get you that formatting with scrivener doesn't?
Thirty-odd replies from working self-publishers answer the price question with time saved rather than looks - most say a book takes them ten to fifteen minutes - while the dissent is that everyone's books now look alike, and both Vellum founders show up to answer questions about drop caps and Kindle file sizes.
KBoards Writers' Cafe · 20 Nov 2017Newb question: Is Vellum a necessity the way a good cover is a necessity?
The thread lands firmly on 'not a necessity, but an investment': owners say it pays back if you publish repeatedly, while others point first-timers at Draft2Digital, Sigil, Calibre or Jutoh and note that being Mac-only is the real barrier.
Hacker News · 26 Nov 2022Interview with Keith Blount, Creator of Scrivener
Eleven commenters pull the thread toward Vellum and settle on a division of labour - write in Scrivener or Word, format in Vellum - with side arguments about it costing three to four times Scrivener and about Windows and Linux authors being shut out entirely.
Hacker News · 22 May 2026I built a Git-tracked book production pipeline
In a thread about rolling your own toolchain, Vellum is still named the best off-the-shelf EPUB generator for fiction and rated well above InDesign's EPUB output, with the caveat that it is barely customisable and only beaten by a hand-built pipeline.

Details

The price in full

One-time purchase with free updates, confirmed on help.vellum.pub. Vellum Press $249.99 (unlimited ebooks plus paperbacks); Vellum Ebooks $199.99 (unlimited ebooks). Upgrading from Ebooks to Press later costs $69.99, with no deadline. Prices exclude tax. Download, build, style and preview for free - you pay only to generate publishable files.

The Vellum page at vellum.pub — The developer’s own page. vellum.pub, captured 22 Sep 2026

Free trial: Yes
Works offline: Yes
Apple Silicon: Native
On Setapp: No
Minimum macOS: not stated
Developer: 180g

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