Write on the page your book will be printed on.

Not an editor with a preview in another window. The page you are typing on is the printed page — your trim size, your typeface, your drop caps, your page numbers — from the first word.

Start writing See the designs

Fourteen days free. Your card is not charged until the fifteenth.

The Lamp Room38,412 words · 312 printed pagesSaved

BIUSplit HereScene Break

The Lamp Room

Chapter One

I am the native of a sea-surrounded nook, a cloud-enshadowed land, which, when the surface of the globe, with its shoreless ocean and trackless continents, presents itself to my mind, appears only as an inconsiderable speck in the immense whole.

My fortunes have been, from the beginning, an exemplification of the power that mutability may possess over the varied tenor of man’s life. With regard to myself, this came almost too late; for the sudden storm had wrecked me before I was aware of its approach, and I was left to gather what I could from the shore.

The lamp had been burning for ninety-one years when I came to it. My grandfather trimmed its wick, and his father before him, and neither of them, so far as anyone could tell me, had ever let it go out for longer than it takes to fill a reservoir.

There is a particular quiet in a lighthouse at four in the morning that I have never found anywhere else since. It is not the absence of sound — the sea is never silent — but the absence of anybody else’s business.

Page 3 · 312 printed pages in the book

Thirty-nine designs, drawn by the engine that prints

Several for horror, several for romance, several for science fiction. These are not pictures of pages — they are the pages, laid out by the same engine that makes your PDF, one design at a time.

Kettle Point — A quiet old-style serif with a small-caps opener. The safe choice for a novel. — **Kettle Point**Literary · Commercial

Meridian Run — Tighter and more current. Reads fast, and sets shorter than most. — **Meridian Run**Commercial · Scifi

Vellum Hall — A drop cap, an ornamental break and a ruled opener. For a book with weather in it. — **Vellum Hall**Fantasy · Horror

Open Desk — Block paragraphs, sans headings, room to breathe. Built for a reader who stops and starts. — **Open Desk**Business · Memoir

Field Manual — Numbered headings, tables that read well, and a monospace that belongs. Reference and technical. — **Field Manual**Technical · Academic

Butter Dish — For recipes: a large display title over clean sans, with space between the steps. Set to be read from across a kitchen. — **Butter Dish**Cookbook

Long Measure — No indent, no justification, generous margins. The line breaks are the poet's. — **Long Measure**Poetry · Literary

Ashgrove — A fine, high-contrast face with plenty of air. Literary fiction that wants a delicate page. — **Ashgrove**Literary · Memoir

Hollow Lane — Small caps throughout the furniture. Quiet, and slightly old-fashioned. — **Hollow Lane**Historical · Literary

Winterbourne — A small tracked title at the top of an empty sink, and nothing else. Memoir, and fiction told in fragments. — **Winterbourne**Memoir · Literary

Northline — Condensed capitals knocked out of a black band, under a tall numeral. Thrillers, and anything that should feel urgent. — **Northline**Commercial · Scifi

Cold Harbour — A tall monospace numeral between rules, over a modern serif. Cool, and a little clinical. — **Cold Harbour**Scifi · Commercial

Saltmarsh — Centred and unornamented. The plainest thing in the gallery, on purpose. — **Saltmarsh**Commercial · Literary

Briarwood — A deep drop cap and a heavy ornament. For a book with maps in the front. — **Briarwood**Fantasy · Historical

Nightjar — Stark, ruled, no ornament. Tension rather than decoration. — **Nightjar**Horror · Commercial

Silverthorn — A soft display face and a light ornament. Warm without being sweet. — **Silverthorn**Romance · Fantasy

Court & Crown — Capitals, rules above and below, and a drop cap. Epic in the old sense. — **Court & Crown**Fantasy · Historical

Clearwater — A sturdy book serif set in blocks. Business writing that respects a commute. — **Clearwater**Business

Summit — A large numeral and generous space. Self-help, and anything with steps. — **Summit**Business · Workbook

Longview — Block paragraphs set in a serif. Memoir and narrative nonfiction. — **Longview**Memoir · Business

Blueprint — Monospaced headings and ruled chapter openers. Reference you look things up in. — **Blueprint**Technical

Lectern — A serif body under sans headings, with room for notes. Academic writing. — **Lectern**Academic · Technical

Workbench — Checklists, exercises and callouts given room. Workbooks and how-to. — **Workbench**Workbook · Technical

Quiet Room — A fine italic title and nothing else at all. One poem to a page where it fits. — **Quiet Room**Poetry

Broadside — A larger face for long lines. Narrative poetry and translation. — **Broadside**Poetry · Literary

Copper Pan — Warm and old-fashioned, with the recipe name in small caps. For home cooking and family books. — **Copper Pan**Cookbook

Pass and Pantry — Quiet and modern, with plenty of white space. For a book where the photographs do the talking. — **Pass and Pantry**Cookbook

Plain Sight — Clear print at 14pt: sans type, extra space between the lines, ragged right and no words broken across lines. — **Plain Sight**Accessible

Wide Margin — Large print at 16pt, the size RNIB and UKAAF both set as the threshold. For a large-print edition of a book you have already set. — **Wide Margin**Accessible

Open Page — Giant print at 19pt, in the range most large-print readers actually ask for. The longest book of the three, and the one a reader with real sight loss can use. — **Open Page**Accessible

Fair Copy — Double-spaced, ragged right, no ornament — standard manuscript format for submissions. — **Fair Copy**Manuscript

Marchmont — An ornate display face, a fleuron and a deep drop cap. Historical romance, and anything with a ballroom in it. — **Marchmont**Romance · Historical

Paper Lantern — A light italic title and a single leaf. Contemporary romance, and warm fiction generally. — **Paper Lantern**Romance · Commercial

Ironmark — Heavy capitals stamped on a black band. Crime, and thrillers that take themselves seriously. — **Ironmark**Commercial · Horror

Glasshouse — A line of inscribed capitals at the top of an open page, and nothing else. Literary fiction, essays and short-story collections. — **Glasshouse**Literary · Memoir

Signal — A small monospace tag over a title knocked out of a black band. For a book set in the near future. — **Signal**Scifi · Commercial

Vantage — A numeral taller than the title, light tracked capitals beneath it, and a great deal of space. For a book set far away. — **Vantage**Scifi · Commercial

Candlewick — A tall, thin numeral between hairline rules, a whisper of a title, and a blackletter drop cap. For a book read with the lights on. — **Candlewick**Horror · Fantasy

Ravenhurst — Blackletter knocked out of a black band, and a deep drop cap. For a book with something in the walls. — **Ravenhurst**Horror · Fantasy

One engine, never approximate

The thing drawing the page while you type is the thing that prints it. Sweep between the two and there is nothing to see.

It does not lose your book

Written to your own computer as you type, and a copy kept every quarter of an hour. No network needed, ever.

A desk you choose. A page that never lies.

Seven moods for the desk you write at. The page stays paper under all of them, because the page is what prints.

And the ebook, on every reader

The same chapter on a Kindle, a phone and a tablet, at the sizes readers actually choose — before you send it anywhere.

The Lamp Room

Kindle

The Lamp Room

Phone

The Lamp Room

My fortunes have been, from the beginning, an exemplification of the power that mutability may possess over the varied tenor of man’s life.

Tablet

What it does

Thirty-nine designs, by genre
Change one and the page count changes with it.
Print-ready PDF
Every trim size KDP, IngramSpark and Lulu take, margins checked.
An EPUB that passes
Valid EPUB3, your cover where a shop reads it, fonts subset.
The manuscript as a Word file
In the shape an agent or an editor expects.
Bring in what you have
Word, EPUB, or a whole Atticus backup — pictures and all.
Pictures, bleed and spreads
Text around a picture, photographs off the edge, two-page spreads.
Hardcovers
Case wrap and page limits read off both printers' own rules.
Cookbooks
Ingredients beside the method, both measuring systems, found by the dish.
Series and omnibuses
Several books that stay several, or bound as one.
Other people in the book
A link to read, to comment, or to write beside you.
A history you can trust
A copy when you sit down and every quarter hour after.
1,825 typefaces
284 checked to set a whole book, each foundry's terms read.

Cookbooks, properly

A recipe is not a chapter with a list in it. Ingredients beside the method, both measuring systems from one set of numbers, and times and yields that leave as data a search engine can read — so your book is found by the dish as well as the title.

Nothing else on the comparison table below does any of it.

1,825 typefaces

284 of them checked as able to set a whole book, and every one read for what its foundry permits before it goes into your PDF.

Chapter OneChapter OneChapter OneChapter OneChapter OneChapter One

Beside the others

Read off their own public pages and documentation in October 2026. A dash is something we have not verified rather than something they lack.

	XLWrite	Atticus	Vellum	Lacuna
What it costs	$8 a month, or $64 a year	$147 once	$199–249 once	$149–339 once
Runs on	Any browser, and installs on any computer	Any browser	Mac only	Windows, Mac, Linux
You type on the printed page	Yes	An editor, with a preview elsewhere	An editor, with a preview elsewhere	An editor, with a preview elsewhere
A slower mode to get it accurate	Not needed — there is only one engine	“Print Proof”	—	“Print – Whole Book (Slower)”
Typefaces to set a book in	1,825 — 284 checked as able to set a whole book	—	—	“Hundreds”
Cookbooks and recipes	Yes	No	No	No
Works with no internet	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Try your own book before paying	Fourteen days free; the card is not charged until then	Buy first, refund within 30 days	Free until you export	Free until you export

The row that matters most is the fourth. A tool that keeps a quick view and an accurate one is telling you its quick view is not the truth. There is no such switch here, and there will not be.

On your taskbar, not in a tab

XLWrite installs onto your computer and opens in its own window — no address bar, no tabs, a real icon you can pin. Nothing to download; open your library and the button is there.

Eight dollars a month

Far more people start a book than finish one, and a tool you pay for once collects once from somebody who may write for years. A month at a time is the honest shape — and against a hundred and fifty dollars paid up front, you are ahead for the first year and a half. Pay for the year instead and four months of it are free.

XLWrite

$8 a month

or $64 a year

Everything on this page.

XLWrite and XLScreenplay

$10 a month

or $80 a year

Both tools. One account signs you into either.

Both, and a website

$12 a month

An XLSites portfolio alongside the two.

The first fourteen days are free. You add a card to begin, and it is not charged until the fifteenth day — cancel before then and it never is. Write, import, try every design, and see your own book at its real size. Making a print-ready PDF, an ebook or a cover starts your subscription that day; that is the part you are paying for.

Stop paying and nothing is taken away: your books are still here, still yours to read, and the manuscript still comes out as a Word file whenever you want it. We charge for the typesetting, never for your words.

Start writing

Asked often enough

Can I bring in a book I have already written?: Yes — a Word file, an EPUB, or a whole Atticus account backup. Headings, italics, scene breaks and pictures come with it.
What happens if I stop paying?: Everything stays. You can read every book, change its design, and take the manuscript out as a Word file. You cannot write new words or make a print PDF until you subscribe again.
Do I need to be online?: No. Your books live on your own computer, and XLWrite installs so it opens in its own window whether you have a connection or not.
Will Amazon and IngramSpark take the files?: That is what they are for. Their margin and spine rules are checked against your real page count before you upload, and the ebook is valid EPUB3 with your cover where a shop reads it.

Thirty-nine designs, drawn by the engine that prints

One engine, never approximate

It does not lose your book

A desk you choose. A page that never lies.

And the ebook, on every reader

What it does

Thirty-nine designs, by genre

Print-ready PDF

An EPUB that passes

The manuscript as a Word file

Bring in what you have

Pictures, bleed and spreads

Hardcovers

Cookbooks

Series and omnibuses

Other people in the book

A history you can trust

1,825 typefaces

Cookbooks, properly

Beside the others

On your taskbar, not in a tab

Eight dollars a month

Asked often enough