New Feature: Upload Your Manuscript as a PDF
Until today, Good Better Beta only took Word files. If your manuscript lived as a PDF, you had to convert it first, and converting always costs something: a mangled chapter break here, a lost italic there, twenty minutes of cleanup before you even start. That step is gone. You can now upload a PDF directly, and it becomes a polished web book automatically, the same way a .docx does.
How it works
Drop your PDF in the same place you would drop a Word file. That is the whole process. The upload reads your document and turns it into the same clean e-reader experience your beta readers already know: paragraph breaks, bold, italic, and your chapter headings all come through, with an automatic table of contents so readers can jump straight to any chapter.
Once the book is in, everything works exactly as it did for Word uploads. Readers open a link and start reading on any device, no downloads, no installs. They can leave inline reactions, attach notes to any passage, and you track their progress from your dashboard. Nothing about the feedback flow changes, because nothing about the feedback flow needed to.
Why this matters
A lot of writers keep their manuscripts as PDFs. Some export from Scrivener straight to PDF. Some work with a designer or a typesetter whose output is a PDF. Some just prefer the format because it looks the same everywhere. Whatever the reason, those writers were doing extra work to use the tool, and the tool should fit the writer, not the other way around.
What to know before you upload
- Chapter headings come through. If your PDF has clear chapter headings, they show up in the table of contents just like they do from a Word file.
- Formatting survives. Bold, italic, and paragraph breaks are preserved, so the web book reads the way your PDF does.
- It is still free. PDF uploads cost nothing extra, same as everything else on Good Better Beta.
Try it
If you have a manuscript sitting in PDF form, upload it and send it to your readers today. And if you spot anything that does not come through quite right, tell me. The best feature ideas keep coming from the writers using the tool, and I am listening.