Disclosure. We make the alternative this page is about.
Kindle Create is Amazon's own formatter. Its documentation describes one
output, for the ebook and the paperback alike:
Go to your Bookshelf and upload the KPF file you saved after formatting in
Kindle Create. You need to do this twice, once for your eBook and again for
your paperback.
KPF is Amazon's own format. It is neither an EPUB nor a print PDF, and no other store or printer accepts it, so a book formatted in Kindle Create can be published only through Amazon.
Where that stops you
When you want the paperback on IngramSpark to reach bookstores, or the ebook on Kobo and Apple Books, the book has to be formatted again from the manuscript, because nothing carries over.
What Torcul gives you instead
A standard print PDF and an EPUB 3 that EPUBCheck validates. They work at KDP, IngramSpark, Kobo and a local printer, and none of that needs Torcul.
Because the files are standard, they can be checked. The print files are checked against the published requirements, and layout faults are counted in the finished PDF. Anything that cannot be checked is reported as unchecked.
If you want a cover, it is sized from the finished interior, since the spine width follows the page count. Building the book and viewing every page with its measurements are free, so you see everything before you pay.
It handles more than plain novels: theses, legal texts and technical manuals, with footnotes, headings numbered four levels deep, tables and cross-references. You can see how it reads your file in your browser, without uploading anything.
Moving a book over
Start from the same .docx you opened in Kindle Create; a KPF file cannot be converted.