I fixed typos in Vellum. Now my Word file is out of date

Why the two copies drift

Vellum, Atticus, and Kindle Create each take a copy of your text when you import it. From that moment the formatted book and the Word or Scrivener file are separate documents, and nothing flows back. Every typo a proofreader catches in the formatted proof is a fix you make once, in one of them. Months later, a second edition or a new trim size starts from whichever file you open, and the other one quietly loses.

There is no switch that syncs them. What works is a rule about which file is the truth, and a habit for the stretch when both are open.

Keeping one source of truth

1. Decide which file is the master before you format. For most writers that is the manuscript file, because it is what an editor, an audiobook narrator, or a translator will be sent. Save a dated copy of it at the moment you import into the formatter.
2. Log every proof fix. Page, old wording, new wording. A plain list in a notes file is enough, and it becomes the checklist for the other copy.
3. Apply fixes to the master, then to the formatted book, ticking the log as you go. Small fixes are quicker made twice than re-flowed.
4. Reimport when the changes are large. After a heavy proof round it is often safer to bring the corrected master back into the formatter and redo the styling than to trust two hand-edited files to match.

If the drift has already happened, compare the two. When the formatter can give you an EPUB, a free converter like Calibre turns it into a Word file, and Word's Review › Compare then marks every difference against your master as tracked changes you can accept one by one. Scrivener users can compare the same way after compiling to Word. Expect some noise from curly quotes, dashes, and chapter titles the formatter rewrote.

In Tabularia

Tabularia lays out a designed book page as you draft, with the trim size, running heads, and front matter living in the same manuscript as the prose. A correction made on that page is made in the master. Take a Snapshot named for the proof round. Later you can preview that version on the page, and while it is the latest snapshot, History counts every change made since.

Its PDF export is meant for upload: every typeface is embedded, bleed is a checkbox, and before the file downloads the dialog lists what KDP would refuse — an inside margin too narrow for the page count, a margin too near the trim. The ebook is another matter, since the EPUB is a preview rather than a retail file, so the rules above still apply to it. What changes is that the master can be one file you both write and proof in, rather than a word-processor file that looks nothing like the book.

Going the other way, an EPUB imports with each chapter in spine order, so a corrected ebook can come in as a new project to check against. It arrives as a separate project, not merged into the one you already have.