Google Docs is the stronger writing room
Docs makes sharing, suggestions, comments, version history, and browser access simple. That is valuable through drafting, editorial review, fact checking, and author approval. A clean paged manuscript can use heading styles, paragraph styles, page breaks, headers, footers, and page numbers without pretending to be the final manufactured book.
Google's current Page setup supports paper size, orientation, margins, and section orientation only in Pages mode, not Pageless. Its strength is still collaborative document work. If the chosen printer trim is not available exactly, do not imitate it with larger margins on Letter or A4 and do not scale the resulting PDF at upload.
Desktop Word gives a simple print book more page control
Word can define custom paper dimensions, mirrored margins, gutters, paragraph and heading styles, section breaks, first-page behavior, odd and even headers, automatic fields, contents, and different numbering formats. Microsoft specifically uses sections to change headers, footers, columns, and page numbering, including restarting the main text after roman-numeral front matter.
That flexibility is also where documents become fragile. A section break carries formatting on both sides; deleting one can merge sections in surprising ways. Page-by-page fixes, repeated returns, manual tabs, and typed folios break when earlier text reflows. Use a small set of documented styles and sections, show formatting marks, and proof transitions after every material change.
Neither editor automatically creates professional typesetting
Both can display an attractive page, but typesetting is the system across the whole book: line breaking, hyphenation, paragraph texture, chapter roles, running heads, folios, widows, orphans, images, notes, contents, spreads, and the final cover-spine handoff. A simple prose book is possible; a difficult table, poem, footnote system, image bleed, or index can expose the limits quickly.
Import the hardest chapter into the proposed workflow before committing. Test long headings, dialogue, block quotations, lists, notes, images, scene breaks, special characters, and very short chapters. If the solution depends on many local nudges, use a guided formatter, professional page-layout application, or specialist service before the book grows around a brittle file.
Print and ebook still need separate outputs
For print, the final file needs exact fixed pages, suitable margins, embedded fonts, appropriate images, correct bleed, and a complete PDF preflight. Word generally offers the more controlled route for that output. Docs can remain the approved editorial source, then export a clean DOCX for the production stage.
A normal ebook is reflowable. Remove trim, print margins, blank versos, running heads, and folios while preserving semantic headings, paragraphs, navigation, notes, links, language, and image descriptions. A Word or Docs file can feed the ebook conversion, but the fixed print layout itself should not be treated as an EPUB.
Use a deliberate handoff between the two
A practical workflow drafts and edits in Google Docs, resolves every suggestion, applies clean styles, and exports one approved DOCX. Production then happens in desktop Word or book-formatting software without a second live editorial copy. Corrections go into a named source of truth and trigger new print and ebook exports.
If collaborators must review the typeset book, give them the proof PDF and collect corrections in one controlled list rather than pasting the designed pages back into Docs. Lock the interior only after proofing, use its final page count for the print cover, and preserve the source, fonts, export settings, and accepted files for the next edition.
Sources: Google Docs Editors Help: Change page settings · Microsoft Support: Insert a section break · Microsoft Support: Customize page numbers by section · Amazon KDP: Paperback submission guidelines · W3C: EPUB 3.3. Reviewed ; recheck current platform requirements before production.