An image forming apparatus including a conveying unit conveying a continuous paper; an image forming unit forming an image on an image carrier and printing the image on the continuous paper conveyed by the conveying unit; and a control unit controlling the image forming apparatus; wherein when a progress state of the image forming apparatus reaches a reference, the control unit performs a maintenance operation by forming an image for maintenance on the image carrier of the image forming unit, after interrupting the printing based on a job when the job is being executed, and when the job is to be executed, the control unit determines whether the progress state of the image forming apparatus exceeds the reference before the job is completed prior to the maintenance operation, and, when the progress state exceeds the reference, issues an alarm regarding the interruption of the printing based on the job.