Category: Formatting

Open a book. Don’t read the words, but instead notice the white space and blocks of text. Formatting is the artistry of a book.  No two are the same.

I recommend going to a book store to help you determine the artistry of your book. These books are products of big publishing houses. Your mission is to replicate the one you like the best.

Do this exercise with paperbacks, since that will most likely be your format. Open random books. IGNORE THE WORDS! Look at the color of the paper, style of the words, and the amount of white space on the page.

Compare chapter title pages with regular pages. Usually title pages have swirls, lines, or an image.  Compare left and right hand pages (notice headings and page numbers). Use a ruler to measure the margins, letter height, line spacing, spacing between letters, size of the book, and anything else that seems significant.

Determine the measurements and characteristics that are the most pleasing to you and write them down.

Then check with who ever is going to print your book to see if they have any requirements. Createspace is particular with margins.

Next you are ready to set up your document using MS Word Formatting for Paperbacks.

Using styles is a great way to stay organized, cut down formatting time, and easily peruse your book. It will also make creating a Table of Contents easy peasy!

To use a style, highlight your text and choose a style from the MS Ribbon.

• Heading 1 for all chapter titles
• Heading 2 for subtitles
• Regular text will automatically be Normal

• Create your own styles for unique items like indented quoted text, references, end notes, etc. Here’s how:

Format your text first (font, size, color, etc.) then right click, choose Save selection as a quick style – give it a unique name like Indent Quote. It’ll then show up in the Home ribbon as a style. (You can see the unique styles I created below).

If you decide to change the format of your indented quotes, you only need to adjust one indented quote and then right click and choose “Update to match selection” which will change all text in your document that has your Indent Quote style!

After your styles are defined, you can use the Navigation Pane (View tab) to see a quick outline and jump to sections by clicking on the titles. Styles with Heading 1 and Heading 2 will be listed.

 

These format settings will be predetermined by your book store visit. Numbers in the examples are purely for your reference and not set in stone.

If you already began formatting your eBook, make a copy of that file and name it paperback. These changes will be made in that new new paperback file. From now on, any editing for content will have to be made in these two separate files.

Page Setup

Margins

Gutter is the space allowed for the binding of the book. This number should be defined by whoever will print your book based on your page count.

Top margin will contain the book title, chapter title, and/or author name. So it will need to be a bit larger than the footer that will only contain the page number.

Page Size

Will be defined via Custom Size

Page Breaks

As you write, let the pages break themselves. However, you will need to make sure your Chapter titles fall on odd pages.  To do this, insert a break and choose odd page.

Header

If you double click on the heading area (even if it’s empty), the Header & Footer tab will appear. Check both – different first page and different odd and even pages.

To make the header different for a new chapter, click “Link to Previous” in order to unselect it.

Font

It is wise not to use the fonts included in MS Word. Determining what font to use will take a bit of research (search on “preferred font for” and your genre). After downloading the new font, drag the font file into the Control Panel Font section.

Back in your document, open the Font window from the Home tab and select the font you installed. In the Advanced tab for font choose “Expanded’ character spacing and then determine how much you would like.

Paragraph

Alignment

Choose Justified for normal text. This will give a professional finish by filling out each line to the margin on the right. This may require you to use hyphens for lines that are too spread out.

Chapter titles and subtitles will either be Centered or Left.

Indention & Spacing

Normal text, chapter titles, subtitles, and indents will all have different settings. If you already have your styles set, you can just change one area of text, right click, and update  your style. Then every place that style is defined, the settings will change automatically.

Here are some examples:

Indented (for long quotes):

Chapter title:

Line breaks

There is a rule that there should not be a single line at the top or bottom of a page. This can occur if a new paragraph begins at the bottom of a page (orphan) or ends at the top of a page (widow). To keep this from happening, check “Widow/Orphan” control.

 

 

 

eBook formatting is very simple!

If you already began formatting your paperback, make a copy of that file and name it eBook. These changes will be made in that new new eBook file. From now on, any editing for content will have to be made in these two separate files.

You can do the entire eBook in MS Word, or can you also use Jutoh. If you use latter, I recommend doing as much in Word as possible, and then import it into Jutoh.

Jutoh is inexpensive and will export into any eBook format you need (Kindle, iBook, etc.)

The following are NOT needed (or allowed in some cases):

• section breaks
• page breaks
• headers/footers
• page numbers
• gutter margins
• character spacing
• hyphenated words
• widow/orphan control
• tabs
• consecutive spaces or paragraph breaks (search & replace in MS Word)
• bullets – remove tab & replace bullets with hyphen
• numbered bullets – remove tab & replace with manually-entered numbers
• index

Use the following:

• Single line spacing
• Indents for long quotes
• New Times Roman font (users can set their own font on their eReader)
• Table of Contents that uses links (no page numbers). This can be created from your existing TOC in Jutoh
• Tables or charts do not convert well. Print them out, take low quality pictures,  and import them into your document.
• Chapter titles all on one line
• Pictures – use compressed files. The smaller the book file is, the less it will cost you.