Formatting
Note: This section is brief, because there are whole books on the subject, which give the granular level of detail you’ll want. The Resources Appendix lists sources that will help, and all the book distributors have information available on their websites. Here we discuss text only. If you include images in your book, you will need additional learning or assistance. Here, formatting is essentially how a book is laid out and appears in a manuscript. It includes font, interior design, page layout, overall manuscript look, file types, and more. Don’t freak out if this is too much. There is help available.
Badly formatted books will not sell and will net you terrible reviews. While ebooks are simple to format and produce, the layout of print books is more complicated and takes some skill and practice. Luckily there are great templates available, which makes your job much easier.
As always, if you find yourself unwilling to learn this part, you can pay someone else to do it. It doesn’t cost much, but if you’ll be producing a number of books, you may eventually want to save the repeated cost of paying for something you can do yourself for free.
For my layout formatting, I go quick and easy with a basic Microsoft Word file (.doc file), which is currently accepted by most (if not all) book distributors. I set up my template types for the different distributors, and for each book, just copy text into these renamed templates. There’s one for Kindle only, one for Smashwords (all other ebook types), and one for print. For an ebook, it doesn’t take long to set up once I have the text to put in it. Use standard fonts and verify what is recommended for the type of book you’re producing. As for front and back matter, check out some of the thoughts of the formatting articles and books on placement and type. They’ll tell you what to include and what to leave out, and where things should go. Of course, you’ll also want to check out other books to see how it’s done.
For print books, you can go upscale if you like clean, professional design. If you use a Mac, many people recommend Vellum, an application which is easy to learn and use. Further up the scale is InDesign, a tool of professional printers and formatters, but pricier, and much harder to learn.
Amazon has the option for a browser to “Look inside” and see how the interior and contents are displayed, and this is great. I use it when deciding on a book purchase. Sites like Smashwords allow you to set a percentage of the book the browser can read for free when you’re setting the book up for publication. I usually select 15%.
