Level Up Your Self-Publishing Game with Expert Formatting Tips

Write, Edit, & Publish Podcast

Episode 06

Ready to unlock the secrets of professional book formatting? I’m here to help you transform your manuscript into a masterpiece that rivals traditionally published works. I'll dive deep into essential elements of both ebook and print formatting, ensuring your book looks polished and ready for readers.

In the first segment, I discuss the art of book formatting, likening it to dressing your manuscript in its finest outfit. From selecting the perfect font to deciding on chapter styling, I'll guide you through the interior design elements that make your book stand out. We'll also cover the essentials of ebook formatting, ensuring compatibility across major devices, and discuss print formatting specifics for both paperback and hardcover editions.

I'll share my personal strategies, including the importance of obtaining ISBNs, creating title and copyright pages, and incorporating front and back matter. Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or considering professional help, I'll walk you through popular formatting tools like Adobe InDesign, Vellum, and my personal favorite, Atticus.

As we wrap up, I'll provide tips on early planning, choosing the right tools, and deciding between a DIY approach or professional assistance. Don't forget to join me next week for insights on crafting effective book outlines. Let's elevate your self-publishing game!

(07:47) - Essential Book Formatting Tips

(14:31) - Designing Professional Book Formatting

(18:00) - Effective Book Formatting Strategies

(21:07) - Professional Book Formatting for Authors

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Hey future authors and friends, this is Lynn “Elikqitie” Smargis. Just back for another episode of Write, Edit and Publish. I'm so excited to be here today because today I have one of my favorite topics, which is all about understanding book formatting. Now, this topic that we're going to talk about today is such a hot topic because this is one of the things that separates the not professional looking books to the professional looking books. Now, it's not the only thing that the only feature that separates a professional and a non-professional looking book right. So a lot of times people want to go to a traditional publisher because you know their book looks nice. They think they're going to get a lot of marketing help from the traditional publisher and while a traditional publisher will make your book look fantastic, think they're going to get a lot of marketing help from the traditional publisher and while a traditional publisher will make your book look fantastic, you're not going to get a lot of marketing help from them. So when you diy it right, you can get that same professional look. You just have to know the tools to use and when to use them and how to use them, and one of those really important tools to make your book look professional is book formatting right? So we're going to dive into book look professional. Is book formatting right? So we're going to dive into the magical world of book formatting today. So if you ever wonder why these books look polished and some seem a bit off, like the pictures are a little stretched or things mash up in places where they shouldn't, then I'm going to tell you the secret sauce that makes books shine from the inside out using book formatting.

01:26

All right, so let's talk about first what is book formatting, so you understand what that is, especially if you don't write for a living and you've never published a book. So book formatting is the art of preparing your manuscript for publication. So your manuscript is your Word document, your PDF, whatever that document is that you have your book content on, and your manuscript is your final draft. So you've gone through your rough draft, you've got some edits done, you've hopefully hired a professional editor and now you have this finished manuscript, which is your Word document and your PDF that has all of your book content on it. Think of it as dressing your words in their finest outfit. So your manuscript is going to the ball and it needs to look that beautiful Cinderella dress or that amazing tuxedo or sports coat or whatever it is that's going to wear, and we're going to wear that tuxedo or sports coat or dress using book formatting, all right.

02:20

So some of the features or components, I should say, or elements of book formatting include interior design elements, right? So interior design elements, like do you want a line on your chapter? Do you want your first letter of each chapter to be really big, typeset, which looks really cool? That's a classic look that I really love. Another thing, another interior design element, can be do you want a picture at the start of every chapter? You're one of my clients I'm working with right now in his book format and he wants his business logo, which is super cool, that goes along with his memoir as his graphic underneath every chapter title, which is going to look really great. So all of these different things are different interior design elements, and there's many different interior design elements. We're not going to jump into a bunch of them right now, but those are just a few.

03:07

Of course, you know, like the font, um, so, and some other elements you need to look for you when you want to consider, when book formatting, is your page layout and margins right? Like, what are your margins going to be on your book? Are they going to be an inch? Are they going to be an inch and a half? Do you want a lot of white space around your text, font selection and sizing?

03:26

So one of my recent books I just published, which is called the sensible senior solutions, I made that in 14 point text. The reason I did that is because I know a lot of people like me who are in the sandwich generation. We wear reading glasses, right. So having that big text is really easy to read and and that's one of the biggest comments I've gotten in feedback from that book is that everybody literally opens it up and the first thing they say is thank you for making this a bigger print. Now, it's not considered big print. I think that's like 18, right, but it is bigger than a normal print book as 11 or 12 point font. So I made it 14 point font and those two points make a really big difference.

04:05

So that's something else you're going to consider, right? What size font do you want? What type of font do you want for your title, what font do you want for your subtitle and which font do you want for your paragraph? Now I will say you want to make sure that those fonts are very readable, right? Like you don't want something that's too fancy script, because then people are going to have a hard time reading it and then people are going to get frustrated and put your book down. So you do want to consider you know how fancy the font is, how easy it is to read. Another thing you want to consider is what book font goes with the style of your book, right? So if you're writing a romance novel, you definitely might want to consider a script title, a script font for your title, right, because it's fancy. So if you're writing a tech book, you're probably not going to consider a script font for your title. So all of these things are things about font selection and sizing.

04:54

You want to consider Chapter styling. So how do you want to set your chapter up? That's what I was talking about before. Do you want to have that beautiful big cap letter at the top of your chapter? Do you want your chapter to be block paragraph? Do you want each paragraph to be indented? I personally make all my books with block paragraph because I feel like it's easier to read. I feel like indented paragraphs which is what I grew up on is a little bit harder to read because you're not having a whole block. So for me it's easier to read block paragraphs. So I personally prefer and format all my personal books in the block paragraph Header and footer, design, page numbering and special elements like tables, images and charts which, after you get your manuscript done, then you wanna add your images while you're book formatting and that's really important to have really good, high quality images and then if you have charts and things like that, make sure you have in.

05:49

You don't necessarily need the charts in your Word document, but you need to know where you're going to put them. So sometimes it's easier to have your charts and images saved in a separate file and then add them in afterward. I like to do that because it gives me a little more control over the graphics. So that's something that's important to realize when you're doing tables, images and charts. But without proper formatting, my future authors, even the most brilliant writing, is going to look amateur, it's going to look unprofessional and it's like serving a gourmet meal on paper plates. Right, so the content might be excellent, but the presentation is going to diminish its impact greatly and it's not going to hold up to your level of professionalism and it's not going to make you stand out from the rest of the people in your niche, right? So if you make a book, even though you've created a book and you're an author, if it looks unprofessional, it's actually going to hurt you rather than help you. So it's definitely worth the investment to get that professional book formatter, especially if you've never formatted a book before. I would never say, take on book formatting if you've never done it. Okay.

06:52

So next part is types of book formatting. These are the different types of formatting you can encounter when you are formatting a book. So one is print book formatting. Now, this one is, of course, with print book and what you do is, once you have your manuscript, you need to decide what size book you are going to print. And that's really important because you need to know the size of the book you're going to print to format your book. And you need to format your book before you can send your book off to your book designer, the cover designer that's going to design your cover. So you need your margins, you need to know what your gutter spacing is for your binding, your bleed settings for cover designs and your page size considerations. So all of those are going to be in the formatting program, which we're going to talk about formatting programs in another episode or later in this episode.

07:47

All right, ebook formatting. This is probably the easiest thing to do and a lot of people have done this. So, ebook formatting, you've got reflowable text. You just need to make sure it is an epub that has device compatible compatibility so you can people can read it on amazon kindle, they can read it on apple ebooks. Whatever type of ebook program they have to use, you want to make sure that it can. It's compatible with navigation features and interactive elements. So if you do an EPUB that will cover all of those things, which is an E publication, and all of the formatting programs have the common EPUB formatting in there.

08:24

So we've gone over two types so far. Right, your paperback, your sorry your print formatting and your ebook formatting. Now, your print formatting. I will go back and tell you this the print formatting does cover both your paperback and your e-book formatting. Now, your print formatting. I will go back and tell you this the print formatting does cover both your paperback and your hardcover. So you need this so you can. So when you're planning your book, your print formatting can be used for both All right fixed layout books. So children's books, coffee table books, cookbooks and art books have a fixed layout, so you want to be aware of those. One of the things you can do with a fixed layout book is you can scan your images and use all those scanned images to put them into your book, which I know people have done before. So instead of having a typed manuscript, you can have a fixed image and use those to make your manuscript as well.

09:11

Alright, so our next topic we're talking about is common formatting elements. So these are essential elements every book needs. So the first thing is a title page. Now what I do for my title page is I create my title page on Canva as an image and then I download that image and add it to the page that is, the title page on my book formatter. I like doing that because it gives me complete control over what my title page is going to look like. I don't do the design inside the book formatter because it doesn't work very well and it doesn't give me as much availability or as many options. So I always recommend people design it in Canva or Photoshop or whatever you're going to design it into, and then download it as a PNG and upload it into your book, the copyright page which is required for any book that is published in the United States, and that is all of the different legal things.

10:01

And I have a copyright page template that I give to my ghostwriting clients which they can just use and edit for their specific thing. So the copyright page also has to have your ISBN number on it. So you'll need to purchase your ISBNs before you purchase your book. And the other thing you want to know about ISBNs is that you need one ISBN for each type of formatted book. So if you publish a book and you have an audio book, an ebook and a paperback book, that means you'll need to use three of your ISBNs, so you can't use one ISBN per title. It's one ISBN per formatted type of book in your title. So my recently published book, sensible Senior Solutions, I needed to use three ISBNs because I have an ebook format, I have a paperback format and I have an audiobook format for that one. All right.

10:50

So table of contents, that is formatted inside the book formatter. You can also, in the book formatter, choose what type of font you want in your table of contents. But book formatters are great because once you put your content into your book formatter and a professional book formatter will use a formatting program, like I do for my publishing company and my clients then what I do is I just put the content in there and then it automatically populates the table of contents, which you can change and move around based on what you want to add or subtract in your book. All right, chapter titles and breaks. So you have to figure out what kinds of again chapter titles that you want, what font you want on them and how you want your chapter breaks to go page numbers, headers, footers, any other front matter you want, like a dedication page about the author.

11:37

If you have a podcast or YouTube platform, I always recommend to my clients to put that information in the front along with your QR code, because on Amazon people will get to see the first few pages of your book. So even if they don't purchase your book, people can see your QR code and scan it with their phone if they're on a computer. Or you also put a link underneath your code, people can go right to your website and see what you're offering and your services, even if they don't purchase your book. So it's basically free advertising. So I always recommend that my clients put a page in the front matter that talks about a podcast or YouTube channel or something else that they offer. If you have a freebie, a free downloadable, that's also a good place to put it is in the front. If you have any dedication, you can put that in the front.

12:20

Now you don't have to have all of these elements. The two elements you have to have in the front matter are your copyright and your table contents. Those are required. But any of the other ones, like dedication or meet the author page, you don't have to have. But I always highly recommend people do a meet the author page and a freebie and a link so you can collect email addresses as well. All right, there's also some things for back matter that you'll want, like maybe you want a glossary, maybe you have a works cited page. Um, maybe you have a um thing in the back of the book that talks about work with me right, like how to work with you, and you put that in the back of your book in addition to that front matter the freebie offer. So there's lots of things to consider for the back With my ghostwriting clients. I give them all a template for front and back matter, and I work with them to help them write their front and back matter and help them decide on choosing what they want for their front matter and what they want for the back matter.

13:10

Now remember to think of these elements as the framework that hold your book together, right? They're not just decorative. They also help readers navigate and engage with your content effectively, and they help readers to learn a little bit more about you and what you're doing. It's like, if you want a preface or an introduction, right, an introduction is a great way to introduce why you wrote the book and maybe a little bit about yourself and your journey in that introduction, depending on what type of book you're writing. All right, my friends, we're going to take a quick break right here, but when we come back, we're going to talk about the next section, which is formatting mistakes to avoid and what you want to watch out for when you are formatting a book.

14:08

Hey, friends and future authors, we're back with the second half of today's episode and we're talking about understanding book formatting. So the first half we talked about what is book formatting, the types of book formatting you can do and the common formatting elements. So now we're going to talk about formatting mistakes to avoid. So these are common pitfalls that people make in their book formatting.

14:31

One is inconsistent spacing. So when you make your book, you should have a basically like a book design in mind, like a book style. Right, styling your book, and what does that mean? Styling your book means I'm gonna have one space between my paragraphs. I'm gonna have two spaces between the end of a paragraph and a new heading in that chapter. So how are you doing your book styling right? Are you going to bold your subheadings? Are you going to underline your subheadings? So your book style is basically like your style that you're formatting each chapter and so that people can expect a consistent read when they're looking for it through it Right? So when they're reading it, all your chapter titles may be in bold and that would be part of your book style. So make sure you have your book style set up so that you know, like what your spacing is. Um, you know what your font is going to be in each chapter and all those things.

15:22

So another common pitfall you want to look out for is wrong margin sizes. So make sure your margin sizes are correct when you're formatting your book. Font choices. Like we said before, poor font choices can look really bad. In formatting I've seen one of the mistakes I commonly see is people using script that is way too fancy and people can't read it. Right. Unreadable script is really bad and I know people like to make their things look fancy and looking fancy is fine, but if somebody can't read it that's going to be really disappointing to the person who purchased your book.

15:50

Okay, incorrect page numbering, missing, incomplete front or back matter, right or incompatible file formats. And when you try to upload it into Amazon, if you're planning on selling to Amazon which I recommend all of my clients do, because 80% of books are sold on Amazon when you upload it. If it's an incompatible file format, it will tell you and say, hey, we can't accept this format. So you're going to have to make sure that you download it in a correct format that is acceptable. I always use PDF when I upload it into Amazon because that is the easiest one that is least likely to get messed up when you upload it into Amazon. I never upload it in a Word document, because a Word document it can change a little bit, but a PDF is going to look like the same thing when you upload it into Amazon. All right.

16:40

Professional versus DIY formatting, okay. When to do it yourself. If you have a simple text-based book and you don't have images and you just and it's an ebook, right, and it's only an ebook, that's probably a good place to start. So if you have like a mini ebook that's maybe a hundred pages, 50 pages, and you want to experiment and you want to try DIYing your ebook, that's great and I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't DIY a print book for a first book that I'm formatting, because a print book is a little bit harder and it's a little more complicated. So if you are just doing a ebook and you want to DIY it, that's a good thing to do with its simple text-based book basic layout, and if you have a limited budget. But if you want to hire a professional, like if you want to hire a unicorn publishing company, we can do complex layouts, multiple formats, illustrated books, especially if you have time constraints and your brand is really important to you. That's something Unicorn Publishing does. We do professional book formatting for our clients and we have really good rates right now. We have introductory rates going on. So I say, definitely jump on our introductory rates because they're going to go up starting this fall. So book that discovery call, which is the link underneath the show, you can also go to writeforyoume for that as well. All right, my friends.

18:00

So here are some tools and resources that you can use for book formatting, and these are the most popular book formatting programs. Now, are these the only ones? No, there are other ones out there as well, but these are the ones that people typically use, so Adobe InDesign, which, of course, you have to have an Adobe platform for, and that, of course, is a lot of these. All these book formatting costs money. It just depends on the amount of money depending on what type of features it has, right, so the ones that are more expensive are gonna be more money, but you also have more options with them.

18:34

Vellum is another one which I've used before, which I really like. You can use Microsoft Word. I don't recommend that, though. Atticus is fabulous. That's the one I use for my clients, and there there's another one called Draft2Digital which I have not used, but I've heard other people using this one and they like that one as well, but Atticus is my favorite out of all these. I'm not a big Adobe fan. I know people have also, I think, formatted some books in Photoshop and stuff like that. My favorite is Atticus, and then, if you're not an Atticus fan, vllum is another really great one. If you want to DIY it, all right, my friends.

19:07

So here are some pro tips which I'm going to talk about in every show. To give you some pro tips is remember, start thinking about formatting early, so you don't want to start thinking about formatting when you're finished your manuscript. You want to think about formatting when you're starting your, when you're finishing up your rough draft. So, before you get your book edited, start looking for a formatter, because it's going to take you probably a couple months to find a good formatter and get pricing for them, and usually formatters will give you a per word price, right, like they might say it's you know, 20 cents per word for formatting, or they might just give you a project price as well. So for me, I have project prices based on word count. So if you fall within a certain word count, your formatting book is a certain price. And then if you want to add extra things to your book, then I have these like a la carte things that you can add to it if you need to add those as well.

19:55

Consider your audience right, like who is your audience and how do they like to read books? Test your formatting on multiple devices before you actually publish it. So look at it on like Apple eBooks or look at it on an eBook like a Kindle preview or things like that, to check to see that your formatting looks good. Always, always, always, get a proof copy. And what does that mean? That means when you submit your paperback book into Amazon, don't publish it until you've gotten your author copy and that's your proof. And you know it's the author copy because it has a little gray line saying it's a proof copy and it's not for sale. So that author copy Amazon sends to you so that you can look through it and make sure that the paper copy looks correct.

20:40

All right, keep backup files of everything. This is so important, oh my gosh. You don't want to lose your manuscript. So I keep my stuff in Google Drive and on my computer. My computer is all backed up to the cloud, so I have two backups, at least two backups of everything. That's super important and you want to have those backups because you don't want if your computer gets stolen or you get hacked or whatever, you don't want to lose your final work that you've taken a year or longer to do. All right, so these are my pro tips.

21:07

Thank you for joining me today on Write Ediit and Publish my future author. I am so excited for your book to be published. Remember, proper formatting isn't just about making your book look pretty. It's also about respecting your readers and your work and to make your work look professional. So your readers will take you seriously and will pick up the phone or get in their email and contact you for work. It's because you're going to look professional with an amazing formatted book. All right, join us. Make sure you hit that follow button, because next week we're going to talk about understanding book outlines and remember future authors. If you want to see your book dreams sparkle into reality, make sure you click that discovery call button at the bottom in the description and let's weave your story into gold. As your ghostwriting enchanteress and unicorn ghostwriter, I'm going to fast track your journey from idea to published author in as little as three months. Your magical transformation begins with one click, so book your discovery call today.