How to Professionally Format Your Book for Print: Make it Look Like the Big Five

How to

Professionally Format

Your Book for Print

Make it Look Like the Big Five

L. D. McMullan

How to Professionally Format Your Book for Print Make It Look Like the Big Five.

Copyright © 2018 L. D. McMullan

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Dedicated to all of the frustrated formatters out there.

Contents

Title Page

1.Getting Started

Software

Trim size

Margins

Page Size

Import your document

2.Amateur! Your Book is a Mess!

Font

Headers not formatted properly

Lack of Hyphenation

Unjustified Text

Improper First Line Indentation

No Baseline alignment

Page numbers missing or in the wrong spot

Missing front and back matter

Using two spaces after a period

Inconsistent formatting of numbers

Drops caps are indented

3.Front Matter Matters!

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication Page

Table of Contents

Forward page

Preface

Half Title Page

4.The Book’s Main Body: Make it Sexy, Not an Experimental Mess

Proper chapter heading setup

Body paragraphs

Page numbers

Headers

Baseline formatting

Kerning

Hyphenation

Master Pages

5.Back Matter—The Ass End of your Book

Conclusion

Epilogue

About the Author

Note from the Author

More by this Author

Upcoming Books

6.Images—A way to Brighten up Your Book

Full Page Pictures

Not full page

7.Dive In! Time to Get Your Feet Wet.

8.Your Cover—The Main Attraction

9.If You Still Insist on Using Microsoft Word

Page Size and Margins

Setting Up Your Pages

Setting Up Paragraph Styles

If Using Images

Setting Up Headers

Kerning

Table of Contents

Finishing Up

Conclusion

About the Author

1.

Getting Started

Software

You need to choose the proper software. Many opt to use Microsoft Word because it is cheap and comes with most computers, but it is also a mistake to use it. Microsoft Word is great to use when typing, but not for formatting. If you want a book that looks inconsistent, then go ahead and use Microsoft Word.

Professional writers and even the publishing industry uses Adobe InDesign which is what I recommend. You can use Quark, which is InDesign’s competitor, but all the examples in here will feature InDesign. InDesign gives you the control you need to ensure that the text of your book looks professional and evenly set. With it, you have control over kerning, spacing, and orphans and widows.

Oh, but Microsoft Word lets you do that too, you say.

Yes, it does and it looks like crap. These options are limited in Word and it is missing the Baseline Alignment feature that InDesign has, which allows you to ensure that the spacing at the bottom of your page is even. Microsoft Word always gives the odd white spacing at the bottom of your pages which screams, Amateur! You can turn off the widow and orphan control in word and the text will look even on the bottom of the page, except having widows and orphans in your book make you look like an amateur who has no idea what they are doing. So, don’t be a cheap ass and just purchase InDesign, or Quark which has all the same features. Besides, you can subscribe to InDesign’s CC for $10 a month.

Trim size

First