Making it look good

Over the last week or so, there have been several requests from readers here and on a forum many of us belong to for more information about the nuts and bolts of publishing. So, over the next few weeks, members of MGC will be doing our best to answer your questions. I got volunteered to discuss how to format your manuscript.

Let’s begin with something that will cause some of you to cringe and argue and curse. I’m not going to debate what program is best or how bad one is when compared with another. Like it or not, Microsoft Word is still the publishing industry standard. If you are submitting to an agent or a traditional publisher, or if you are hiring an editor for your indie work, you will save yourself some headaches by getting Word. The simple truth is that for all its problems, and they are legion, it still has the best “review” function of all the other word processing programs out there and it is what the trads use. There is another truth that you, as the indie author needs to worry about. If you use one word processing program and the editor you hired uses another, unless you do a “come document” and don’t merge the documents, you are going to get junk code and that can impact the conversion of your manuscript to e-book formats. This problem of junk code can also come up if you use Google Docs. It has nothing to do with what format you save your document in (although never, ever save as DOCX). It has to do with the the underlying code that is written into the program itself and how well it plays with your conversion tools.

It used to be very simple to format your work for submission. Back when self-publishing was an evil term and the only real option a writer had if they wanted to consider themselves a “professional” writer was to submit to an agent and/or a traditional publisher, you knew exactly what to do because the publishers told you. You were to use 12 point font in either Courier or Times New Roman. You set up for double spacing and a half inch first line tab. Your margins were set at one inch all the way around and your header included your title, your last name and the page number. All this went back to when everyone still wrote on typewriters. Very simple and very easy to remember and very easy to understand. Agents and editors wanted something easy to read and didn’t worry about “converting” because your manuscript went to the printers to be set up. E-books were not a major force in the market — they weren’t a force at all.

Then along came computers and, eventually, e-books and the submission guidelines remained the same. Even though e-mail was common, many publishers continued to require a physical submission of your work and would not accept electronic submission. This slowly started to change and now most all publishers and agents now want electronic submission. Even so, their submission guidelines haven’t changed much.

But that doesn’t really help the author who is considering going indie with their work. The truth of the matter is, if you follow the standard submission requirements we were all brought up with when converting to e-book format, you are going to get an odd, often sloppy looking book as a result. So, what do you need to do to have your book or short story look like it is something a “professional” put out and not something a wanna-be put together?

The first thing you have to do is decide if you work best by writing in a format that won’t be your final conversion format. If you do, then do so and don’t try to force yourself to do something different. However, if you are like me and want to cut out steps along the way, go ahead and set up the formatting for your rough draft in as close to final format version as possible.

The first step is to look at e-books — and physical books — where you appreciate the look of the “printed page”. See what characteristics they have that make them look “pro” and decide if you want to copy those characteristics into your own e-book. (We’ll discuss formatting for the printed version in another post.) Remember, the key here is that readers want their e-books to look as close to the printed page as possible. So don’t go trying to re-invent the wheel. Don’t format your work in such a way that it throws your reader out of the story.

For this, I’m going to walk you through what I do using Word. The steps will be basically the same thing using Open Office, Libre Office, Pages, etc. Some of the terminology may be a bit different but the results will be the same.

After opening a new document, I set my styles and assign them to various aspects of my document. Header 1 will be used to either name sections in the book or for chapter headings. If I have sections I will be naming using Heading 1, I will then use Heading 2 for chapter headings. Normal is for the body of the text. That’s it. At most there will be three “styles”

If you right click on any of them in the Styles ribbon, you will bring up a dialog box that includes the option to modify that particular style. After clicking on “modify”, you will bring up a new dialog box that lets you set alignment and font (including size, bold, italics, etc.). I set Heading 1, if it is for a section heading, at 16. I publish all my work using Georgia as the font. Alignment is centered. Next I click on the format button at the bottom left corner of the dialog box. That lets me access more options on not only formatting the font but also the “paragraph”.

If you don’t want to add any special characteristics to your font like Small Caps, then you can move on to the next step. However, I will open the font sub-menu and for Heading 1, click on bold italic. Next I click on Small Caps. Then click on OK to save your changes. Repeat the steps to open up the format sub-menu for the Heading 1 and click on the paragraph option to open that sub-menu. Here you want to make sure you are still set for centered alignment and that for “Special” — which is where you will set your first line indent for the body of your text — “none” is showing. Now, make sure 0 shows for all values of “indention” and “spacing”. To the right of “spacing” is “line spacing”. This is up to you. For me, single space looks too cramped for an e-book and yet 1.5 looks too wide. I usually go for 1.15 as the value there. To do this, I click on “multiple” and then insert the value I want.

Before you click “okay”, you have one more thing to do in this dialog box. You need to set your first line indent. Please, please, please, if you do nothing else, do this. Do NOT use tabs. They don’t translate into e-books and you will find yourself with one long paragraph, especially if you use single space for your line spacing. Also, don’t default to 0.5 which is where most of us were taught to set our tabs. In an e-book, that half inch looks a mile wide. I set my first line indent at 0.3. Play with it and see what you think looks best.

Now hit okay.

It looks complicated and, at first, it might seem that way. But it really isn’t and after you’ve done it a couple of times, you won’t even have to think about it. The good news is, everything I just walked you through to set up Heading 1 is basically what you have to do for the other “styles”. So, here’s the down and dirty of my formatting settings. Again, I’m not saying you have to follow what I do but it is a good place to start. From there, you can play around and see what looks good to you.

Heading 1 (for section titles or chapter titles)

• Font — Georgia
• Size — 14 (you can go to 16 if you want but I wouldn’t recommend going any larger. Remember that a lot of folks read on their phones and a larger font will do odd things on their screen)
• Special characteristics — Bold Italic
• Alignment — Centered
• Spacing — will correspond with what I use for the rest of the book.

Heading 2 (used only if I am using Heading 1 for anything other than chapter headings)

• Font — Georgia
• Size — 14
• Special characteristics — Bold
• Alignment — Centered
• Spacing — will correspond with what I use for the rest of the book.

Normal (used for the body of the text)

• Font — Georgia
• Size — 12
• Special characteristics — None
• Alignment — left
• Spacing — 1.15

Here are a couple of things to remember:

• No tabs.
• No spacing before or after paragraphs.
• When you have section breaks within a paragraph, use something to denote the break. I use *   *   * to do so. It is centered and, using the paragraph options dialog box, I remove the first line indent.
• Also in the paragraph dialog box, be sure you turn off the widows and orphan option.
• Have a “page break” at the end of each chapter. This will make your reader have to “turn the page” to begin the next chapter, thereby making your e-book more like a “real” book. To insert a page break, you can either go to “Insert” at the top of your page and then click on page break or your can simply hit CTRL and Enter at the same time.
• When showing internal thoughts, most authors use italics. That is what the reader is used to, at least here in the States.
• I keep my margins and paper size — at this point — at 1 inch all the way around and at 8 1/2 by 11.

Because of the fact there are so many different e-readers out there and so many different apps that let people read their e-books, you have to keep your formatting simple. What looks good on a tablet might not look good on an e-ink reader. Just because something looks good on a Kindle Fire or iPad Air mini doesn’t mean it will look good on a smartphone.What that means is, as I said, you need to keep the formatting simple. Don’t use a lot of different fonts. Don’t try to re-invent the wheel when it comes ot how your e-book looks.

There is one more thing I do that I haven’t mentioned so far when it comes to “formatting” my manuscript. I take off first line indent for the first paragraph of each chapter. I also go to small caps and either italic or bold italic (depending on what is used for the chapter heading. I don’t want them looking the same) for the first three words or the first phrase of the first sentence. My intention is to make the e-book look as close to a printed book as possible. The reason I don’t use special formatting for the first line or the first sentence is because of the different screen sizes and magnification your readers will be using. By only doing the first few words of that first line — and you have to keep it consistent — you can guarantee that the special characteristic will appear only on the first line of text — assuming the reader isn’t using extreme magnification.

Again, this is what I think works best for me. Your mileage may vary. Just keep notes of what you have tried and discarded and what you like so you can remain consistent in subsequent books. Most of all, remember that formatting serves two purposes at this stage of the game. The first is to make conversion to both print and digital easier for you. The second is make the “page” look familiar to your reader. You want them focusing on what you wrote, not on how you formatted it. That means making it look like a “real” book.

When it comes time for conversion for either print or digital formats, there will be some tweaks just as there will be some front and back material you will add. But, for now, this is a good place to stop. We’ll pick up on the steps to turn your manuscript into an e-book and a print book later.

(edited to correct page size — sorry, I plead coffee deprivation.)