Never approached book formatting yourself before? It’s not as tricky as you might imagine. With more authors moving towards self publishing to gain more control over their work, the self publishing business is the right one to be in right now if you have work ready to go, and learning how to format the book right can save you money if you don’t have the budget to hire someone else or just want to handle it yourself.
Here’s what you need to know about basic formatting guidelines for uploading your book to platforms like Reedsy and Lulu.
Check Formatting Guidelines First
Always check the formatting guidelines for your individual self publishing company to make sure you’re getting it right. If you don’t, you could run into issues somewhere along the supply chain, or major retailers like Amazon or Barnes & Noble might not be able to stock your print or e-book.
Things like margins and fonts can differ between publishing companies, although the information here is a good starting point for the formatting settings you’ll need to produce a professional-looking manuscript.
1. The Page Size
Most default word processors are set to A4 or Letter Size. While that’s fine for most documents and manuscripts, it’s not ideal for print. Formatting usually means setting your page size to something more print-friendly like A5, though this depends on the size of the final print book and what your individual self publishing company requires.
2. The Page Margins
Page margins also usually aren’t set for print or publication and will need adjusting. This is easy enough to do (most page margins default to an inch), though you should always check your individual self publishing company for their specific guidelines.
3. The Font and Font Size
Font and font size will be specified by your publisher. Generally, unless you’re doing large print, your font will be set at 12 point. Smaller and a manuscript becomes harder to read, while larger fonts take up too much space on a page when they’re double-spaced.
Easy-to-read fonts include Times New Roman, Georgia and Calibri. Obviously bad choices are fonts like Comic Sans and Courier New. I recommend looking at actual examples of books in print and e-books on readers like Kindle to see how different fonts look before making your final choice.
4. The Spacing
Most manuscripts going to print are set to double-spaced. It’s just easier to read and makes the editing process smoother. If you don’t set it to double spacing beforehand, you’ll notice that your final proof and print often looks off.
5. The Page Numbers
Most print books and e-books have page numbers, usually at the bottom of the page and centered as a “footer” in your word processor’s settings. If you don’t include page numbers, some retailers could refuse to stock the book and you might have further formatting issues. Remember that copyright pages usually don’t get page numbers, so set this in your Page Settings.
6. The Top Header
Most books and e-books show the title of the book (and sometimes the author too) at the top of the page. If you don’t have a top header, some formatting and converting programs will have trouble with the manuscript.
7. The Copyright Page
Most published books have a copyright page that lists the printer, publisher, author and a general copyright notice (you can find examples online). For retailers to stock it and self published authors to upload it, most books must have a copyright page and an ISBN number. Sometimes your self publishing company provides you with an ISBN option, which is necessary if you want your book widely distributed.