[stylist] Tips for Formatting Books and E-Books

[goldbeckjm at comcast.net]

I wanted to share what I had learned about formatting books/e-books from the website jungleredwriters.com.  They have different articles written by different writers on a regular basis. 



I met one of their contributors at the Willamette Writers Conference. 



Enjoy, 

Julie Goldbeck 



A Few Tips for Formatting Books and E-Books 


ROSEMARY HARRIS: I'm about to embark on my first self-published ebook adventure. So many people have done it  - why not me? 
Weeeeeelllll - because I'm terrified? Because I'm afraid I'll mess up the formatting and earn a slew of one star reviews because the indentations are too big? Too small? Non-existent? Because I'll click Yes on something that somehow prevents me from doing something else - or worse - mangles the book? 

So to give myself a little confidence, I asked one of my more experienced buddies to share his knowledge of self-publishing with me and the JR gang. 

VINCENT H. O'NEIL: I’ve prepared numerous books for print-on-demand and e-book production, and there are many ways to go about this. There is also a wide range of publishing sites and services, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, but the most common questions I hear involve formatting. It’s not as challenging as it might sound, and so here is an approach I’ve found useful. 


NOTE: Some of the detailed instructions here involve MS Word, but the concepts discussed should translate to other software. My experience with e-readers is largely confined to Kindle and Nook, but hopefully most of this guidance will apply to other versions. The conversion software is steadily improving, and so some of these considerations may soon become outdated. 

The basic idea is to create a single book file which will be copied as two separate files that are then adjusted, one for print-on-demand and one for e-book. Here we go: 



  Unless the book is going to be very long, use 12 pt font or higher. 

    1. Single space the entire book. 
    2. Make sure you include a copyright notice, an Author Biography, your website, and a list of all your other books in a “Books by this Author” segment. 
    3. Avoid underlining (for example, “ Chapter One ”) because in an e-reader conversion the blank lines following that underlining sometimes appear with what looks like a dash because the underlining continued past the underlined words. Bold face seems to have no negative consequences. 
    4. Consider putting a marking symbol (such as a black dot) in the center of the blank line between segments within a chapter; this helps people reading the book on an e-reader to know a segment has ended. 
    5. In Page Setup / Margins / Pages, select “Mirror Margins”. This will let you see the pages as they will appear in the printed book, as well as create proper margins. 
    6. In Page Setup / Margins, set the inside and outside margins according to the chart below (Leave the “Gutter” at zero). 



Total Pages                                   Inside Margin                                     Outside Margin 





  

24-150                                      at least .375”                                        at least .25” 

151-400                                    at least .75”                                          at least .5” 

400-600                                    at least .875”                                        at least .5” 

>600                                         at least 1.0”                                          at least .5” 



  Don’t get overly concerned about this; the “Preview” function in most print-on-demand software is pretty good and you can adjust from there. For a standard-sized book (roughly 220 pages) I use .7” for top, bottom, and outside margins and .8” for inside. 


    1. I recommend setting the tab / paragraph indents at .3 to save space. Also select “Justify” so that the words on each line stretch from margin to margin. 
    2. Insert the page numbers, page breaks, and section breaks that you want for the printed book; many of these will be removed by the e-reader conversion, but there are fixes for the ones you want to keep. 
    3. Once the file is complete, save it as a Print On Demand file and an e-book file because you will be doing different things to each. 


For the Print On Demand File: 



    1. Add a blank page in front so that the book opens on a blank page instead of the title page. 
    2. Any time you want to leave the page numbers off (for example, the title page and the dedication) add a Page Break, a Section Break (continuous), and another Page Break on the last page before you want the page numbers. Then select “View Header / Footer” and open the footer for the first page that will have a page number. Click inside that footer and then unselect “Link to Previous”. Then move up to the footer above that one (it should show a different number, as in “Footer Section 1” versus “Footer Section 2”) and delete the page number manually. The page numbers should remain going forward. 
    3. I generally start new chapters on a new page, roughly halfway down. 
    4. Depending on the service you use, you will be able to preview the final document digitally after it is loaded. The digital review will reveal any glaring errors, but it is still important to get a proof copy and review it thoroughly before putting the finished product on sale. 

For the E-Book File: 


    1. When you load the file onto whatever site you’re using, the conversion software is likely to remove much of the Print On Demand-specific formatting. 
    2. If you want to keep a page break, enter a Section Break (continuous) where the original Page Break was. I generally only do that at the beginning (title page, dedication, etc.) and let the completed chapter scroll right into the next one. 
    3. The Page Numbers will be removed automatically; they’re not needed. 
    4. Different e-reader platforms (Basic Kindle, Kindle Fire, Nook, etc.) emplace indents on their own or fail to recognize the indents in some files. Although it’s a bit of work, here is a fix that has worked for me: I recommend removing all indentation so that every line (including the indented first line of each paragraph) is left-justified. Then highlight each segment in turn, go to Format / Paragraph / Indentation and select Special / First line and set it to .3. All of your paragraphs will indent to .3, which should keep the indentation standard across platforms. 
    5. The Preview function in most e-reader setup software is usually very good, so once the file is loaded go through the entire book and see if anything looks wrong. Most problems are fixable by adjusting the file, reloading it, and checking it again.