Book Manuscript Formatting Tips

Planning to Self Publish? Avoid digital conversion problems and make your editor and typesetter happy by following these book formatting guidelines from author and editor Barbara Brabec.

 

WHETHER YOU PLAN to publish your own book or hope to attract the interest of a trade publisher, writing your book in MS Word is an important first step to success. And the first thing you should do before you type "word one" of your book is set up your master book document file according to the specific guidelines below.

As the author of several trade books published by various publishers between 1979-2006, I wrote exclusively in WordPerfect, and I still prefer this word processor for writing articles for my websites because it gives me clean code that doesn't have to be run through Notepad before I drop content into my WordPress blog or a new  FrontPage template. My publishers had no problem with WordPerfect documents, but things are changing now as digital publishing becomes the norm. Today's trade book publishers probably still accept WordPerfect manuscripts, but as more and more of them begin to print books using print-on-demand technology instead of offset printing, I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually made submission of Word documents a requirement.

If you plan to publish a digital version of your book for the Kindle or other eBook readers, you certainly need to write in Word because these documents are more easily converted to the digital files required by POD printers and eBook publishing services. In fact, Amazon suggests that when publishing for the Kindle you should save your book manuscript file as a .doc file (not .docx) because many publishers have reported conversion errors with Word documents saved with the .docx extension. "For self publishing in general, Word 2007 is a sizable step backward," confirms Aaron Shepard on his New Self Publishing blog.

NOTE: If you're using Word 2007, the .docx extension appears to be the default, but you do have the option of saving files with the .doc extension, and this is advisable if you regularly send attachments to people with older versions of Word on their computer. (I couldn't open the first .docx file I received until I downloaded some special file for this purpose.)

How to Format a Book Manuscript for Editing,
Typesetting, and/or eBook Publication

First, except for italics, your book manuscript should be devoid of ALL—repeat, ALL—formatting until it has been completely edited and ready for typesetting as a print book. PLAIN is the keyword here. (If you plan to publish an eBook, different formatting of the manuscript will be required—a topic that is beyond the scope of this article.)

Since I first began to edit book manuscripts for clients in 2004, I've never received what I would call "a clean manuscript" for editing—"clean" meaning the way I was always required by my book publishers to submit a manuscript to them. This has been frustrating to me and has often caused me hours of extra work that sometimes had to be billed to the client. (One client actually tried to typeset her book—and very badly at that—before deciding it should be professionally edited. I took the job because she was in a bind, but this job was frustrating to both of us, and so many changes needed to be made to the book's content that she had to hire a professional designer to reformat the book for publication after I'd cleaned up the text.)

Beginning authors seem to think that they should "pretty up" their manuscript with different fonts and font sizes, boldface headings, underline content for emphasis, and so on, but this only muddies the editorial and self-publishing waters.

I cannot overestimate the importance of keeping your book manuscript CLEAN OF ALL FORMATTING except for italics.

Any formatting or style sheet you have used in your manuscript will have to be removed before a book can be electronically typeset because Word's style sheet isn't compatible with the style sheet your typesetter will be using. And even if you decide to design and typeset your own book using Word (as I did with my POD memoir), you will need to start from ground zero after your content has been completely edited.

Designing a book requires considerable thought and design skill, and, as the writing progresses, you may find, as I did, that your book may call for a completely different kind of design than originally envisioned. Unless you have experience in this area, book design is a job best left to an expert. What you should do as a writer is focus on perfecting your book's content.

Here are SPECIFIC formatting guidelines you should use when writing your book:

MARGINS. Set page margins to one-inch all around, and number the pages. Note: While trade book publishers want to see a manuscript with a header on every page that includes author's name, book title, and page number, the author who plans to self-publish needs only page numbers (at the top or bottom) since headers will become part of the book's design when the manuscript is ready to be formatted for publication.

JUSTIFICATION. Do not justify text; use LEFT justify instead. (This is the only way to detect spacing problems in the manuscript.)

FONT. Use the same font and font size throughout the book for both text and headings. (Remember that you're just WRITING, not DESIGNING the book.) Select a standard font face such as Times Roman or Verdana in 12-point size. Use italics in the text where appropriate, but no underlines or boldface type anywhere in the text or in headings.

LINE SPACING. Use standard double-spacing throughout with indented paragraphs. (Remember that you're not writing for the Web, where it is common to start all new paragraphs blocked left with a double space in between.) Do not set any before/after line spacing in the format menu. You simply want to indent each new paragraph, retaining the standard double spacing throughout the manuscript (see next point).

TABS. Rather than use a set tab stop for a new paragraph indent (which may be difficult to adjust during the typesetting process), it's better to set a first-line indent in the Format menu because this can be changed universally at any time to be more or less, depending on how the book is to be designed. (Every time you hit ENTER, you'll get the automatic first-line paragraph indent you've set, and it can be changed globally at any time by you or your typesetter.)

Lesson Learned: I had decided at the beginning to typeset my memoir using MS Word, so I formatted my book manuscript exactly as described in this article, except that I mistakenly set my paragraph indents using a .5 TAB stop because this has always been considered standard. However, after realizing that good book design called for just a .3 paragraph indent instead, I built that setting into my typesetting style sheet using the first-line indent setting. But that didn't overwrite the tab stop (merely indented each paragraph another three points), so during the typesetting process, I had to manually delete every single paragraph indent in the 296-page book as a result. OUCH!

RIGHT-LEFT INDENTS. If you want certain text content to be set off with a right-left indent, it would be better to just make a "typesetter's note" in the text and let the book designer/typesetter determine the degree of indent, because you may choose the standard .5 indent when your book designer or typesetter may think a wider or shorter indent would look better. You might include a note like this:

<<<Typesetter: Right-Left Indent>>>
(text)
<<<End R/L Indent>>>

SIDEBARS. Sidebar text should also be identified with a typesetter's note since sidebars in a book are usually specially designed, often with the addition of a graphic image or a different font from that used in the book:

<<<Typesetter: SIDEBAR>>>
(text)
<<<End sidebar>>>

WIDOWS AND ORPHANS. Do not use this setting in your manuscript, as the widows and orphans setting is a typesetting function. Just let your copy flow and let the lines break where they will. But do start each new chapter on a new page, using Word's Insert button to insert a page break.

LISTS. Do not use Word's options for bulleted or numbered lists; just indent each item in a list using an asterisk or a number. Again, let the book designer or typesetter design these elements of the book for you, with a note that indicates the kind of list you'd like:

<<<Typesetter: Set this up as a (bullets/numbers) list>>>
(list of items)
<<<End list>>>

TABLES. Put NOTHING in tables or boxes because this greatly complicates the electronic editing and typesetting process. First, content deleted electronically is simply clumped at the top of a table with no indication of where it was originally. Second, Word's boxes don't allow for adding editorial comment notes. If you have content that needs to be put in tables, set it up in lists with a typesetter's note indicating that "this content goes in cell one; this in cell 2," etc.

<<<Typesetter: Set up a table with (X-number) of columns>>>
(content for all cells)
<<<End table>>>

If content needs to be boxed, or is to be formatted as a SIDEBAR, include a similar typesetter's note to that effect. Ditto for any illustrations you plan to add in certain areas of the text. (The editor does not need to see these illustrations; only a reference to them.)

<<<Insert Illustration (number or name) here>>>

TABLE OF CONTENTS. You need to develop your Table of Contents before you write your book, and refine it as you progress, being sure to add all the subheadings. But do not add page numbers as they are useless at this point and will just have to be removed by the editor. (Page numbers are one of the last things the typesetter will add after the book has been formatted for publication.)

PUNCTUATION TIP: Finally . . . use just one space after a period or other closing punctuation mark. And when using punctuation inside quotation marks, the general rule is to put punctuation INSIDE the mark. (Your editor will know the exceptions to this rule.)

Looking for a good editor who does quality work and guarantees your complete satisfaction?

Look no farther. When you have a clean manuscript ready for editing, follow the guidelines on this page to get started.

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