I approached this “Indie-Author Arsenal” series of blogs with the assumption that you are publishing your book on Amazon, IngramSpark, or a similar platform, and doing most of the work, writing, editing, proof-reading, artwork, marketing, etc., yourself. I’ve only published on two platforms—Amazon and IngramSpark. But there are other choices available, and the one you choose will depend a lot on how much work you want to do, especially when it comes to marketing. The marketing process will be covered in the next and my final blog in this series, so stay tuned!
The most important advice I can give you when you’re ready to publish, is to visit the website of the publishing company you’ve chosen and thoroughly read the guidelines and rules specific to them. You don’t have to read everything. Some of the information will probably not apply to your book. If you’re only going to publish in e-book format, for example, there’s no reason to worry about what size your paperback cover should be.
Save yourself the grief of having to upload your book multiple times before getting it right by reading the instructions first. If you’ve ever heard the term RTFM (Read the f—king manual) it definitely applies here! That doesn’t mean you still might not make mistakes. I read the guidelines and still uploaded the wrong cover size. I had forgotten that I’d changed the size of the font, and that alteration impacted my cover size. Oops!
But make sure, as much as possible, that your book is as perfect as you can get it before hitting the upload button. As of the date of this blog, Amazon doesn’t charge for you to upload your book or to make any changes to the cover or content over the lifetime of the publication. IngramSpark, on the other hand, has no charges until 60 days after your first upload. So, you’ll want to keep your changes minimum and make them quickly.
When it comes to formatting, you have some choices to make, and once you make them, you must be able to execute them. If you’re using a simple application like MS Word, your formatting options are going to be limited.
The tool I use to write my books, which I’ve mentioned many times, is Scrivener. It has a ton of different options on how to format any version of your book you want. It can format in not just epub and pdf, but also in screenplay, outline, MS Word, webpage, Final Draft, and others. That is one of its strengths. But I’ll be the first to admit that strength can also be a weakness. There are almost too many options, and it can be overwhelming.
I had heard a lot of good things about Atticus, so I broke down and purchased it, and will use it to format my next book. I’m not ready to give up my beloved Scrivener. It is still my favorite tool for actually writing my books. But when I finish writing, I’ll import my book from Scrivener into Atticus to complete the formatting process.
There are a lot of decisions to make when you start the formatting step. One of those is book size, as mentioned in the last blog in this series, “Book Covers”. You should really have already decided this when you created your book cover art. But if not, you may need to tweak your cover image to fit your size choice.
Depending on the contents of your book, there may also be random formatting styles you'll need to check to ensure everything looks perfect in the final version. In my last book, MYND Control, I had newspaper articles, obituaries, bullet lists, and phone texts, and I wanted specific fonts and spacing. It took a lot of tweaking to get everything right, and I ended up making two different versions to ensure the formatting was consistent across both ebook and paperback versions. This is one of the things I’m hoping Atticus will help with on book number three.
Remember when I talked about going to a bookstore or library and checking out the paper types and fonts of books in your genre? Now is the time to use that research and decide which style of paper, font types and sizes, and colors to use for your book. Options for paper color are usually limited to cream or white. But some publishers may give you more choices.
You will also need to decide if you want a glossy or matte cover, or if you're publishing a hardback, if you want a jacket cover. Some publishers don’t offer this option, but for those that do, you’ll want to have the jacket art ready to go.
Another specification to keep in mind is the bleed area. This is the space around your text or images inside your book and also refers to the space around your cover’s edges and spine. You’ll want to be sure, for example, that the text on the spine of your book is centered. A dead give-away that your book was independently published is off-centered text on your cover or spine. On the inside, you’ll want to be sure your images are where you want them on the page, have the appropriate space around them, and are separated from the text the distance you planned.
As mentioned, every publisher has their own set of guidelines. For example, are they expecting a CMYK or an RGB color profile for the cover art? When you export your cover from the graphic application, make sure it’s in the format required. I got dinged on this when I tried to use the same cover file on IngamSpark that I used on Amazon. I had to go back into Photoshop and change the color profile to get IngramSpark to accept it.
The type of book you’re writing has a direct influence on the number of factors you will need to consider regarding formatting and publishing. If all you have is straight text, your formatting should be simple. But once you start adding things like bullet lists, images, phone text, or tables, your formatting becomes more complex. Both Amazon and IngramSpark give you previews for you to review of your final book in ebook or paperback version, and you’ll want to be sure and check the WYSIWIG (What you see is what you get) examples before you hit the publish button.
If all this sounds overwhelming, don’t let it deter you. My goal is to help you not forget anything so that when it comes time to publish, you’re ready—you know what to look for, you’ve checked everything, and you know your book will look good on both a bookstore shelf or an e-reader.
Uploading your book to a publisher is the final step before you make your book available to the world. Take your time, and do it right. Then wait for the accolades to start rolling in!
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