Every book has unique typesetting issues that templates won’t address. You will need to customize it so much, in the end, it won’t be that useful.įor interior layouts, templates are even worse. Typically, templates aren’t flexible enough to account for these kinds of differences between manuscripts. Will you have a preface or a foreword? How many chapters will you have? What are the typical conventions for back matter or citations in your field? The parts of a business book are going to be very different from those of a memoir. We don’t recommend using a template for either manuscripts or interior layouts.įor a manuscript, book writing templates may be helpful when it comes to basic formatting, but every book has structural differences. Why You Should Avoid Using a Book Template It’s best to keep the book layout simple. If you have too many complicated design elements, you will spend a fortune on layout work and book printing. Try to minimize special layout styles if you can. They are easy to add in the writing phase, but they become trickier once you’re designing the inside pages of your book. Here’s an example of a manuscript layout versus an interior page layout from James Carbury’s book Content-Based Networking: How to Instantly Connect with Anyone You Want to Know:Ī word of warning: When you’re writing a manuscript, you might be tempted to include fancy features like sidebars, graphics, and callouts. Even if you include images or notes, they won’t look the way they will in the later layout phase. You don’t have to worry about all that in a manuscript. Your book cover has to be the right resolution and size. Charts, graphs, images, and sidebars all have to be inserted on specific pages in specific places. When you’re designing the interior layout of most nonfiction books, there will be special elements to consider. Some Major Differences Between the Two Formats When it comes to typesetting, the difference between professional and amateur books is clear. The differences may be subtle to the untrained eye, but they matter a lot to readers. There’s more to it than you might think.Ī book with a good interior layout will look lightyears better than anything you can design with a Microsoft Word template. If your paragraphs are poorly spaced, readers won’t lose themselves in the flow of the book.Īll these little things have a huge impact on how much a reader enjoys your books. If you use the wrong font, readers can get headaches. What’s the big deal, right?Īctually, it’s one of the hardest things to do in design. Microsoft Word formats text automatically. They are in charge of deciding what fonts to use, how to format chapter headings, how large the margins should be, where images should go, and so on.īasically, they make pages look good for readers. The images are precisely placed on the page.Īll that formatting is also known as typesetting.Ī typesetter’s job is to put text on a page so it’s print-ready. Printed books (and even eBooks) look really different from a manuscript document. Once you learn it, you won’t have to worry about it again. That means you’re paying them to make edits that don’t really improve your book. When editors receive badly formatted manuscripts, they spend their time fixing the formatting instead of your writing. You might be wondering, why does all this little stuff matter? No matter how tedious or silly it may seem, don’t ignore the proper manuscript format for writing a book. So why do we mention them? Because every one of these is routinely violated by authors who don’t pay attention. If you don’t touch the settings on your word processing program, you are fine. Most of these rules are baked into the defaults of Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Most of the conventions will seem obvious: use a standard font like Times New Roman, use black text on a white background, set the paper size to 8.5″x11″ (Check out this post on Scribe’s 15 manuscript formatting rules for a full list). When an editor reads a manuscript, they want it basic so they can focus on the quality of the writing. Its purpose is to give editors a clear and consistent document that’s easy to read. It’s the actual Microsoft Word (or Google Docs) file that contains your book. Interior Layout Formatting Manuscript FormattingĪ manuscript is a finished, book.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |