You can help Kindle Direct Publishing (or whichever platform you’re going to sell on) by making sure these are all within the proper bounds. Getting paragraph indentations and spacing are important for a professional-looking ebook. Once you have all the parts of your book organized in your manuscript and your text size and style set, it’s time to get formatting. These will make your life easier and your readers will thank you, whether they're reading your Kindle book or your print book. Start with a standard font size and style, like 12-point and Times New Roman or Arial. If you’re not sure what goes into the front and back matter of a book, check out this article. Many writers are so excited with their finished and edited manuscript that they forget about the seemingly little things that can have a big impact on readers. This means having the title page, introduction, preface, etc. Formatting a Book in Microsoft Wordįirst off, you need to make sure you have everything ready to go in your document. You can check out this article on KDP for help with image-heavy books. You’ll probably want to go with a professional formatting service or try your hand at formatting with a fixed-layout file manuscript format. Note: If yours is a picture book or one that has lots of images, graphs, blockquotes, illustrations, and the like, Word is not the best option for formatting. Setting up the book size and page format.How to format your book for print in Word.

But, it’s a good idea to read through the whole thing, because formatting for an ebook sets you up for formatting for print. So whether you’re looking to format your manuscript for an ebook or a print book (or both), this guide can help!įirst, we’ll talk about formatting an ebook and then a print book, since they’re both a little different. That’s why formatting your manuscript is so important. If it looks unprofessional, it’s going to be harder to gain readers and build your reputation. Presenting a nice-looking book to readers is essential. But, since many people are familiar with Microsoft Word, I decided an article on how to format a book with Word is in order. Even a simple Google search can give you nearly endless options. There are a ton of options available for formatting your manuscript before you can upload it to the various online vendors or book printing companies. Next Steps: Formatting for Print in Microsoft Word.

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