For a brief introduction on this particular post, my friend Annie McMahon asked me a series of questions on self publishing. Her few questions turned into a three post series on her blog! And there was still so much information I left out. So, I’m going to be posting it here this week! This is the first post of three, so keep a watch out for the rest.
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Pull some paperback and hardback books off your shelf. Open them up look at how they are formatted. Spacing, font, etc. You’ll probably notice the differences between them depending on author, publisher, and designer. But, for those that are indie publishing, you get to decide on all that yourself. So, I’ve put together this post here to give you some things to think about and consider before you begin formatting. I didn’t think about all this stuff before I formatted my first book. Needless to say, I had to go back multiple times and change/add/take away things because I’d get to the end and think of something else. If I had thought about these things ahead of time, I would have saved my self a lot of time and a major headache.
I’ve split this post into four main sections: Pages, Chapters, Extras, Hardcovers. Pages is well, the pages. Chapters I’ll be talking about the first page of each chapter, the beginnings. And Extras deals with the front and end matter. All the information applies to both hardcover and paperback formats, but in the hardcovers section at the end, I’ll mention a few things that are just for hardcover versions of your book.
Ready? Here we go.
PAGES
This section will talk about the general pages of your book, excluding the very first page of each chapter and the stuff that goes at the beginning and end, like the copyright information, dedication, and about the author. Those areas will be discussed later.
Page Numbers
Think about where to put your page numbers. Corners? Top or bottom? Centered? Based on the collection of books on my shelf, there doesn’t seem to be a hard rule to this, regardless of genre, fiction, or non-fiction. Just make sure it’s consistent! Don’t have half the book with the page numbers in the top corners then suddenly switch to have them at the middle bottom of the page.
Also, decide if you are going to number all the pages in your book, or just the pages that have the actual “story” on them. I’ll talk about this more in later sections, but when it comes to formatting, it might save you a bit of time to get all the page numbers out of the way at once.
Headers
By headers I mean the information at the top of the pages in most books. This are varies too, depending on author and publisher. Some have the book title on the left side and the author name on the right. (Positioned at the top middle of the page) Others (like mine) have the book title on the left and the series title on the right. Still other books have book title on the left and the chapter title on the right. You can mix and match these if you want of course, change which page they are on, etc. It’s up to you. Again, be consistent! If you got with the title/author name combo, keep that through the entire book and on the same pages. Don’t suddenly switch to author name/title or change to title/chapter title half way through.
Font
Okay, now this applies to your entire book really, but I put it in this section since the story pages are the bulk of the book. It can look very pretty to have some swirled, soft, looking font. However, it can be very hard to read for some people. My research told me to pick a san-serif type of font like Times New Roman or Georgia. I used Book Antiqua for my book Cleanse Fire. Fonts like Arial can work for print if you really want to use that, but some formatting programs won’t even allow it and some printers won’t allow it either. It’s safe to stick with Times or Georgia type of fonts.
Also, the general rule is for the font to be 12pt in size.
Paragraph Spacing
Okay, this is where the books on my shelf differ slightly with a big different between fiction and non-fiction. Fiction books usually have paragraphs indented and no blank line between them. Non-fiction books are in “block format” meaning, no indents and a blank line between paragraphs.
Realistically, you can break the mold and have your fiction book in block format, but I wouldn’t suggest it. Readers expect a fiction book to look a certain way and while a little uniqueness is great, I don’t think paragraphs is the place to do it.
CHAPTERS
Page numbers & Headers
Most books on my shelf do not have any header or page number information on the first page of the chapter. For me, I have the page number on these pages (at the bottom center) but I did not have any header information. Without the header information, the very first thing on the page the chapter title.
Spacing
Often times, the chapter title (in fiction) is spaced farther down the page. As in, it doesn’t sit directly at the top. The question here is how far down the page do you want it to be? A quarter? Half? Three-quarters? In my book, I have the chapter titles set at half way down the page.
Also consider how much space to have after the chapter title and the beginning of the actual chapter. I have one book on my shelf that has just the chapter title on the page – and nothing else. The actual chapter begins on the next page. But more often than not, I see that type of set up in non-fiction books that have “sections” rather than “chapters.”
Starting the Chapter
Drop caps are those times at the beginning of a chapter where the very first letter is bigger than the rest of the text. Usually takes up about two lines of text for the one letter. It looks really pretty and professional. Again, don’t use funky font here. If you do want to use a more artistic looking font, I suggest making it an image to embed rather than typing it.
Other books have the first line in all caps or bolded font. I’ve seen a few where the first line was italicized as well. Think about how the rest of your book is formatted as far as internal dialogue, etc. Do you have a lot of special words in italics? Then starting your chapter with italics might not be a good idea. It could confuse the reader. Instead use bold or put the first line in all capital letters.
The chapter title can be set to a larger font than the rest of the text. I wouldn’t go bigger than 18pt size. Also take into consideration how long your chapter titles are when deciding the font size here.
EXTRAS
Text Alignment and Spacing
Most of the time, your front matter and end matter pages of your book are always center aligned text. But you don’t have to do this. In my opinion, it looks really nice and helps separate them from the rest of the book, since your story is left aligned. (It is left aligned, right?)
Now, I won’t discuss what exactly the front and end matter is in detail, as it can vary from author to author. I’ll save that for another post. But it does involve things like the copy right, title page, about the author information, etc. Consider what order you want these to show up. What information will be before the story and what will be after it?
Another thing, consider what will be on what page! You can put the dedication and acknowledgements on the same page – or have them be on their own pages. Think about how to present all the information to the reader. Consider how many pages they’ll have to turn at the beginning before they get to the story at all.
And last thing, if you are putting a map at the front (or back) of your book, consider whether you’ll have it span both pages or only take up one. Remember that a paperback and even a hardback is smaller than your standard printer paper, so your map won’t look exactly the same as it did when you printed off a copy. As a note, my map spans across both pages. Not for any
particular reason, I just wanted it to.
Page Numbers
In non-fiction books, the extra information to the book, like the appendices, glossary, etc have their own set of page numbers, usually in lowercase roman numerals (i, ii, iii, …) Some might use the alphabet (a, b, c, …). With fiction, these extra pages aren’t usually numbered at all, leaving only the actual story with page numbers. Again, this is up to you and how you want your book to look.
HARDCOVERS
Font
Hardcovers have larger font than paperbacks. Usually paperback font is 12pt sized. But hardbacks can range between 14pt and 15pt. Again, it depends. (If you are taking the extra step to make book formats for the vision impaired, you’d probably go with 16pt to 18pt font.)
Again, stick to a Times New Roman or Georgia looking font. This doesn’t change just because you change the size of the text.
And of course, you can make your chapter titles a bigger sized font as well so that they still stand out against the rest of the text. I think no bigger than 20pt is good.
Page Numbers & Headers
Don’t forget to make the font larger here too! 14pt is good.
Also, just something to share with you, I did something fun with my book with the headers. In the paperback version, I have the book title on the left and the series title on the right. In the hardback, I have them switched, with the series title on the left and the book title on the right. Okay, honestly I did this by accident but I decided to go with it! 
SOMETHING ELSE…
One thing I didn’t mention is how to end your chapters. Now you don’t have to do this and in fact I’ve only seen it in a few books. Put a little glyph, a small image, at the end of each chapter. Of course the readers knows it’s the end, but it’s just a nice little eye pleaser to have this at the end. For my book Cleanse Fire, I used the crest I made for the Kinir Elite. But you can use a tribal looking symbol or just pretty swirls if you like. Obviously, make sure it makes sense to your book. I love dragons but I wouldn’t have a dragon image at the end of my chapters unless it fit with the story.
What other things do you think one should consider when formatting their book? Anything to add that I may have left out? Leave a comment and let me know!
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