If you want to write a book, you’ll need book writing software that’s up to the task. Yes, you can invest in dedicated book writing programs. But you don’t have to: a great writing tool is likely already at your fingertips, if you know how to write a book using Microsoft Word.
There’s a lot of book writing software out there. Many of these programs claim to offer intuitive use, help with organization, and even say they’ll keep you from distraction. The options can be overwhelming.
There’s still one tried and true option if you’re not interested in all that (or can’t afford the fancier programs): Microsoft Word.
I write most of my books in Microsoft Word, not to mention short stories. Here’s the rundown of how to write a book using Microsoft Word, and why that might be your best choice.
The Benefits of Microsoft Word for Book Writing
You most likely already have it. And so does everybody else. Word is the standard, accepted across platforms, and is easy to access for non-writers (your beta readers). It’s been around forever, so most people know how to use it.
There are book formatting templates. A ton of them. They have them for short story format and for manuscript format. Personally, I don’t use those templates, but they’re a nice baseline for beginners, or even old hats that just want to hurry up and write without setting up their document first.
It’s simple and uncluttered. There are a ton of apps and programs out there that will allow you to keep your plot structure notes close at hand, to rearrange your chapters with the click of a button, and to keep detailed character profiles right in the program. That’s all a little too much for me. I prefer handwritten notes and nothing else blocking my screen while I’m typing and Word gives me that.
It is worth noting that if all that sounds appealing to you, you can do those things in Word as well, it just won’t be as fancy as other programs.
Hey writer: the first step to writing a book is coming up with a great idea. The second step is figuring out the structure of your book. If you have an idea but you need help with the structure, check out our new book The Write Structure. In it, we’ll teach you how to apply timeless story structure principles to write a great book. Get The Write Structure »
How to Navigate Your Book in Microsoft Word
When you have a 90,000-word manuscript, navigating becomes daunting. Luckily there are ways to do it in Word that make it easier if you know where to look.
Chapter Headings
Word doesn’t divide your book into chapters for you like some other programs. There will be no easy way to click and drag to rearrange chapters.
What I recommend is using headings. On Word’s Home page, there are already standard headings listed. Definitely mess with them and change their formatting to something simple.
No one needs giant blue words as their chapter headings. (You can set your simpler formatting as your default style as well, so you don’t have to change it every time.)
Make the title or number of each chapter a heading. Then you can easily bounce around to different chapters through the navigation pane (check the Navigation Pane box under the View menu).
Bookmarks
These basically work the same way as headings, but they’re for anywhere in your document. Have a specific scene you need to do more research on? You can bookmark it and jump back to it later.
Bookmark by going to the Insert menu and clicking Bookmark. Name your bookmark and voilà. You can delete them easily from the popup menu as well.
Find and Replace
CTRL+F brings up a simple search option to find words and phrases in your document. CTRL+H brings up the full gambit. From that dialogue box, you can search, replace certain words with others (i.e. Jennifer now becomes Julia all through the manuscript), and go to any page, section, heading, bookmark, etc. that you need to go to.
Microsoft Word is Great for Editing Your Book
Word has a ton of options for editing your story, including comments, tracking changes, and comparing documents. All of these are under the Review menu.
I use the comments feature to make notes to myself where I need to recheck facts or add description later. It’s easy to navigate through the comments with the search feature or the buttons under the Review menu. Don’t forget to remove them all before saving your document as a PDF or sending it off to an editor.
Tracking changes is awesome and a lot of editors (for short stories anyway) will use this feature to collaborate with you during the editing process. You can accept or reject changes or even revert back to the original.
Finally, make sure you have grammar and spellcheck on! Grammar check even allows you to check style issues (like how to use an ellipsis correctly) and passive voice. It’s invaluable.
Pro tip: To keep you on track while you’re writing, turn off some of the more fine-tuning features of grammar check. There’s nothing that will ruin your flow more than a bunch of underlining you feel like you need to take care of immediately. I recommend running the full check when you’re done (or at least done for the day).
Formatting Your Book in Microsoft Word
Make sure you’re familiar with standard manuscript format for novels and formatting short stories. Take a look at those links and follow their instructions. You don’t want to get rejected out of hand because you tried some weird formatting that’s hard to look at.
One of the biggest gripes I see from editors is writers using spaces to indent paragraphs. Don’t do this. It makes it super hard on them when they’re putting a book together. Instead, use the ruler in Word (under the View menu) or the paragraph settings (under the Home menu) to adjust your tabs. A half inch is standard.
Despite what most of us were taught in school, the standard is now one space after periods, not two. This is another sticking point with editors, so don’t do it. If you’re used to two, there’s a grammar check feature in Word you can turn on to highlight every time you use two spaces.
Finally, use the page break option to break for a new chapter, not enter or a million spaces. You can find the page break under the Insert menu.
Pro tip: When in doubt about your formatting, you can turn on the Show/Hide option under the Home menu (looks like a paragraph symbol) to see all your formatting symbols.
Now That You’ve Mastered Microsoft Word, Go Write Your Book
Don’t let choosing writing software stagnant your writing. Don’t overthink it. You don’t need to keep up with the Joneses with the latest writing technology that’s trotted out on tech forums and in writing chats.
The important thing about writing a book is actually writing it. No fancy book writing software is going to help you with that.
So get writing!
Ever used Word to write a book? Do you have any more tips for how to write a book using Word? Let me know in the comments!
PRACTICE
Take fifteen minutes to write. Just write. Don’t worry about page setup, formatting, or which program you’re going to use. Open up Word or get out a pen and paper if you’d like!
When you’re done, share your writing in the comments. Don’t forget to comment on your fellow writers’ work!
Sarah Gribble
Sarah Gribble is the author of dozens of short stories that explore uncomfortable situations, basic fears, and the general awe and fascination of the unknown. She just released Surviving Death, her first novel, and is currently working on her next book.
Follow her on Instagram or join her email list for free scares.
Create a booklet or book
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Go to Layout and select the Page Setup dialog launch icon at the bottom-right corner.
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On the Margins tab, change the setting for Multiple pages to Book fold. The orientation automatically changes to Landscape.
Tip: If you have a long document, you might want to split it into multiple booklets, which you can then bind into one book. Under Sheets per booklet, choose how many pages to print per booklet.
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Select and increase the value of Gutter to reserve space on the inside fold for binding.
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Go to the Paper tab and select the Paper size. The final size of the booklet is one half width of the paper size.
Tip: You can add many embellishments to your booklet’s appearance. For example, to add borders to every page, on the Layout tab of the Page Setup window, click Borders.
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Click OK. If your document already has content, the text is formatted automatically, but you might need to adjust objects like images and tables manually.
Print settings for booklets
When you print the booklet, check the print settings to make sure you print on both sides of the paper and flip the papers correctly for the printing to work as intended.
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Go to File > Print.
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If your printer supports automatic printing on both sides, change Print One Sidedto Print on Both Sides. Choose the option Flip pages on short edge to avoid printing the second side of each sheet upside down.
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If your printer doesn’t support automatic printing on both sides, select Manually Print on Both Sides, and feed the pages back to the printer when prompted. To avoid pages from printing upside down, flip the sheets on the short edge of the paper according to your printer’s instructions.
Tip: For a professional touch, consider adding page numbers in the header or the footer. For more info, see Add page numbers.
See Also
Create a booklet using a Word template
Booklet: Page numbering tips.
Create different headers or footers for odd and even pages
Get Microsoft publishing templates
Create a booklet or book
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Go to Layout > Margins > Custom Margins.
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Change the setting for Multiple pages to Book fold. The orientation automatically changes to Landscape.
Tip: If you have a long document, you might want to split it into multiple booklets, which you can then bind into one book. Under Sheets per booklet, choose how many pages to print per booklet.
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To reserve space on the inside fold for binding, increase the width of the Gutter.
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You can add many embellishments to your booklet’s appearance. For example, to add borders to every page, on the Layout tab of the Custom Margins window, select Borders.
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Select OK.
If your document already has content, the text is formatted automatically, but you might need to adjust objects like images and tables manually.
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Go to File > Page Setup and check the paper size. Keep in mind that the final size of the booklet is one half of the paper size. Make sure your printer is stocked with paper of the right size.
Print settings for booklets
When you print the booklet, check the print settings to make sure you print on both sides of the paper and flip the papers correctly for the printing to work as intended. If your printer supports automatic printing on both sides, follow these steps.
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Click File > Print.
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Under Two-sided, select Booklet.
Tip: For a professional touch, consider adding page numbers in the header or the footer. For more info, see Add page numbers.
Note: If your printer doesn’t support automatic printing on both sides, you’ll need to print each page manually.
See Also
Create a booklet using a Word template
Booklet: Page numbering tips.
Create different headers or footers for odd and even pages
Get Microsoft publishing templates
Wondering how to write a book in Word? In this video, I’ll be sharing how to use Word to format your manuscript. This video is perfect for aspiring writers who need to know the format for writing a book.
Not only is Word online, which means you can be anywhere and have access, but you can also use this software to share your manuscript with your editor, writing coach, and beta readers. In this video, I share my screen and show my Microsoft Word format template, which walks you step-by-step through the process of formatting a book.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to format your manuscript, find your word count, create chapters, and more!
Video Transcript
The traditional publishing industry has set guidelines for how a manuscript should look. And the reason why everyone follows these guidelines is just because it makes it easier for the person reviewing the document. And of course, if we want somebody to review our document, we want to make it as easy as possible.
So what I’m showing you on the screen is my format template, and we’re looking at what is going to be your title page.
So on the very first line, you’re going to include your first name and your last name, you’re going to tab over to the right and type the words, ‘Word Count’ and include your word count.
Now the reason why this is important is because there is so many people that are going to make a determination on pricing based off word count. So to learn your word count, what you want to do is go to the top of your screen, and you want to go to Review, and then click word count. And in this particular document, there are 618 words. So I want to include that in this word count section.
So I’m going to highlight this. And I’m going to put 618 words. Of course, you want to include the word count for your own document. And then you’re going to drop down to the next line and you’re going to type your address.
On the very next line, you’re going to type your city, state and zip, and then you’re going to type your email address. Now, with your email address, make sure that it’s an email that you check regularly, this is going to be the email that you’re going to either be giving to your editor or your writing coach, or even to an agent or the publishing company. So you want to make sure that it’s an email address that you check often.
Then you’re going to drop down to the middle of the page, and you’re going to put your manuscript title in all capital letters.
Then you’re going to drop down two additional lines, and then you’re going to put the words by, and then your first and last name. And that basically is what your title page consists of. This is the first step in learning how to write a book in Word.
The next page we’re going to be looking at is the actual manuscript. So this is the page right after your title page. And this is going to be where your manuscript begins. You first want to do a page break so that your manuscript starts on a new page. In the menu, click Insert, then click Page Break and that will start you off on a new page. And you will also want to use this page break when you are looking to start a new chapter.
Now we’re going to make some changes to our manuscript. The first thing want to do is confirm the page layout. Click layout. Then click Margins and confirm that its set to normal. Next click these three dots, then Paragraph options, and then make sure that your line spacing says double.
And you’ll notice that there is an extra space between the line and again, this just makes it easier for the person reviewing your document.
The next thing you want to do is to make sure that you are using the right font. So the most common font for a manuscript is Times New Roman. You can also use the other Arial, and also Courier. So in order to change the font, you would click Home and if you already have text, you would want to select it first, otherwise for the sake of this video I’m going to use Times New Roman. And also confirm that your font size is 12. Now 12-point font is the standard font size, you don’t want it to be smaller, and you don’t want it to be bigger. Again, we’re trying to make it as easy as possible for the person reviewing the document.
The last thing that we want to do is make sure that we include a header. Now the reason why the header is important is if a person decides to print your document, you want to make sure that they know that your document is in the correct order.
So we’re going to add a couple of things to the header, we’re going to include your name and your manuscript title. And we’re also going to include page numbers this way, if they print it, and it happens to get out of order, they can put it back into order.
To get to your header, click here where it says header. And now you can type in this section. So include your first name and last name, you’re going to put a space and then you’re going to put a slash, and then you got to put another space and you’re going to put your manuscript title.
Then you’re going click Insert, then Page Numbers. And then I’m going to hit this option on the far right that will right align the page numbers.
Now you just click on your document and you can begin typing your manuscript. And that’s how you write a book in Word!
So I hope you enjoyed this video. If you want to write a book that helps you to connect with readers and sell more books make sure to visit my website at howtowriteabookthatsells.com!
Want to write your book in Google Docs instead?
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Table of contents
- Formatting a Book in Microsoft Word
- Font
- Setting Paragraphs and Spacing
- Chapter Headings
- Table of Contents
- Double-Check Your Work!
- Next Steps: Formatting for Print in Microsoft Word
- Book Size and Page Setup
- Margins
- Copy and Paste Your Book
- Header
- Footer
- Triple Check Your Work!
- Formatting With Atticus
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. Even a simple Google search can give you nearly endless options. It’s pretty overwhelming. But, since many people are familiar with Microsoft Word, I decided an article on how to format a book with Word is in order.
Presenting a nice-looking book to readers is essential. If it looks unprofessional, it’s going to be harder to gain readers and build your reputation. That’s why formatting your manuscript is so important. So whether you’re looking to format your manuscript for an ebook or a print book (or both), this guide can help!
First, we’ll talk about formatting an ebook and then a print book, since they’re both a little different. But, it’s a good idea to read through the whole thing, because formatting for an ebook sets you up for formatting for print.
In this article, you will learn:
- Formatting chapter headings in Word
- How to format your book for print in Word
- Setting up the book size and page format
- Formatting your book in Atticus vs. Word
Let’s dive right in.
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. You’ll probably want to go with a professional formatting service or try your hand at formatting with a fixed-layout file manuscript format. You can check out this article on KDP for help with image-heavy books.
Formatting a Book in Microsoft Word
First off, you need to make sure you have everything ready to go in your document. This means having the title page, introduction, preface, etc. in place. 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.
If you’re not sure what goes into the front and back matter of a book, check out this article.
Font
Start with a standard font size and style, like 12-point and Times New Roman or Arial. These will make your life easier and your readers will thank you, whether they’re reading your Kindle book or your print book.
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.
Setting Paragraphs and Spacing
Getting paragraph indentations and spacing are important for a professional-looking ebook. 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. Make sure you’re in the Home tab for proper navigation.
First, click on the Paragraph bar at the top of your screen. Set the alignment to left and make sure the Outline Level is set to Body Text.
Next, under the Indentation heading, there’s a Special column on the right. Set that to First Line and place the indentation at 0.2”.
Then you’ll want to make sure that Line Spacing is set to Single.
Chapter Headings
Formatting your chapter headings correctly differentiates them from the rest of the text so that when the manuscript is transformed into ebook format, the ebook reader will know when a new chapter is starting.
To do this, place your cursor on a chapter title. Then click on the Styles tab. A window should open up on the right side of your screen.
Click the Heading 1 style. You’ll see the heading change. Once it has changed, you can select whatever font style you want without removing the Heading 1 style from the chapter heading.
Repeat this process for all the chapter headings in your book, making sure they’re all the same font.
Once you have all of them changed, you can go to the View tab and check the box for the Navigation Pane. You’ll then be able to view your headings on a window on the left side of your screen. You can also jump to a chapter by clicking on your chapter title in the Navigation Pane.
Table of Contents
Next, you’ll want to create a table of contents (TOC).
Decide where you want your table of contents (it should have its own page after the title and copyright pages). Place the cursor there and then navigate to the References tab and click on the Table of Contents. Select Automatic Table 1.
Go to Table of Contents again and select Custom Table of Contents from near the bottom of the menu. When the box pops up, set the Show Levels option to 1. Then unclick the Show Page Numbers box above that.
It will ask you if you want to replace your current TOC. Click OK.
Next, you’ll need to add a bookmark to the TOC. Highlight the word Contents at the top of the table of contents. Navigate to the Insert tab. Under the Links heading, select Bookmark. Label the bookmark TOC.
That’s it! I can’t say that it’s easy exactly, but it’s not the hardest thing in the world. Next, you can upload the .docx MS Word document to Kindle Direct Publishing and Amazon will convert it to an EPUB file for you.
Double-Check Your Work!
Now, it’s important to make sure the final products look good. One drawback of formatting with Word is that the Kindle ebooks often have some issues in formatting, so you need to go through it with a fine-tooth comb, paying special attention to the text and formatting.
Of course, if you’d rather not go through all the hassle outlined above, you can also use Atticus to format your ebook! But, more on that later. First, let’s talk about formatting your book for print.
Next Steps: Formatting for Print in Microsoft Word
For best results in print formatting, you’ll want to follow the steps above for ebook formatting. Print formatting is more involved, but it works off the same basic structure that I described above.
So, once you have your chapter headings, your font size, paragraph spacing, and TOC all ready to go, you can continue with the print formatting directions below.
The easiest way to go about this is to use a new blank document that you can cut and paste your manuscript into. So, do the following on your new blank document to get it ready for your manuscript.
Hint: You can also search for a Word template to download and transfer your text into. There are free and paid template options out there made expressly for MS Word. These still often require some trial and error to get the proper book format.
Book Size and Page Setup
Before you can do anything, you need to decide which size your book will be. There are several different options available. The most popular sizes in the U.S. are 5” x 8”, 5.5 x 8.5”, and 6” x 9”. If you’re not sure which page size to choose, pick up a book from your bookshelf that seems like a good size for your book and measure it. Chances are it’s one of the three sizes above.
If you choose another page size, head over to the print-on-demand company of your choice to make sure they support the size you want to use.
In your blank document, navigate to the Layout tab. Click on the Size option and select More Paper Sizes at the bottom to enter your desired size. For this demonstration, I used the page size 5.5” x 8.5”.
Margins
Next, navigate to the Margins tab on the left-hand side of the Layout toolbar. Click on it and select Custom Margins at the very bottom of the dropdown menu. Depending on your book’s word count, you may have a little room to make them smaller. The important thing is to not make them too small because doing so can cut off some of the text when the book is bound.
You generally don’t want to go smaller than 0.325”. For this book, we’ll set all the margins to 0.75”. When you preview your book before you send it to be printed, you’ll be able to ensure that none of the text is cut off by the binding.
Copy and Paste Your Book
Now is a good time to copy and paste your manuscript into the formatted document. This way you can have a different document for print books and one for ebooks. Plus, the next section is easier when you can see what you’re doing and where your different sections start.
Once your manuscript is pasted into the formatted Word file, head over to the Insert toolbar. Then navigate to the Header tab. Once you click it, a dropdown menu will appear and you’ll be able to choose the header style you like best for your book.
If you’re not sure, take a look at a couple of your books to see what style you like best. Usually, the header is used for the author’s name and the title of the book. Most of the time the text of the header is smaller, but not always. It’s always differentiated in some way from the main text.
Next, let’s put a footer in that’s just the page numbers. But, the kicker is that you don’t want page numbers for your title page, TOC, or your copyright page. You want the first page of your book to be where the numbers start. Here’s how you do this:
Make sure you exit out of the Header and Footer section to go back to the Home toolbar. Move your cursor to the bottom of the last page before your novel begins. Then go to the Layout toolbar and find the Breaks tab. Find the Section Breaks in the dropdown menu and select the Next Page Section Break (not to be confused with a regular page break).
This will create a different section for your front matter and another for the main text of your book, which will allow you to add page numbers only where you want them.
Next, go to the bottom of your first page — the page where you want the numbers to start, and double click on the bottom margin. The page should change, letting you know that you’re in the footer section.
Next, you’ll see that the top toolbar has switched automatically to the Header and Footer tab. The Link to Previous button should be highlighted. Deselect this.
Then, navigate to the left and find the Page Number button. Click it to access the dropdown menu. Select whichever style of page number you like. The numbers should only start at the bottom of the page you’re on.
Once you’re done adding the page numbers, you’ll have a print-formatted manuscript!
Triple Check Your Work!
Upload your finished product to Amazon along with your cover and take a look through their printed book preview feature to make sure it looks good and that none of the text gets cut off.
As you can tell, working with Microsoft Word is not the best (or the easiest) way to format your book, whether you’re working with print or ebooks.
If you want a much easier and faster way to format your books, Atticus is the way to go.
Video: How to Format a Book in Word
For a nice summary of this article, along with a few of my own personal thoughts on the subject, be sure to check out this video on how to format a book in Microsoft Word.
Want more videos like this? Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel for weekly videos!
Formatting With Atticus
Atticus is a brand new all-in-one formatting and writing software that yours truly (and a great team) has been working hard on for a long while now. It allows you to customize your book layout with several different options — all with a few clicks of the mouse.
You can choose to write your entire book in Atticus or you can simply import your Word document or Google doc when you’re ready to devote a few minutes to formatting.
Atticus gives you the option to change the text style and size. You can use the preview option to see how the text will look in different formats.
You can choose from seventeen different chapter heading styles with ease, and Atticus will format them all automatically. Even within those options, you can customize titles, subtitles, and even how the numbers show up. Whether you’re writing a nonfiction book or a fiction book, there’s a template for you in Atticus.
You can also customize the paragraph styles, making them indented or spaced. You can also add custom paragraph breaks or choose from existing ones. There’s an option for lead-in small caps and, of course, the always classy drop cap option. And, you can preview the changes in real-time.
Atticus also makes it easy to change your headers and footers without all the trouble that doing it in MS Word entails. You can choose what page number format you want, as well as what header format.
And, perhaps best of all, it also allows you to pick your print options easily. Atticus will then automatically format it, giving you an excellent-looking file that you can use with any print-on-demand companies. You can use it as a word processor or just for book formatting. Or both!
So if you want to save time (and time is money, especially for indie authors, isn’t it?), then head on over to Atticus.io and get yourself a copy for a one-time price. No monthly fees here. And you’ll always get the latest updates as we continually upgrade and make Atticus even better.
Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens in lots of weird genres like, fantasy (Blood of Kings trilogy), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). Find Jill on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or on her author website.
This week I had to typeset Tinker (RoboTales, book one) for printing. I love creating new books. It’s always an exciting time. I opened a template I made a few years back and got to work . . . and couldn’t remember how to do it. Thankfully I had created a handy tutorial a few years back to help other authors, so I downloaded a fresh copy from my website, printed it out, and I was set!
This got me thinking that others might like this information too. So I decided to blog about it.
Now, I realize that few of you need to know how to typeset a novel at this very moment. And even if you do, there are easier ways than doing it in Microsoft Word. You can buy a template to paste your book into, which is a lot less work. But, if you like to have complete creative control and don’t want to purchase Adobe InDesign and learn how to use it, knowing how to typeset in Word might be of interest to you. If you have no need of typesetting today but think you might in the future, bookmark this post or click here to print out a version of these instructions to save for later.
1. Save a copy of the document so that your original will be untouched in case you need to start over. Save your new file with something that you’ll instantly recognize as the typeset document, for example Title_typeset.doc or Name_of_Book_final.doc.
2. I also have a file where I keep all my self-published typeset documents, so you might want to create one of those too.
NOTE: If there is any strange formatting in the manuscript—odd paragraphs, weird font changes, anything you may have changed but it keeps coming back—open the document in file in WordPad. Since this is a program with very little formatting options, it will rid the file of anything unusual without removing italics, indentions, etc. Save the document from WordPad, then open it in MS Word and continue.
3. Track Changes. Check to make sure track changes is off and that any lingering changes have been accepted. You may want to do a quick glance to see if any editor comments remain in the manuscript.
4. Font colors. “Select All” in the document (CTRL A) and remove highlighting and make all the text black.
5. Trim size. Change the page size to the trim size of your final book. Keep in mind that you can choose anything here. You are the designer. But be sure to choose one of the industry standard trim sizes. Most trade paperback books are 5.5 inches x 8.5 inches, so that’s what I’ve used in my example.
a. Click on “File,” “Page Setup”
b. Margins: Top .75, Bottom .75, Left (inside) .75, Right (outside) .5
c. Mirror Margins = yes
d. Paper Size = 5.5” x 8.5” (width x height)
e. Click “OK” and “Save” your document
6. Style. Adjust the style to make get rid of any special style formatting and chance everything to your normal Word style settings.
a. “Select All” (CTRL A)
b. Click “Normal” on the Styles toolbar or in the “Styles” dropdown menu.
7. Font. Change the font to whatever you want. Do keep in mind that you want something legible for the text. Most books are typeset in two fonts: one for the body and one for chapter titles. Don’t worry about your chapter headings for now. Simply make everything in the font you want to use for the body of the book.
NOTE: If you’re not sure which size font to choose or want to see how the chapter titles look, you can print out ONE page of your typeset novel to look at it. Use scissors to trim it to 5.5” X 8.5” and set it inside a book from your shelf to get an idea of how the final page will look. Be careful not to print your whole book.
a. “Select All” (CTRL A)
b. Click on the “Font” dropdown menu and select the font of your choice. If you’re not sure which font to use, some recommended fonts are: Garmond, Century, Century Schoolbook, or Times New Roman. I used Garmond for my books.
c. While all the text is still selected, click on “Font Size” in the “Font” dropdown menu and select your font size. If you want your font to be bigger or smaller, you can change this. I used size 10 for the Go Teen Writers book. But I used size 12 font for my Chokepoint novella to make the book a little longer and to make it match the book that Jeff typeset since I wanted them to look identical.
8. Front matter pages. You have to add pages to the front of the book for the copyright page and title pages. Here is what I recommend, but if you want more or less, it’s up to you. Do keep in mind that the first page of chapter one should start on an odd numbered page.
a. Hold down “CTRL” and the “Home” key to move your cursor to the very beginning of the document.
b. Click on “Page Layout,” “Breaks,” and select “Next Page” section break. This will allow you to restart your page numbering. (Any time you want to restart your page numbering throughout the book, you’ll need to insert a “Next Page” section break.)
c. Hold down “CTRL” and the “Home” key to move your cursor back to the very beginning of the document again.
d. Now click on “Insert,” “Page Break” as many times as you want, making sure that the section break page is on the page before chapter one starts. If you can’t see where the page breaks are, turn on the paragraph marks by clicking on ¶.
e. You should now have four or six blank pages before your first chapter/prologue. If you want to add a table of contents, you will need to add more pages. Below is an example from the Go Teen Writers book.
9. Formatting the body. If you haven’t already, select the paragraph mark in the “Home” toolbar (Show/Hide ¶) so that you can see all the behind-the-scenes formatting like paragraphs (where you hit enter), tabs, line breaks, extra spaces, and so on.
a. Place your cursor at the beginning of the first page of the manuscript (chapter one or prologue). Be sure you’re at the beginning of the first line even if it is blank.
b. Hold down “CTRL” and the “Shift” key and the “End” key to select all of the manuscript body text.
c. While the text is selected, double check your chosen body font and size.
d. On the “Home” toolbar, bring up the “Paragraph” menu. On the “Indents and Spacing” tab…
i. Justify selection
ii. Special Indent First Line = .3
iii. Line Spacing, Exactly 14 points
iv. Do not set a left or right indention or before after spacing—delete any settings that exist.
e. On the “Line and Page Breaks” tab …
i. Deselect all of the checked boxes except for “Suppress Line Numbers.” Leave that one checked.
f. Click OK
10. Find and Replace. You can use the “Find and Replace” function to seek out things that need changed in your document.
NOTE: While the “Find and Replace” box is open, click on “More” to bring up more options. You can use the “Special” button to show a list of things you can search for in the document. If for some reason the “Find and Replace” search isn’t bringing up things that you know exist, you might check here to make sure the “Match case” option is off.
a. Deselect your text and hold down “CTRL” and the “Home” key to place your cursor at the beginning of the document.
b. On the “Home” toolbar, click on “Replace.”
i. Tabs. Type ^t (shift 6, lowercase letter t) in the “Find” box. Leave the “Replace” box empty. Do not put anything in there, not even a space. Click on “Replace All” to remove the tabs throughout your document.
ii. Spaces. Delete the ^t from the “Find” box and type in two spaces. In the “Replace” box, type in one space. Click on “Replace All” to remove the double spaces in your document. Do this again and again until the window tells you it has made 0 replacements.
iii. Spaces and Paragraphs. Delete the two spaces in the “Find” box and type in ^p and a space. Type ^p with no space in the “Replace” box. Click “Replace All.” This will remove any extra spaces (false indents) that appear at the beginning of a new line. Click “Replace All” until the window tells you it has made 0 replacements.
iv. Manual Line Breaks. Delete the ^p space and type in ^l. Click “Find Next” to search for any line breaks in your document. (These happen when you hold down “Shift” and hit “Enter.”) These forced returns will keep the following paragraph from indenting. Replace these manually throughout your document by deleting the manual line break and hitting Enter to get a new paragraph. Watch the ¶ marks so you can see how things change. Check the following paragraph to make sure it is properly indented properly without any leading spaces. (Spaces are noted with a dot in the show ¶.) Delete any leading spaces.
v. Column Breaks. Do a search for any column breaks (^n) and remove them manually by clicking “Find Next” and making sure you don’t want them.
vi. Hyphens. Type two hyphens (–) into the “Find” box and type an em dash (—) into the “Replace” box. You can either paste a proper em dash in the “Replace” box by finding one in your document and copying it. Or you can select it from the “Special” list when you click on “More.” Click “Replace All.” Then do a search for spaces around your em dashes. In the “Find” box, replace the double hyphens with a proper em dash, then add a space before it. Put only an em dash in the “Replace box.” Replace all of them. Do the same for a space trailing the em dash. Do this until there are 0 replacements.
vii. Find and replace the misuse of en dashes (–) with em dashes (—). Check the leading and trailing spaces as well.
viii. Ellipses. Decide how you want to format them in your manuscript. You can either use the auto format ellipses (…) or you can use the period space period space period one (. . .). If you use the period space one, you’ll need to do a search for (. . .) once your manuscript is formatted to make sure that none of them ended up at the end of a line and got cut in half. These you will have to fix manually by rewording the sentence so that the ellipses falls together on the same line. If you want to use the auto format ellipses, this won’t be a problem. So, if you do choose the auto format ellipses, do a “Find” for any that might not be picking up the format. Type three periods into the “Find” box without any spaces between (…) and paste an auto formatted ellipses (…) into the “Replace” box. Replace them all. Then do a search for the auto ellipse with leading and trailing spaces and make them the way you want them. You will also want to do a “Find” for two periods (..) and period space period (. .). This should help you make all your ellipses consistent.
ix. Quotes and Double Quotes. Do a “Find and Replace” of all the quotes to turn the straight quotes into curly quotes. You’ll do this four times. One for “, one for ”, one for ‘, and one for ’. Paste the same thing into both boxes and click “Replace all.” Sometimes this will cause a quote to turn the wrong way when there is an em dash or ellipses there, but hopefully you or your proofreader will find those before you upload for printing.
x. Underlines and Bold. Search for underlining by clicking in “Find” box and type “CTRL” “U” at the same time. Then click “Find Next” to see where you’ve used underlining. If you used underlining for italicized thoughts, you’ll need to replace the underlining with italics. You can click in the “Replace” box and type “CTRL” “I” to do this faster, but I recommend taking your time to check each one before you replace so that you’re sure you want to italicize. Once you’re done, do a search for “CTRL” “B” for bold to see where you’ve bolded things in your document and remove any you don’t want.
11. Asterisks. Do a “Find” for a single asterisk. This is where you will format your scene breaks. Make sure you format them the way you want them to look in the print book. If you want to use a fun image or dots like ●instead of plain asterisk, replace them manually. I like to get one scene break formatted the way I want it, then copy it. Then I use the “Find” function to go from asterisk to asterisk and paste in my formatted scene breaks. If you want to insert an image, go to “Insert” “Picture” and find the image you want to use. Resize it, center it, then you can copy it and paste it in all the right places.
12. Page Breaks and Chapter Headings. Additional page breaks should only occur between chapters and maybe at the end for your acknowledgements and about the author pages.
a. Do a “Find” for manual page breaks (^m) and section breaks (^b) and remove any that don’t belong.
b. You can format your chapter headings anyway you want to. Do a “Find” for the word “chapter” or if you didn’t use the word chapter, you’ll have to search for each number “1,” “2,” “45,” etc. or manually scroll through the document to find them all. Make sure they’re all the same font, size, and start in the same place (count the ¶ marks to be sure). I like to format one and copy and paste it, then go in and change the number or chapter title. You can keep chapter headings plain or get fancy. Below are some examples of chapter headings I’ve done.
13. To add pages to the end of the book. One of the best things about typesetting your own book is that you are in control of what you put in the back. You can cross promote yourself however you want. And you should. Someone finished your book and loves it wants to see what else you’ve written. So put in a list of the other books you’ve written, create JPG ads for your other series and put a few in the back. Maybe even put an ad for your author website, inviting the reader to come connect with you online.
a. Press “CTRL” “End” to get to the end of your document.
b. Click “Insert,” “Page Break” to insert a page. Insert as many extra pages as you’d like and make sure you end on an even page number.
14. Headers and Footers. Go back to the very beginning of your document and double click on the page somewhere in the header or footer area. This will bring up the Header & Footer Tools menu.
Here’s how it works. Headers and Footers are connected unless you unconnect them. You can only unconnect them where you’ve placed a section break. So, if you want no page numbers in the beginning, lowercase Roman numerals for the table of contents, numbers for the book, then no page numbers at the end where the acknowledgements and ads are, you will need to insert three section breaks. If you want to change the chapter heading in each chapter, you will need a section break between each chapter.
This can get very complicated. Unless you’re publishing a nonfiction book, I recommend leaving your headers the same throughout the body of the book and even letting the page numbers go through the acknowledgements and ads in the back. But it’s up to you.
Here’s an image of the Header & Footer Tools menu.
I put a yellow box around the buttons that will take you from one section’s header or footer to the next. The button at the bottom, “Link to Previous” is the button that controls whether your headers and footers stay the same of change. If you want them the same, link your headers and footers. If you want them to change, unlink them. You link or unlink on the first page of each new section.
To make things easy, simply center your page numbers and headings and put the same heading on each page, for example: Chokepoint by Jill Williamson. If you’d like to have the title on the right-hand page or above the odd numbers and your author name on the left-hand side or above the even numbers, check the box in the Header & Footer Tools that says “Different Odd & Even Pages.” If you want to have no page number on the very first page, check the box that says “Different First Page.”
If you get stuck on page numbers, I have a video tutorial on the subject at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UOuihsC7SyY
And there are many others video tutorials out there too.
Insert a page number by double clicking in the footer area and selecting your choice from the “Page Number” menu. Choose whether you want your page numbers on the left, center, or right. Once the number appears, you can highlight it and change the font or size.
For the headers, simply double click in that area of the document, type what you want, and format it.
Here are some sample instructions for how it could be done. If you try it this way as a method of training, you will learn the basic concept. Then you can make changes however you’d like.
a. Header. Go to the very first page of your document and double click in the header. The header in section one will have nothing in it as these are your front matter pages. Click the show next button to look at the header in section two.
i. Deselect “Link To Previous.”
ii. Check the boxes in the Header & Footer Tools menu that say “Different First Page” and “Different Odd & Even Pages.”
iii. Deselect “Link to Previous” again as it may have reselected itself. If you accidentally leave this on, it will mess up your numbering.
iv. Click on “Show Next” in the Header & Footer Tools menu. This will take you to the even page header.
v. Deselect “Link To Previous.”
vi. Enter your author name, font Garamond size 10, centered, with one return after the name. Adding a return will give a little space between the name and the body of the page and is easier than adjusting the header and footer margins.
vii. Click on “Show Next” and do the same for the title of the book on the odd page header. Don’t forget to deselect “Link to Previous” before making any changes.
viii. Click on “Show Next” to see section three. The acknowledgements and author bio page has no header or footer. You will probably need to deselect “Link to Previous” to keep the headers from showing up.
b. Footer. Go back to the first page of your document and click in the footer. The footer in section one will have nothing in it as these are your front matter pages. Click the show next button to look at the footer in section two.
i. In section two, deselect “Link to Previous.” Click on the “Page Number” dropdown menu and select “Format Page Numbers,” which will bring up the Page Number Format box. Here you can click the button “Start at” and enter a “1” so that your first page will start at one. Click “OK.”
ii. Click on the “Page Number” dropdown menu and select “Bottom of Page,” and then select the page number that is centered. The number should appear in your footer. Highlight it and change the font to Garamond, size 10.
iii. Click on “Show Next,” deselect “Link to Previous,” and insert a page number for the even page footer. Format it as you did before.
iv. Click on “Show Next” and do the same for the odd page footer.
v. Click on “Show Next” to deselect the “Link to Previous” for the acknowledgements and author pages in the back. Delete any page numbers if they exist.
15. Embed your fonts. Once your document looks just how you want it to, you need to embed your fonts. This allows you to use fonts that the printer might not have. Embedding the fonts with your file saves that font information in the file so that it’s available to the computer that opens your file. If you don’t embed your fonts, the computer that opens your document to print it or read it will choose a substitution font, and that might mess up your formatting. Simply printing or saving to PDF will not embed fonts.
a. Click “File,” “Options.”
b. In the “Options” window, click “Save.”
c. Under “Preserve fidelity when sharing this document,” check the box “Embed fonts in the file.” Make sure that the “Do not embed common system fonts” box is also checked.
d. Click “OK.”
16. Save to PDF. Now you’re ready to save your document.
a. Click “Save as.” Enter the name for the file. And under the “Save as type” dropdown menu, select PDF.
b. Click the “Options” button. Ensure that the “Document structure tags for accessibility” box is checked. Click “OK.”
c. Click “Save.”
Congratulations! You have just formatted your manuscript for publication.
Any questions?