How to Lay Out Text for Self-publishing

You’ve finished writing your book and have decided to self-publish it. You can either self-publish it independently or use a POD (print-on-demand) publisher. In either case, if you want your laid-out pages to look professional, this article tells you how to meet that goal. The instructions apply to Microsoft Word.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• A computer loaded with Microsoft Word.

1. Study a published book and refer to it as you design your text layout in the following steps.
2. Save a master copy of your manuscript. Re-save the master as your working file. You might want to use the suffixes 01, 02, and so on with your file name, to reflect revisions.
3. Create "front matter," which consists of a half-title page (title only); title page (title and author’s name); and a copyright page. The title page should be "recto" (right-hand/odd) and followed by a blank page. The copyright page should be "verso" (left-hand/even). You can include a dedication and opening quote, if you wish. You might also want to include some additional blank pages.
4. Create a "spec sheet" that describes your interior text design. This spec sheet should list point sizes for chapter numbers and part titles (if your book contains parts); the text font and point size; styles for chapter numbers, page numbers, and part openers (if your book contains parts); line spacing; and margins.
5. Insert page numbers. To do this, choose Insert>Page Numbers. Make your choice.
6. Apply paragraph spacing. To do this, choose Format>Paragraph>Spacing>Line Spacing. Make your choice.
7. Apply full justification to all of the body text for the whole book. To do this, choose Edit>Select All. Then, hover your mouse over the Standard toolbar and look for an icon that consists of five straight lines. This is the Justify button. Click that button to justify the body text.
8. Set your left, right, top, and bottom margins; also set the "gutter" (space at the spine of the book). For margins, .5 is common and .3 is typical for the gutter. To do this, choose File>Page Setup>Margins.
9. While still in the Page Setup dialog box, under Pages, Multiple Pages, choose Mirror Margins from the drop-down list box. Under Preview, Apply to, select Whole Document. This will keep the margins and gutter even throughout the book.
10. Set up each chapter as a section. To do this, choose Insert>Break>Section>Next at the beginning of each chapter.
11. "Bottom" pages so that they’re even along the lower edge. At the beginning of each chapter, justify vertical alignment. To do this, choose File>Page Setup>Layout>Page>Vertical Alignment>Justified.
12. On the last page of each chapter, fix a "loose" (widely spaced) last line by pressing the Enter key to insert a paragraph mark. Repeat step 11, except instead of Justified, select Top from the drop-down list box.
13. To preview your manuscript as two-page spreads, choose File>Print Preview. You might need to suppress page numbering for part openers. To do this, choose Insert>Page Numbers and uncheck Show Number on First Page. You might also need to renumber pages. To do this, choose Insert>Page Numbers>Format>Start At.
14. Make changes and corrections as needed after previewing the manuscript. Make sure part openers begin on unnumbered recto pages, preceded by blanks.
15. Create a page-range sheet, part by part, and chapter by chapter, to make sure page numbers are sequentially correct.
16. Save versions as needed. Keep a final, revised master and back it up.