self publishing tips by

Self Publishing Tips

24by7Publishing.com

Self Publishing Tips by 24by7Publishing.com

Self Publishing Tips

Create a well groomed & broomed, clean manuscript

to save your time & money

24by7Publishing.com

This book is published by 24by7Publishing.com. 24by7 Publishing

13 New road, Kolkata - 51, India http://www.24by7Publishing.com [email protected]

00 91 9831 470 133

© 2014 by 24by7Publishing.com All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted or

stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without the prior permission of the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of

binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

Version 1.00 MRP: INR 200.00 or USD 5.00

http://24by7Publishing.com

To all the Authors in the world!

CONTENTS

1 Proof reading 1

2 Formatting 2

3 Images 4

4 Front matters 5

5 Chapters 9

6 Back matter 10

7 Final words 11

PREFACE

As per our 24by7Publishing.com experience of handling thousands of manuscripts in different languages and from different geographies, we have found manuscripts where the gap between paragraphs are not equal in a single short story. we have also seen, people are using multiple hits of spacebar instead of pressing the tab button from the keyboard only once. Many authors are still confused, whether they need to put some space before comma/semi-colon or/and after too! Recently we have reviewed an article having seven different fonts used in the same paragraph! Here, in this article we are not bothered about the originality of the content, though originality is also a matter of concern in general. But when the newbie is submitting his dream-work to the editors, it is the editors duty to cover all these silly mistakes & reformatting stuffs to give the book a decent professional look. And, as you know - there is no free lunch available! You need to pay for the effort which you can easily minimized to zero.

This article is a small initiative by 24by7Publishing.com to help the authors from all over the world to save some bucks by following some simple rules to avoid payments to the professionals for formatting.

1

1 PROOFREADING

Use spellchecker : Example - change "teh" to "the". Do visual proofread : Example: "your" for "you're" or "no"

in place of "on". Correct quoting error: Example: proper use of single(') or

double(") quotes; closing of opened quote etc. Proofread at-least FIVE times! Good to get proof-reading done by some other, qualified

peoples.

2

2 FORMATTING

Fonts: Instead of using "fancy fonts", try to stick to two-three fonts for your entire book; choose book-friendly fonts like Garamond, Caslon, Minion, Palatino, Janson, Bembo, Arial, Times New Roman etc. Unless your book is meant to be for children or large type, your text font should be somewhere between 10 to 12 points. Please note: different fonts have different specifications, so a 10-point setting in font-A may be as large as a 12-point setting in font-B.

Punctuations: Always try to keep the pattern in mind – wpsw(word-punctuation-space-word).

Spaces: No more than one space between two words in your entire writing.

Tabs: Try to use the paragraph style in your Word processor to indent paragraphs.

Paragraphs: Your Word processor should help you to introduce paragraphs with properly measured indents.

Boldfaces, Italics & Underlines: Try not to used them very often or their special decorative power will certainly loose the specialty.

Headings: Never use ornamentations like Boldfaces, Italics & Underlines for headings. Try to use the help of your word processor to choose correct heading styles.


3

Header: Chapters generally start one-third to halfway down the page or three inches from the top of the page in Word.

A fancy font is ok for a chapter heading, providing it is appropriate to the content.

Insert a SECTION BREAK on the last page prior to where you want page ONE to begin.

In most cases page one is also the first page of Chapter One. Text justifications: If your book is prose, you'll want the text

to be full-justified (smooth left and right margins). Drop Cap: "A final touch you may wish to add is to begin

each chapter with a "drop cap." This enlarges the first letter of your chapter and insets it into the text. Just go to the "Insert" menu and select "Drop Cap." You can also set this initial in a different font, but be careful; choosing a font that has a different size range from your normal text can throw off your formatting."

Footers & Page Numbers: In most cases page one is also the first page of Chapter One.

To follow the international trend, insert the page number in a footer at the bottom of every page.

Please note: Insert only the page number (not "Page 1, Page 2, Page 3...")!

Running Headers: Setting up running headers can be little complex. The word processor you are using might be offering a host of preformatted headers that you may wish to use. For more help with this step, go into the header/footer menu and click F1 for a help documentation by your word processor.

4

3 IMAGES

If your book includes images(sketches or photographs or illustrations), set up a blank page for every image in your word processor. Insert a page break before and after the "image page”, then import the image from an image-processing program, and type in your caption (if any), and any necessary photo credits.

We will not recommend you to embed images within your text if you don't have much formatting experience. Image pages must be of same size as the rest of your document.

5

4 FRONT MATTER

Title: Title can be either single page (page #1) or double page (page #1 & #3)

Single title page: "full title page" that includes the author name and self-publisher's logo (optional).

N.B: DON'T USE 24by7Publishing.com logo in this page in case of "self published" books. In case of books published by us, we will have the copyright & other paper works and you will not be designing/formatting the book by reading this document.

Double title page(optional): - "Short title page" - includes the title only. - "Full title page" - includes the author name and self-

publisher's logo (optional). N.B: DON'T USE 24by7Publishing.com logo in this page in

case of "self published" books. In case of books published by us, we will have the copyright & other paper works and you will not be designing/formatting the book by reading this document.

Copyright page: This page appears on the reverse of the

title page. Example:

6

This book is self-published by the author. All the publishing, printing & distribution process assisted by

24by7 Publishing 13 New road, Kolkata - 51, India

http://www.24by7Publishing.com [email protected]

00 91 9831 470 133

© 2014 by [author's name] All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted

or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without the prior permission of the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of

binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

Version 1.00 [optional] MRP: [INR 200.00 or USD 5.00]

ISBN [1234567890123 optional]

Cataloguing in Publication number [optional] Name of the company publishing your book[optional]

Author's contact information or website[optional]


7

Table of contents: This can be generated either manually or automatically in your word processor or by some third-party index generation tool.

Automatic table of contents by Word Processor: Designate your chapter titles as "Heading 1". If you have used level-one headers in your text, you can

generate this automatically in Word. Manual table of contents by Word Processor: Create a two-column table from your word-processor with

invisible borders. Number of rows should be as per the number of chapters you have. Then manually update the chapter names & page numbers in that table.

Acknowledgement/dedication page(optional): Example: To my parents who were always thereby my side to guide

me and gave me the courage that I can do the best in my life. Foreword(optional): As per Wikipedia, "A foreword is a (usually short) piece of

writing sometimes placed at the beginning of a book or other piece of literature. Typically written by someone other than the primary author of the work, it often tells of some interaction between the writer of the foreword and the book's primary author or the story the book tells."

Preface(optional): If you’re writing a preface, it’s for your own book. At preface, author tells why he wrote the book, what it’s

about, and why it’s important. Many books don’t require preface, especially works of fiction.

The author may cover all or some of the following points as the part of the preface.

- How the book came about - How long it took you to write the book - Brief description of the book - Purpose of the book

8

- Author's experience & learning while writing the book - In case of non-fiction book, discuss the research process - Thank the people who inspired & helped to write the book - Any suggestions about how to read the book if there is a

special structure Author's introduction(optional): This may have two parts

– the tag line and the extensive biography of the author. The Tag Line: Example: Aby Lucose is a Doctor from Framingham, Massachusetts. The Extensive Bio: Example: Aby Lucose, a Doctor, has been worked in India. He has

published articles in BITS, ABP Weekly and is a member of the XYZ Society. Currently he lives in Framingham, Massachusetts, with his wife, two kids and two cats. This is his first novel.

List of images(optional): Create a two-column table from your word-processor with

invisible borders. Number of rows should be as per the number of figures/images you have. Then manually update the image names/taglines & page numbers in that table.

Please note: Front matters should not be numbered, so

they must be in a separate section that has no header or footer.

9

5 CHAPTERS

Chapters should be there in between the front matters and back matters.

10

6 BACK MATTER

In case the book is a fiction, it probably should end on the last page. If it is a nonfiction, the author may wish to include an index.

The author can generate an index automatically by inserting index entries in the word processor throughout the text.

Another option is to complete your index manually, after the book has been completely formatted and the pagination is final.

11

7 FINAL WORDS

Go through the document multiple times to make sure it looks as per your expectation and as per 24by7Publishing.com’s standard. You may find, for example, that a running header listing the wrong chapter, or an image that isn't where it's supposed to be.

Every time you make a correction, review your book yet again from the very begining, as every format change tends to create new (and unwanted) changes "downstream".

12

Get Published in four easy steps!

Continue to the next page to start publishing your dream

book!


13


15

self publishing tips by

Documents

different fonts

formatting fonts

bookfriendly fonts

entire book

fancy fonts

self publishing tips

different languages

different geographies