After a book has been professionally copy edited, a book designer will begin the layout. My goal is to help you, your self-publishing clients and their book designers work smarter, not harder. I often say, “It’s not the doing but the re-doing that costs.” More than just money, re-work costs us the most valuable asset we have: our time.
The layout of a book will depend on its content. At the editing stage, the author might not have engaged a designer yet. Since a book designer will strip out excessive formatting, I recommend that editors keep everything as simple as possible. You and the author can focus on the content; the book designer will focus on the formatting.
The team’s responsibilities
The book designer is responsible for steps including the following:
- selecting typefaces
- consulting on trim size
- placing images
- setting the size of margins, headers and footers
- adding page numbers to the table of contents
- cross-referencing content within the book as needed
- styling chapter headings and subheadings
To make the design process smoother for authors (and designers!), editors can support their clients by ensuring that the elements below are clearly marked in the manuscript.
- boldface, italics and underlining
- superscripts
- small caps and all caps
- hyperlinks
- paragraph styles
- indents
- centering
- bulleted and numbered lists
- tables
Book design mistakes to avoid
Word processors often include multiple ways to create the same visual effect, and for the casual user, it seems easy to revert to the manual formatting steps that we learned in school. But for the book designer, one-by-one manual formatting changes can create complications — and increase the cost when the designer has to spend extra time undoing them.
Tabs
Do not use the tab key to indent paragraphs or align text. Instead, set an automated indent in the paragraph settings.
Spacing
Do not use multiple spaces or returns to accomplish anything. If an author has put multiple spaces between sentences or pressed return dozens of times to get to a new page, you can remove the extra spaces while editing by using find & replace.
Do not use soft returns (shift + enter). Soft returns are a manual method to control line breaks, and the designer will determine the best line break based on trim size, margins, words per line, etc.
Page and scene breaks
Page breaks are based on the importance and flow of the content. They are decided during a layout review between the author and the book designer, so there is no need for the editor to add page breaks at all. As long as chapters or other sections are clearly labeled, the book designer will assess the content and ensure page breaks happen where they need to. If there is specific content that should appear on its own page, then you can always leave a note for your designer in your manuscript.
Scene breaks occur within a chapter when the setting changes abruptly (common in fiction). To establish a scene break, do not hit the enter key two or three times. Simply type “Scene Break” on its own line or type “***” or something similar. As long as you’re consistent, the book designer can easily find them and work with the author to set how the scene break should look.
Text boxes and call-out quotes
Do not use text frames. Ever.
All text should be in-line, and if you need text to appear in a sidebar or call-out quote, you can leave a note for the designer. You can do this by using a tag like [COQ] or colouring the text.
For call-out quotes, you’ll also need to consider the following:
- which text is the call-out quote
- where it needs to go and/or which text it needs to stay close to
- whether the original text will remain in place alongside the call-out quote or whether it will become the call-out quote
Understanding paragraph styles
Paragraph styles are oft-misunderstood. Several people only see them as a decorative option, not as the organizational utility that they are. Styles let you communicate with the designer.
Remember writing an outline in middle school English class? The same principle applies here.
Heading 1 is reserved for the top-most level of the book. This is often the chapter title, but it could be the labels for Part 1, Part 2, etc. (in which case chapter titles will be marked as heading 2).
Make sure your client’s text doesn’t skip from heading 1 to heading 3. Subheadings should be marked with the next logical heading style. If you don’t see a heading 3 or heading 4 style in your style list, you can easily create one and then start using it.
Images
Images are not a one-size-fits-all subject. All images should be in the highest quality obtainable and uncropped/unedited. The book designer will handle the cropping and the sizing of the image for final export. (The image should be able to obtain 300 DPI on final export.)
The best way to go about having images in a book is for you to not insert them at all.
Instead, ensure the author has labelled their files to send separately and type out which image you want inserted at the place in the manuscript that it needs to go. If the author wants a caption to go with the image, type that out as well.
Conclusion
To learn more about these concepts and see more formatting tips, visit my website.
What kinds of document prep do you do for your clients?
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Melinda Martin
Melinda Martin owns Martin Publishing Services and has served the self-publishing community since 2011. As a former instructor for Microsoft and network administrator, she blends her head for tech with her eye for design to create books that authors can be proud to promote. She is a production artist and publishing consultant who works across multiple genres and layout complexities. Melinda seeks to work with authors who are process-minded, relationship-centric, and quality-driven. She also manages the 20,000-member Facebook group Melinda Martin’s Publishing Forum.