Explore Book Design and Formatting: A Complete Guide

You need to know how to format a book, if you wish to become a bestselling author. Formatting and book design attracts the readers and makes the reader want to sift through the book.  

What is the Meaning of Book Formatting?

Book formatting is to arrange the layout of the book in a plausible manner. It involves the visual look of the text, paragraph and the page layout of a book that includes page, indent, margins, etc. Proper formatting embellishes all these features and makes sure a book looks good. 

Importance of Book Cover Design and Formatting

 Formatting is important for several reasons which are as follows: 

•  It enhances readability of a book making it presentable and engaging
• It looks professional and immaculate that attracts readers, reviewers and publishers
•  It ensures an immersive reading experience for authors
• Formatting makes you adhere to technical aspects of publishing

Software for Book Formatting

There are many kinds of software used for book formatting which are: 

• All writers use book formatting to align their book such as Microsoft Word. It has all formatting features to make your book click such as text styling is applying attributes to text to control how it looks. It has features like indent, and aligning the text accordingly, and also updating the table of contents. 
• Atticus is an affordable and intuitive format which is done for printing e-books through templates.
• Vellum is a Mac software for beautiful output and is focused on ebook formatting.
• Adobe Indesign uses multifarious layout features and is great for print books.
• Google Docs can also be used for formatting docs, but with limited options. 

How to Format A Book/ Manuscript Format 

So, now you know the software that can be used to format a book, so let us delve into formatting a book.

• Set a margin of 1 inch on all sides of the manuscript subsequently. 
• You need to make sure that text is left aligned. 
• You must indent each paragraph by using half inch,
• Use Black text on white background. Do not use colours.
• You need to add page numbers in the footer, and chapter name on the header. 
• Front and back matter must be included. The front matter includes the title, copyright page, and the backmatter must have author bio, footnotes and about the book.
• You need to keep text justified for a proper formal look. 
• Images, and tables need to be formatted which means high resolution images have to be used. 
• Double space needs to be used in the document.
• Lastly, the word count needs to be mentioned. 

Now, after you have written the novel, or completed the manuscript. You need to decide if you want to send it to a publisher to publish print books, or upload on Kindle, Google Play Books, or Wattpad. It then requires a different format called Epub format. 

Epub is an open standard format used for digital books. This means that the formaat matters a lot, and ebooks can be read on multiple devices easily. Ebooks have the epub extension which allows them to be easily accessible. This format is generally used to publish e-books. Examples of Epub books are Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Lightning Thief. 

Now, if you want to publish an ebook, you need to know how to format it. 

Ebook Format 

The format for an ebook is as follows: 

• You need to remove all kinds of formatting. Then, select it to be normal. 
• If there is automatic numbering in the book, you need to remove it. 
• Next, you need to remove page numbers.
• Then, you need to remove the table of contents. 
• Remove all double spaces by pressing ctrl+H, and press space in Find to know if extra space is there. 
• You need to also make sure that each chapter begins with a new page. 
• Now, after you have cleaned formatting, you need to add it again. 
• Make headings for each chapter bold, add front and back matter.
• After you have completed styling, it needs to be uploaded. 

Then, upload it to a free ebook converter.

Upload your finished doc to Amazon with a customised cover. Book covers have the potential to attract readers for which design and formatting is needed. 

Book Cover Design and Formatting

Book cover design is important to rope in readers for your book. A book cover needs to have imagery for the book. The image could be related to the story, or themes in the book. For example: If you have written a novel about summer vacations, it could include a pool, hobby classes or the Sun shining overhead in the backdrop. Now, the next thing is book typography which could include book title, subtitle and also the name of the author. 

Hence, writing a book is a daunting process, do not let book formatting and design set your pace back. Make formatting stand out to make your book click.