How to Format a Book – Part 1

How to format a book seems to give indie writers more difficulty than writing the book itself.

In my world as an editor and book designer, the word format means several things. When a writer contacts me asking for book formatting, I always have to clarify exactly what they want.

I covered formatting the text of your book in the following posts:

How to Format Numbers, Dates, and Times in Your Manuscript

Should I Use Italics or Quotation Marks? A Style Guide to Formatting Titles

Before formatting your book for publication, there are several things you must consider and decide first.

Trim size

Trim size relates to the physical dimensions of your book. It’s called that because, in simple terms, your book is printed on large sheets (or rolls) of paper in 4 or 8 page (sometimes even 16) sections, called signatures, of your book (see picture above).

After all the necessary sheets have been printed, these sheets are folded, assembled into your book, bound, and trimmed (cut) to the requested size. Understanding this aspect of printing will go a long way in helping you make the right decisions for your specific book.

Standard trim sizes are 5 x 8, 5.5 x 8.5, and 6 x 9 for adults’ books. Children’s book sizes are often determined by the age of the reader and vary widely.

If you are publishing via KDP, check the sizes they offer before you spend time designing your book. They don’t offer all sizes.

Let’s discuss another term that is important to trim size: bleed.

You’ve probably heard of bleed, but might not understand it. This most often applies to your book’s cover, but if you have design elements on the inside (which children’s books do), then you’ll want to understand bleed.

Any design element that goes all the way to the edge of your book must go past the trim line. If it doesn’t, you risk having white spaces between your picture and the edge of your book. The space between trim and the edge of your design element is called bleed. The typical requirement for bleed is 0.125”.

The picture below from KDP illustrates these elements.

Margins

Your book has top, bottom, outside, and inside margins. Most people understand 1 inch margins all around, whether on the computer or hard copy. However, in a book, you have to account for the book’s binding.

The inside margin (also called the gutter) relates to the side of the page that will fit into the binding of the book. This margin has to be larger than your outside margin.

Common margins are .5” for top, bottom, and outside, with .75” for the inside. (Be sure to catch next week’s post to learn how page count can impact your inside margin.)

Font and font size

Without getting into the technical elements of fonts and their sizes (called typography), understand that the font you choose and it’s point size can greatly increase or decrease your page count.

Below is an example of 2 common fonts used for the body text of your book. The difference is obvious. This also gives you an idea of the readability of a font and how the font’s qualities can affect a reader.

Fancy fonts are fine for certain elements of your book like chapter titles and drop caps, but stick to serif fonts like Baskerville, Minion Pro, Georgia, or Garamond for your body font.

One last item to consider in choosing a font for your book is that not all fonts are available on ebook devices. Devices convert the text in your book file to a font available on the device (and it isn’t the 31 choices you find at Baskin-Robbins!). Those fancy fonts that look great in print may not convert well in ebook.

Make it easy for reader to read your book and not come away with eye strain!

The above 3 items impact the page count of your book, which impacts the cost to print your book. Click here  to download KDP’s printing cost and royalty calculator.

How to format a book doesn’t have to overwhelm you. All this can be accomplished in MS Word! If you have any questions on how to format a book, use the comments below.

Next week we’ll look at page count, headings, and chapter beginning elements.

“How to Format a Book, Part 2”