Maybe I should say, “printing your book”, as
that is what this is all about: how to
prepare your manuscript for printing.
It makes me smile, when I talk with people who
have even less writing experience
than me and they ask me questions about self
publishing. They seem to be convinced that cover design, editing, publishing
and printing are more or less the same thing, mixing everything up. Any author,
especially Indie like myself, knows how to distinguish writing and editing,
formatting text, from publishing (digital or otherwise): the successive phases
are at least as challenging as the creation itself.
That's why I'm writing such an in-depth
introduction.
So, you
have your beautiful tome, the result of so many sacrifices, you've read and
re-read it, so much so that you keep forgetting that you have already corrected
it and removed the repetition, and checking back at it just makes you realise
that it really is completed, and neither you nor your Beta Readers can now
change a single comma.
Alas!, it is not completed at all! It's time to
concentrate on the lay-out and watchful
eyes will start from the beginning, sifting through every detail that shouldn't
go to print. I would advise to save a copy under the same title – but marked
“proof-reading”. You should save the
file in the same folder as the original so that you have them both at
hand. I would also advise to add the
title in the header (ie in the " Header / Footer ") keeping in mind that it's a draft. Print a real copy,
armed with a red pen, and you can begin to sift through the text.
To format a
text you should use a page layout program just as text editors do: they
understand everything and, therefore, do everything. We, especially us indies,
are usually satisfied with Word, Page,
or similar programs. I use Word and I feel confident with it as it has a lot of
potential, even if some of the options are well hidden by the programmers. For
example, I struggled to find the inverted commas, as the program took them for
quote marks. These things happen, but
can be overcome with a good dose of
lubricant and a lot of patience.
I will
just presume that you like the chosen font: I went back to Times New Roman, a
classic, from Garamond (which is much less legible, in my opinion). These are
great, as are others such as Book Antiqua. What matters is that they clear and
don't tire the reader. Fictisious novels
should begin with a first-line indent, and non-fiction shouldn't. I have it set
to 0.5 cm. (as I have with the beginning of a paragraph, ie, the first indent of
the paragraph or chapter). It may be more or less, and you may have to
experiment but I would say that it shouldn't vary greatly from the standard.
Some authors chose to start in capital letters, and then continue the paragraph
with half-clutch to characterize their own issues and this certainly isn't
forbidden: a clear mind and a
consistency in style is what really matters. That's more or less what I have
managed to attain in the draft of my "Double Homicide" with the help
of my editor: both the font, and the paragraph format will inevitably vary from
publisher to publisher. Given that an
“Indie” is also his own publisher, he can chose how to maximise the clarity and
characterization of his book. Even the punctuation in direct speech varies from
publisher to publisher: you just have to compare your own text with a Mondadori
, a Feltrinelli or a Piemme, to realise this. There is no rule, it is a
manifestation of freedom! In direct speech, I prefer to follow the punctuation
pauses and inflections of speech, and, when I put a comma in the sentence, the
full-stop goes at the end of sentence and then I close the speech marks. One
last point: editors do not admit widows (works that have a past but no future) and tend to avoid
orphans (works that have no past, but a possible future): it is absolutely
forbidden to publish the last line of a paragraph on a new page, or to publish the first line at the end of one page
and continue it into the next.
I have
tried to summarize my experience, and I hope it will be helpful to some. In the
end, you may see the fateful "imprimatur" and push the papers to the
other side of your desk. In your own
time, you can then pick it back up and load it onto the chosen launching
platform. I published my four works with Create Space, also designed three of
the four covers with their Cover Creator. If you have clear idea of what you
want to in your mind what you want to
purvey, I'm sure you will be happy with the end results. I have no reason to be
unhappy, in fact I received quick and timely responses whenever needed: we
just need to remember that they are supporting us but we are our own
publishers, so you shouldn't approach them with issues that they can't resolve.
So: enjoy!
Many thanks to Charlie Shaw, who kindly translated my post!
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