You know that feeling when you finish writing a story? It’s something incredible. That last line, final punctuation. The end. Of course, finishing the manuscript is just the beginning for self-publishers. Next, you have to figure out how to create and print a book to sell and share with your readers.
I’ve talked about this in the past—just writing a great book isn’t enough. You have to present your book to readers. Think about the way the perfect frame emphasizes a work of art; your book’s design is like a frame.
Turning your words (and images) into a book ready for readers is the essence of book formatting. Authors who want to self-publish need to know how to format a book for publishing.
Luckily, that’s why we’re here.
Over the years, the entire team at Lulu has contributed to hundreds of blog posts, videos, emails, guides, and more to help you overcome any problems you might run into while formatting your book.
Today, I want to bring together all the resources you need to get started printing and publishing your first book. If you’re new to publishing or you just want to create a book as a gift, this is exactly what you need!
Here are the steps we’ll walk through to create and print your book.
I am notorious for wanting to format before I finish writing. I’ll spend hours deciding on a drop cap font or getting just the right line break graphic. I’ve wasted entire writing sessions just picking a font to use for the first draft.
This is all to say; the first step is to finish your book. If you’re writing a novel, memoir, or another text-based book, you’ve got to get it all written and edited before you do any formatting.
There’s lots of software for editing your book; but nothing beats a hardcopy, double-spaced and a red pen. Create your editing edition today.
If you’re making a book with a lot of graphic elements—like a photo book, cookbook, children’s book, or journal—you’ll still need text! A lot of your story design will be in the page layout. You might want to storyboard your idea so you can think about where the text will go; however you do it, you’ll want to write all the words for your book before you start creating.
If you held the book open, that’s what you’d see. Now here’s that same spread with notes about some of the page layout elements:
Understanding how to format a book has a few pieces of important vocabulary:
Okay, just some definitions probably aren’t enough to really help you get started laying out your pages. To simplify page design, I like to think about it in two phases:
This is the layout of your page, including the space your text/images will occupy, the header/footer, margins, gutter, and bleed marks. Here’s an example of what a page might look like with all the page design elements marked:
Note that this single page does NOT have a Gutter added. When you view your pages as spreads (two pages side-by-side), you want to verify the Gutter is present.
You’re also in luck—you don’t need to create your own book design! Self-publishers will provide templates that show the standard margins and bleed (at least) for their printers. You can get Lulu’s templates (including guides on how to use them) on our Guides & Templates page. Find the page size you need and get your templates in no time!
Create a stunning photo book this year using Lulu and Canva. Get those pictures off your phone and into the perfect gift.
The reason is; that you need to be able to control the placement of your images and text. Word processors might allow you to add images in-line or on top of the text. But to get the layout you want, you have to be able to manipulate both the text and image spaces.
I’ve used a lot of different programs to lay out book pages. On the whole, they all seek to do the same things:
Some do one of these better than others. All of the software you’ll use to create a book has a learning curve. Once you decide on how you’ll create your book, you’ll want to take some time to really familiarize yourself with the software.
Not sure where to start? Would I leave you hanging this far into a post?
These are my top four picks for laying out your book:
Are you a graphic designer? Will you be creating a lot of books? Do you have a small pile of cash you don’t want anymore?
Using InDesign to layout and prepare your book file has long been a standard. But actually using the software can be challenging. Let’s learn more!
Built by Serif, the Affinity line of design software is an affordable alternative to Adobe’s suite of tools.
Affinity Publisher is the newest publishing software to rival InDesign in features and pricing.
If you can avoid it, don’t use Word to lay out your book. When it comes to writing and editing text, Word is just fine. But that’s where the usefulness ends.
Microsoft Word is the premiere tool for writers, dating back to the 1980s! And it’s still a powerful tool for writers, but not without it’s limitations.
The only free option I’m going to present today is Scribus, an open-source desktop publisher. You’ll get the same basic features as Affinity Publisher and Adobe InDesign but with a much clunkier interface.
In fact, most of what you pay for is the interface; Scribus certainly provides the same tools and options. Only many of the features are complicated to use or require really deep knowledge of Scribus to adjust your contents to fit your needs.
That said, you absolutely can use Scribus to lay out your book. If your design is really simple or you’re just a hardcore DIY’er, consider giving Scribus a try.
Scribus is a free, open source desktop publishing program you can use to layout your book. Learn more about this tool and how it compares to InDesign.
You’ve got the basic page layout set up with one of our templates. You’ve pushed buttons in your design software and you know what to do with it. It’s time to build your book.
The first thing you should do is prepare your styles and page design (like we discussed earlier). Got it?
Now, before you start pasting in your text, you need to set up the front and back matter. These are the pages like the title, copyright, and table of contents in the front and the author bio pages in the back. I concede that you could design the front matter after you build your book’s pages.
I advocate for setting up at least the front matter before you add your book’s contents. You’ll have a better sense of your total page count and you can make decisions about design for the front matter (like different styles or using a graphic) early in the process.
If you’re making a book as a gift or if you don’t intend to publish and want to skip that content, I still encourage you to add a title page and a copyright page. Both are simple and take only a few minutes to add.
You’ve got page designs and you’ve added your content; now you need to format that content to look good. In my experience, this is the most time-consuming part of the process. Each software has its own quirks and features. You’ll need to understand how to achieve the layout you’re after using your software.
The most important thing to remember is to avoid what I call ‘manual’ formatting. Basically, if you want space between some text, you could 1) mash the ‘return’ button or 2) adjust the spacing between lines. Avoid #1 at all costs.
You should aim to include page breaks, line breaks, and any other formatting in the way your design software suggests. Avoid ‘cheating’ or anything that just looks good on the screen. You’re not writing a book to be read on a screen, in a page layout program. What you are doing is creating a file to print—keep that in mind as you prepare your file.
Use Lulu’s free templates to easily create and publish your book today.
Use Lulu’s free templates to easily create and publish your book today.
The book is done. It’s written. You’ve adapted the basic page template to suit your needs and you’re satisfied with the design. Everything is inside the margins. The graphics are all high-resolution. The story is amazing.
For most software, that means exporting your file to PDF (save it in the software’s format too!) and ensuring the PDF settings are correct for printing. There are a few things to look for as you’re preparing to export:
Paul is the Senior Content Manager at Lulu.com. When he’s not entrenched in the publishing and print-on-demand world, he likes to hike the scenic North Carolina landscape, read, sample the fanciest micro-brewed beer, and collect fountain pens. Paul is a dog person but considers himself cat-tolerant.
