Update March 2019

I wrote this book back when I was a professional freelance book designer. I switched to being primarily a writer but I still use the techniques I wrote about in this book today, both with my own books and some I continue to publish from other authors.

Since I wrote the book, new versions of Microsoft Word have arrived. Createspace has become Amazon KDP Print.

Having traversed these changes myself, I can confidently state that the techniques taught in this book are still applicable to authors and publishers readying manuscripts with the latest edition of Microsoft Word for publication through KDP Print, as well as Lulu and other publishing services.

Tim

Did you ever want to print your own book? Now you can!

Welcome to the online page for Format YOUR Print Book with Createspace … and Lulu, using Microsoft Word: 2nd edition.

#1 Amazon.com Hot New Release 

Here you can find updates, samples, and the latest links to additional resources on the internet.

Format YOUR Print Book: 2nd edition is available now as a Kindle eBook, and as a 296 page paperback:

eBook: $2.99 at amazon.com | £2.00 at amazon.co.uk

Paperback  $10.80 at amazon.com | £8.50 at amazon.co.uk

Praise for the second edition:

“…the content and presentation are excellent and incredibly useful, even though I’ve already written and formatted at least six books using Microsoft Word.” —  Patricia West, treeoflifememoirs.com

Why buy this book?

Publishing a print book with Createspace or Lulu is fairly easy. But unless you know how to lay out a book, AND how to achieve the results you want in your word processor, the result will brand you an amateur.

In this guide, I will show you how to format your book’s interior:

* What you need to know about book layout and typesetting to get professional results.

* How to use Microsoft Word 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011 & 2013 to achieve those results (with notes for Word 2003 users)

* eBook tips: how to format your manuscript in Word so you can move easily between print, Kindle, ePUB, and Smashwords editions. (Note: this is not a comprehensive guide to building eBooks).

*NEW! A workflow for publishing a book through Createspace. Follow the workflow and use the cross-references to find the detailed discussion later in the book for each step.

*NEW! Answers to the questions about paperback publishing that I am often asked by my book-formatting clients, such as: how to pick the right trim size, how to set pricing, what kind of ISBN you should use, and how to link print and kindle editions on Amazon.

*NEW! The correct way to use paragraph and page breaks in Word.

*NEW! Advanced topics: add that final level of polish with subjects such as kerning & OpenType settings, using Unicode code points in paperbacks and eBooks, dot gain & color spaces, faux glyphs and how to avoid them, the perils of transferring Word files between Mac & Windows, and how to republish your back catalog.

*NEW! Many more screenshots and diagrams (now 76). All are reproduced in the paperback and eBook editions of this book, and are also available from the book’s website.

Try before you buy…

Several extracts from the book are available for you to read and use on this website. Click here to see all my posts on Writing Tips, including the extracts from this book.

Praise for the first edition:

Here’s a selection of comments from 5-star reviews on Amazon

“It helped me get my book ready much, much, MUCH faster than I could have done it on my own.”

“There is a TON of information here, all laid out with step-by-step explanations and screen captures.”

“As the owner of a small publishing company and an author myself, this book has become my ‘Createspace Bible.’ “

“…the best instructional seminar you can read.”

“I have some other books about formatting for print, but none of them even come close to providing the amount of information I found in this book.”

“Tells you all the “little” things you need to know to format.”

“…very easy to read and understand.”

Topics covered in the book are:

image (c) Kirril M/ Fotolia.com

PART 1 – SELLING YOUR BOOK THROUGH CREATESPACE

Why bother with a paperback edition? — How to use Createspace to print and sell your book — 1. Let Amazon sell them for you — 2. Sell them yourself — 3. Set yourself  up as a traditional small publisher — 3a. Using Createspace’s ‘Expanded Distribution’ option — 4.  And still more ways to sell your book … — Conclusion: How YOU should sell YOUR book! — Common Questions about Createspace — What is an ISBN and do I need one? — Should I use my own ISBNs or use one from Createspace? — Can I use the same ISBN for my eBook and my paperback? — If I print my book with Createspace, do I still own my book? — If I print my book with Createspace, can I also print it with another printer? — If I make changes to my book, do I need to use a new ISBN? — Do I really have to upload my book to Createspace as a PDF? — Copyright, Library of Congress, and mandatory deposit — How much royalty/margin will I make? — Should I choose cream or white paper? — Which trim size should I choose? — If I change my trim size, should I lay out my book differently? — Can I make hardback books with Createspace? — How can I sell to Canada? — How can I sell to Europe? — If I’m not a US citizen, why am I paying US tax? — Why can’t I have spine text? — Is it worth selecting Createspace Expanded Distribution? — How can I link my paperback and Kindle edition on Amazon? — Should I use Createspace to build my Kindle edition? — Amazon has reduced my retail price. Can they do that? — Help! My paperback book is being sold by someone else. Are they pirates?

PART 2 — A TYPICAL BOOK -CREATION WORKFLOW

One-page Summary: how to self-publish with Createspace — A typical Createspace workflow: DETAIL — Set up your Createspace account — Register your book with the US Copyright Office — Set up dummy projects — Organize cover art — Choose trim size — Create your main Createspace book project — Set correct paragraph and page/section breaks — Set headers and footers — Set page layout options in Word — Set font and paragraph styling — Set section breaks — Consider use of ornaments — Set front and back matter — Curl your quotes — Perform other final checks — Upload paperback interior — Check results in Interior Reviewer — Upload Cover — Print proof/ beta copies    — Finalize book description — Run your beta-reader program — Create your eBook version

PART 3 — FORMATTING: SETTING CORRECT PARAGRAPH AND PAGE BREAKS

Writing Robust Paragraphs — Manual line feed. — How to set page breaks correctly — How to fix badly marked paragraphs

PART 4 — FORMATTING: PAGE LAYOUT

Plan the layout strategy for your pages — Copy the page setup from the Createspace template — Headers and footers — Link to previous — Which, what, huh? — Sections — What’s a section? — Smashwords, Kindle editions, ePub and section breaks — Page numbers — Make sure you have entered page numbers for ALL your headers/footers — Formatting page numbers — Working with page numbers in Word 2003 — Introducing styles — Don’t start from here! Start formatting as you write your book — Defining Styles — Defining Styles#1 — direct formatting into styles — Defining Styles#2 — create a style family — Why styles again? — Editing your styles — Sorting out a style soup — Sorting out style soup… without losing your italics — Justification — Justification and eBook formatting — Paragraph indentation — Exceptions – other types of books — Exceptions – scene breaks and letters — Paragraph spacing — Consistency — Maintainability — eBooks — The paragraph spacing gotcha — A starting set of styles — Fonts and Typefaces — Leading — eBooks and leading — Super style sets — Using style sets with your book — Creating your own style sets — Older versions of Word

PART 5 — IMAGES

Images: a great opportunity but Word lets you down — WHERE TO USE IMAGES — Ideas for images: fiction — Ideas for images: non-fiction — Typographer’s Ornaments Revisited — COLOR IMAGES, BLEED AND FULL PAGE IMAGES — HOW TO INSERT IMAGES — 1. Keep the images separately in a safe place, then insert them — 2. Set gridlines on — 3. Use the size and position menu to place the image — 4. How to set captions — 5. Using frames, shadows and special effects — HOW MICROSOFT WORD RUINS YOUR IMAGES PART#2  — Working with images that aren’t 300dpi   — Image basics… and image resizing

PART 6 — DETAILS   

Dinkus asterisms, and how print and eBooks are very different — You cannot tell how your eBook will look — The final tidies — Do I really need to upload a PDF? — Embedding fonts in PDFs — Front Matter — What to put in your front matter — Front matter for eBooks — Adding blank pages at the end of the book — Widows and orphans   — Table of Contents — Drop Caps and Small Caps — Small caps and page header styles

PART 7 — ADVANCED TOPICS

Typography 101 — Special Effects with OpenType  — Kerning & Spacing — Typography 909 — Faux Fonts — How to tell what your font can do — Font style-linking — How to republish your back catalog — Cover art tips — More on Margins — Createspace vs. Lulu & LSI. Which is best? — Advanced Colorspaces and Dot gain — Beyond Microsoft Word — is it worth paying for anything else? — A note about Adobe products — Adobe Acrobat Standard/ Pro  — Adobe InDesign — Adobe Photoshop — CutePDF Writer — doPDF — Nitro Pro — NovaPDF — Scrivener — yWriter5 — Text boxes and Wordart — Wordart & Text Effects   — Where to find further information

Appendix A — How this book was formatted

AVAILABLE NOW…

The second edition. Revised and expanded. Covers Createspace workflow, Word 2013, Unicode, common publishing questions answered, PDF settings, Opentype features, typography primers, and a fully revised section on getting the most out of images. More than double the size of the first edition, and with 76 screenshots and diagrams, all of which are faithfully reproduced in the eBook edition and available on the website here.

Buy the paperback and get the Kindle version free through Amazon Matchbook

Readers who purchase the paperback version through Amazon can download the Kindle version for free through the Matchbook program. This offer is provided by Amazon and only available in territories where Amazon are running the Matchbook program (which as of November 2013 was only the US).

The eBook edition…

The eBook edition includes not just the screenshots and diagrams from the print edition, but all the other formatting, typeface and layout examples are also captured as images and reproduced in the eBook. So when in the print edition I talk about kerning or how to use faux and genuine small caps in Microsoft Word, I’m demonstrating by using those techniques in my Microsoft Word 2013 manuscript that I turn into a PDF file and send to Createspace for printing. With the eBook, I take a screenshot of my manuscript open in Word so you can also see the technique demonstrated.

As examples, here are a few screenshot taken from the Kindle version being read on an iPad (click on the image for a larger version).