Features

To adjust the paper size and margins of your manuscript, in Microsoft Word, go to the File menu and select Page Size. The first tab lets you set both the margins and the amount of space at the top and bottom of the page. Click on the Paper Size tab, and either use the selection of standard sizes or enter your own. Make sure the 'Apply to' option is set to Entire Document before pressing the OK button.

Font of knowledge

Fonts are the most visible aspect of the formatting process. The publishing world divides these into serif and sans serif fonts. It's usual to use serif fonts in books where there are long tracts of text, such as a novel. These fonts tend to be easier to read.

Consider font size carefully. The usual default size is 12 point, but the font you decide to use might look larger than usual. The serif font Bookman Old Style is a good example of this. At 12 point, it is larger on the page than the similarly sized Times New Roman. Because the number of pages partly governs the cost of your book, dropping the font size slightly (by just one point) can sometimes reduce the overall length by several pages. The longer the manuscript is, the more pronounced this shortening effect will be. Don't reduce the font size too far, though, or you may end up with complaints that the text is too small to read easily. As a general rule, the font should be big enough to allow each page to carry around 30 lines of text.

Art of the matter

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aspect of creating a book that many POD authors shy away from until the last moment is the artwork. This includes images that appear in the text as well as on the cover. An enticing design can help attract potential readers, and if you have an artistic eye, it is a great opportunity to be creative. Different POD sites insist on different image sizes for the covers, so check how much space you have available before you start, or you may find the outer regions of your cover art missing on the printed cover.

Digitise any pictures you draw or paint at the highest resolution and number of colours that your hardware will handle. Also remember to save your pictures in a format that doesn't lose quality every time you save them. Avoid the JPG format at all costs, and instead save your image in TIFF, PNG or BMP format, as required by the POD site.

To include images and diagrams in your manuscript, in Microsoft Word you place your cursor at the insertion point, select the Picture option on the Insert menu and select the From File sub-option. Once inserted, you can resize and justify the image as you would any other graphic, by selecting it and stretching the frame.

If you don't have access to a professional image-manipulation package such as Adobe Photoshop, there are free alternatives. One is the open-source GNU Image Manipulation Program, also known as GIMP. Supplied as standard with Linux and designed as a substitute for Photoshop, GIMP is also available for Windows in an easily installed executable package.

If you do decide to use GIMP on Windows, you'll first need to download and install the associated GTK+ 2 graphics library, which you'll find on the same download page (you'll find the GIMP and the GTK + library on the cover DVD). Download this first, then open its compressed folder, double-click on the executable and install it by accepting the defaults. Now install GIMP, again accepting the defaults. Run the program for the first time, and it'll ask you to confirm a few things about working directories and cache sizes. You can simply accept the defaults again.