Microsoft Word Secrets for Self-Publishing Thomas MacEntee, of High-Definition Genealogy

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1 Microsoft Word Secrets for Self-Publishing Thomas MacEntee, of High-Definition Genealogy Self-Publishing Requires Special Formatting in Microsoft Word Whether you are creating a print copy of your book, an e-book version or both, it s likely that you ve written your manuscript using Microsoft Word. To be honest, even after teaching the application for close to 20 years, I find Microsoft Word to be frustrating. As I ve said before, there is a certain zen to be achieved when working with the program and you need to stop fighting and just workaround the quirks and bizarre stuff! Many of the insights below are agnostic as to document creation software... meaning you can use the same information for a Google Drive, Open Office or other document type. The menu and command syntax used to get to the functions may be different, but you should pay attention to these formatting quirks no matter which program you use. Print Formatting vs. Ebook Formatting Before you even start writing and preparing your manuscript, you need to make a decision: do you want to produce a printed version of your book, an e-book version or both? Each version has different formatting requirements and it takes some advanced planning in order to work smart and to use your editing and formatting time wisely. If your goal is to produce both versions which is wise since in the genealogy field, many consumers still prefer print books then start with the print version first and when complete (meaning proofed and already in print), create the e-book version. Why Is Formatting Different for E-Books? Realize that e-books can take many formats... from something as simple as a PDF or even a Word file to a standard e-book format like E-PUB to a proprietary format for a specific e-reader. If you ve never used a Kindle or other device to read an e-book, and you want to sell your book to the e-reader market, then you should take time to understand how e-readers work. If you don t have an e-reader (Kindle, Nook, etc.) then at least download the free Kindle App ( and install it on your desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. Next download a free book like Building Your Book for Kindle at Realize that the user of an e=reader has the ability to change font size, words per line, lines per page etc. This means that for the e-book version, you shouldn t waste your time on things like page numbering and headers/footers since they get stripped out during the conversion process and won t appear anyway. It won t be easy maintaining two copies of your manuscript print and ebook, but it might be easier than making changes in the print version for a second edition and then generating a new e-book copy. Microsoft Word Secrets for Self-Publishing Page 1

2 Microsoft Word Secrets for Self-Publishing The list of secrets below aren t so secret really and they do make sense if you ve selfpublished a book before. But many of us have had to learn these secrets the hard way: multiple editing sessions and proofreading sessions, uploading the manuscript several times until the layout was perfect, or receiving a printed proof copy only to realize all the mistakes you made. Use the information below from the beginning of your project and you ll save time (and money)! Select Your Book Size FIRST Book Size (also known as Paper Size or Page Size) is important more for the print version than for the e-book version. With most publishing platforms like Lulu and CreateSpace, you will need to select a page/paper size that matches the options available at the platform. Do you want a 6 x 9 inch book? Or 8.5 x 11 inches? Putting off this decision until after you ve spent hours formatting your manuscript can mean almost a total do over if you aren t careful! Example: If you use a 8.5 x 11 inch paper size in Microsoft Word for your document (standard) and then select a 6 x 9 inch book size, your book will be scaled down by 75% leading to blurry images and smaller type. Very important: If a print platform provides templates for Microsoft Word, especially for a specific book size, then download and use them! Formatting: Use the K.I.S.S. Concept You ve heard of the K.I.S.S. concept before right? It stands for Keep it simple, stupid! When used in the context of preparing a manuscript to be self-published, it means don t get fancy! Don t use obscure fonts, weird margins or page layouts, no drop caps, no text boxes or call-outs or sidebars etc. Realize that what looks great in most of the books you ve read, were done by professional printing houses and publishers. What works for them, won t necessarily work in self-publishing and at its worse, could create a final copy that is not just difficult to read, but embarrassing to you as the author (and as the publisher). Here is a quick list of items to review so you keep the formatting simple: Turn on Show/Hide. Click the Show/Hide button, Paragraph section on the Menu/Ribbon. With the Show/Hide feature enabled, you can see hidden items such as paragraph returns, line breaks, whether or not headings have special features enabled. Show/Hide is the closest thing to WordPerfect s Reveal Codes that you ll find. If you are serious about taming Word, you ll quickly get used to all the codes and soon learn their value! Remove two spaces after a period. This practice is a legacy practice from when manuscripts were typed on a typewriter. Use the Replace function on the Menu/Ribbon to replace two spaces with one space. Microsoft Word Secrets for Self-Publishing Page 2

3 Remove extra paragraphs. If you ve hit the Enter key to add space between paragraphs, 1) stop doing this NOW and 2) remove the extra paragraphs. You should be using paragraph styles (see below) to add 12pt Space After between paragraphs. Leaving these blank paragraphs in your manuscript can result in blank pages for both the print and e-book versions. Use consistent margins. Under Page Layout, Margins on the Menu/Ribbon, set your margins before you begin typing. For print, the standard is 1 inch all around; for e-books, especially Kindle, the standard is 1 inch top/bottom,.75 inch left/right (for a 6 x 8 inch page setup). Turn off Auto-Formatting and Hyphenation. Go to File, Options, Proofing on the Menu/Ribbon and disable any and all functions where Microsoft Word will guess what you want. This includes going to Auto Correct Options, selecting the Auto Format as You Type tab and disabling most of the Replace functions! Use a single file for your manuscript. Don t have a separate file for each chapter; doing so will cause problems with pagination, especially for a print version. Use indents, not tabs or spaces. Learn how the Indent feature works under Home, Paragraph; manually pushing text over using spaces or a tab will come back to haunt you in the finished product. Better yet, add a First Line Indent setting to a Paragraph Style and turn on the Ruler (View, Ruler) to see if a line is indented or not. Take care with headers and footers! Information in headers (top of the page) and footers (bottom of the page) will be stripped out of the e-book version of your manuscript. Consider if you really need the information and don t waste your time formatting these items. No page numbers for e-books. For e-books, page numbers aren t displayed and will be stripped out since they usually reside in the footer. Since many users can change the font size and the lines per page on an e-reader, fixed page numbers don t really matter. Your 150 page print book could be 300, 600 or even 900 pages in e-book format depending upon the settings set up on the e-reader. Use justified text. Most readers before an even right margin, not ragged right as it is sometimes called. Under Paragraph, Alignment, select Justified. Avoid inserting lines, text boxes and borders. While horizontal lines and borders may look nice, they may cause problems during the file conversion process. And with the e-book format, these items very often don t display properly. Be consistent in your formatting. Each chapter should look the same in terms of line spacing, font size, heading format etc. throughout the entire manuscript. This is why you want one file for the entire book, and not separate files for each chapter. Microsoft Word Secrets for Self-Publishing Page 3

4 Use paste special to paste clean plain text. If you feel you ve over-formatted your manuscript and want to get back to basics, take the nuclear option: Paste Special, Plain Text. This means 1) copying the text from the old document, 2) creating a new document (with proper page size and other settings), and 3) then in the Paste drop-down selecting Paste Special, Unformatted Text. Yes you will need to do some formatting using styles, etc. but you will have the cleanest possible text as a starting foundation. Take Advantage of Styles If there is one piece of advice to follow when it comes to formatting your manuscript, it is to learn and use Microsoft Word s Styles function. Doing so will help streamline your formatting tasks and assist with future self-publishing projects as well. So what is a style? How do you describe a function that works like this: You apply it when you want to apply a format to a paragraph and you format other paragraphs the same way. And when you update the formatting for one paragraph, all the other paragraphs that are similarly formatted receive the same update? In Word, you d call it a Style. How to use Styles: Select a style from the Style section of the Menu/Ribbon. To update a Style, just format a paragraph with that Style, then right-click with the mouse, select Styles, then Update... to Match Style. What does a Style do? A Style is a set of formats bundled into one name. Let s say you use the Heading 1 Style throughout the document, about 50 times. It makes a paragraph appear in Times New Roman, Bold, 20pt Font with 12pt Space After for Paragraph Spacing. Later, you change your mind and drop the font size down to 16pt. Once you format one instance of Heading 1 Style, you can then update all other instances to copy or mimic the new format. It s like dropping a stone in a pond and watching the ripples go out, but the ripples hit specific targets: those other Heading 1 Style paragraphs! Table of Contents: Yes or No? The decision as to whether or not to use Word s Insert Table of Contents (TOC) function depends upon whether you are creating a print or e-book version of your book. Print books: 1) make sure your chapter headings use the Heading 1 or Heading 2 styles and then 2) insert the TOC towards the beginning of the manuscript, usually after the copyright statement page and before the Introduction. E-books: Many platforms will generate a TOC based on use of the Heading 1 or Heading 2 styles in your manuscript. It is recommended that you first run your manuscript through a conversion program and view the resulting file. Microsoft Word Secrets for Self-Publishing Page 4

5 Be Font Savvy You might be tempted to use some neat font you found out on the Internet, one that really sets your book apart from the rest of the crowd. Resist the temptation... DON T DO IT! Stick with standard/universal fonts such as Times New Roman or Arial since obscure font sets may not convert properly to ebook format. Remember to us 12pt as the minimum font size for body text. For the e-book version, it is can be a waste of time and effort to especially with e-readers since users often reset font size, line spacing etc. on the device to suit their reading preferences. Another note about fonts: if you export your final manuscript to a PDF, make sure to embed the fonts in the PDF before uploading to the publishing platform. Please Stay Put: Inserting Images and More Images and photos can really make or break a book, whether it is a print or e-book version. The problem is this: it isn t always easy to include images in a Word file and to get them to behave! Here are some secrets to getting your images under control: Always use Insert, Picture to add images. We covered this above in terms of file size and file bloat but there are other reasons for inserting images properly. The image must be embedded into the document and not linked in order for the publishing platform to properly handle your manuscript. Check to make sure that the Insert, Picture dialog is using Insert and not Link. Understand Position and Wrap Text. The In Line With Text setting will place your image on the page with text above and below the image. As the text moves, so does the image. This is the preferred and default method placing images on a page. Other settings, such as Wrap Text lets you place the photo to the left or right of the text. Resize Images Don t Let Word Do It! Many authors use the largest possible image, insert it into Word and then resize it manually once it is in Word. This can lead to blurry images in your printed proof copy or in the e-book version. The proper method is to create a copy of the image file, resize it using a photo editing program, then insert it into the Word document. No borders on images. Again, fancy stuff like borders are often stripped out in the conversion process, especially for the e-book version. Microsoft Word Secrets for Self-Publishing Page 5

6 Avoid File Size Bloat While it may seem easy to work with a large manuscript file on your computer, wait until you need to upload it to a publishing platform several times and you ll realize this: your file should be as small as possible yet retain high-resolution for any images you use as well as quality formatting. One way to avoid the bloat that can happen is to insert images and photos properly. This means using Insert, Picture on the Menu/Ribbon. If you use the Copy and Paste method or drag photos from a file folder into the Word document, you may see a dramatic file size increase. Some users have seen files increase in size up to three times the original size! Crazy Stuff: Tables, Automated Lists, and Footnotes You also might be tempted to use some of these features in your Word file. For most genealogists and family historians, these aren t one off items, but part of constructing a solid narrative based on genealogical research. Yet, these items can cause problems for your manuscript, especially during the conversion process: Lists. Avoid automatically numbered or bulleted lists when producing an e-book. Very often, the auto-numbering is stripped out. It is better to manually enter bullets and numbering. Tables. With e-books, tables don t always display properly, especially large tables with many columns or tables that span more than one page. Footnotes (and endnotes): For e-books, footnotes will be converted to endnotes and placed at the end of the document. Some authors will include footnotes for the print version of a book and forego them for the e-book version. Microsoft Word Secrets for Self-Publishing Page 6