FORMATTING
Today's writing tip isn't really about writing, but it is an important part of the process if you are wanting to self-publish a book. (And it's also the part of the process I'm entrenched in this week).
My cover artist has assured me I will be receiving a draft of the cover for SECOND SON tomorrow (that super excited screaming coming from the vicinity of the East Coast is me... by the way). Which means that I have got to get a move on this whole formatting thing. I have been getting some feedback from my beta reader (well, I have two, but I've only received feedback from one thus far...) and working on formatting a bit, but NOW... now I've really gotta get to it.
Which is why today's post is about formatting.
About a year and a half ago, when we were getting ready to release KING'S WARRIOR, we discovered the importance of having a formatting plan. This doesn't have to be anything formal... but it does need to be something you've thought about. A book isn't just a set of words that tell a good story. A book is also a cover... many people DO judge a book by its cover, and so as the author you really want to have something appealing and hopefully unique there. And then there's the interior of the book, the layout that makes up each page.
This is where many authors may get bogged down, as the different aspects begin to seem overwhelming. What is the layout? What kind of font do you use? What sort of spacing is optimal? What size font? What sort of margins should your pages have? Do you have a different font for chapter titles or not? Do you make the first letter of each chapter a different size? A different font? Nothing? Where do you want your page numbers? How do you deal with segues? (not the motorized vehicle... the break within chapters that often indicates a change in time/perspective/or place). What do you want at the top of the page? Your name and the title? Your name and the chapter title (if your book has chapter titles)?
A good researcher would grab books off the shelf that are similar in genre and target audience and start browsing through them to see if there is an "industry standard" answer for any of these questions.
Which is what we did.
To our disappointment, the answer seems to be that there IS no industry standard answer to many of these questions. Fonts range and vary from book to book. Page numbers appear in the upper and lower corners, and often in the middle at the bottom of each page. The "header" usually contains the book title and the author's name... but sometimes it's the book title and chapter name, or chapter name and author name. Margins and spacing vary widely depending on the word-count in each book and how many pages the publisher wanted the book to boast. Chapters often start with a larger/different font/bold letter... but not always, and it doesn't seem to be a big deal whatever you do. Segues can be as simple as an extra space between paragraphs to extravagant curlicues and images.
The answer, then, seems to be something along the lines of this: Formatting is important. I read a book a while back that had very little formatting, and that lack was distracting, despite the story being very good. However, there is no "standard." Formatting can be very flexible. I think the rule is that it does have to be intentional... and consistent. Books in a series should be formatted identically, for example. All your segues should be the same. If you make the first letter of a chapter different... make sure that it is the same for every chapter (unless mixing it up somehow adds to your story).
This is not meant to imply in any way that looking at published books for layout ideas and tips is not a good idea... it is... a VERY good idea. There are a few things that may not be true across the board, but are true in the vast majority of cases. For example: most traditionally published books are JUSTIFIED as opposed to LEFT-ALIGNED. Most traditionally published books are on CREAM paper, not WHITE... a fact which eluded me until AFTER we had published KING'S WARRIOR... which means that a second edition of that book will most likely be coming out this Summer.
It is these little things we self-published authors have to think about in order to gain credibility with our market. Formatting the interior of your book so that it looks professional is every bit as important as editing and having a nice cover.