When creating a print book you can upload you can either upload your manuscript as a Word document (.doc/.docx) or a PDF. When uploading the former, it will be converted to a print-ready PDF automatically by the platform.

This guide will cover how best to format a print-ready manuscript in Microsoft Word.

Word templates

When formatting your manuscript in Microsoft Word, we recommend using one of our templates. These templates are tailor-made for your chosen book type, and most of the important formatting settings have already been configured for you. This saves a lot of time and effort. You can download templates in the ‘Manuscript’ step, or simply select the appropriate template from the list below:

• Pocket book - paperback (110 x 180 mm)
• Pocket book - paperback (120 x 190 mm)
• A5 - paperback (148 x 210 mm)
• Small - paperback (135 x 215 mm)
• Medium 1 (155 x 235 mm)
• Medium 2 - paperback (170 x 240 mm)
• Medium 2 - hardcover (168 x 240 mm)
• Medium 3 - hardcover (177 x 254 mm)
• Large 1 (193 x 260 mm)
• Large 2 - hardcover (210 x 279 mm)
• A4 - paperback (210 x 297 mm)
• Small Square - paperback (155 x 155 mm)
• Large Square (200 x 200 mm)
• Landscape - paperback (210 x 155 mm)

Basic rules

Before you begin formatting your book, it’s good to get familiar with conventional formatting standards. Ignoring these standards tends to make your book look a bit odd, or worse, unprofessional. As such, it’s recommended, but not compulsory, to abide by these standards.

• The first page of your manuscript is always on the right-hand side, right after your front cover.
• Even page numbers are placed on the left, odd page numbers on the right. Page numbers are either centred or aligned to the outer edges of the page.
• The title and colophon pages are almost never numbered, but still count towards the total number of pages. Your page numbers should therefore become visible on the first page of your book that contains actual body text. This first visible page number will therefore not be ‘1’, but likely 4 or 5, depending on the number of pages preceding it.
• You should start new paragraphs using enter, a new line within a paragraph using shift+enter, and a page break using control+enter (or cmd+enter on mac)

Transferring text from another file

If you’ve already written parts of your book in a separate (Word) document, you’ll probably want to copy it over to your current file, rather than retype it. To make sure that the copy-pasting goes smoothly and doesn’t ruin your formatting, use the ‘paste special’ function when pasting the copied text in your new document.

Here’s how it works:

• Copy the text you want to add.
• Use your cursor to select the place you want to paste the copied text in.
• Click on the little arrow under ‘Paste’ and select ‘Paste Special’
• In the pop-up window, select the option ‘Unformatted text’
• Your text has now been copied without transferring the format settings from the previous document.

Title and colophon pages

As soon as you open one of our templates, you’ll notice that we’ve set up a few unnumbered pages in the beginning of the document. These pages are meant to be used for title and colophon pages, which in most books will be organized in the following way:

• First page: Only the title of the book, large font size
• Second page: empty
• Third page: Title of the book, followed by the name of the author
• Fourth page: The colophon page, which should contain the following:
  • Name of the author
  • The ISBN (if you have one)
  • Name of the cover designer
  • Copyright
  • Year of publication
  • Name of the publisher

Automatic hyphenation

There’s a handy feature in Microsoft Word that automatically uses hyphens to break up words that are too long to fit in a line. This is a great way to avoid those big empty spaces that appear at the end of a line when the final word is too long, and makes for a smoother reading experience.

However, if you’re planning on uploading your manuscript as a Word file, we strongly recommend disabling this feature, as it will likely cause problems when your manuscript is being converted to a print-ready PDF.

This means you have two options:

1. Upload your manuscript as a PDF instead of a Word file. You can easily save your document as a PDF in Word, which will prevent any issues caused by hyphenation. This is the solution we recommend for B/W printing.
2. Disable automatic hyphenation. If you do this, Word will no longer use hyphens to break up words that are too long. You can still do this manually if you wish. This is the solution we recommend for colour printing.

If you want to disable automatic hyphenation, do the following:

1. Go to ‘Page layout’
2. Click on ’Hyphenation’
3. Click on ‘None’

Fonts, font sizes, and line spacing

We’re not going to tell you which font to use. It’s a personal choice and varies depending on the book. The first thing you need to decide is whether you want to use a serif or a sans serif typeface. Serifs are the little lines attached to the ends of letters, and are widely considered to help make printed text more legible. Serif fonts are the classic choice for print books and newspapers.

Sans serif fonts do not have these lines, resulting in a more modern, minimalist aesthetic. These typefaces are commonly used online, and are widely considered to offer better legibility than serif fonts in this case.

Some popular fonts:

• Serif fonts: Cambria, Garamond, Georgia, and Times New Roman.
• Sans serif fonts: Arial, Calibri, Helvetica and Verdana.

Additionally, you’ll need to decide on a font size and line spacing. Again, there’s no correct choice here; it all comes down to personal preference. Generally, the most common font sizes are 10, 11, and 12, depending on the font being used. If your book has an older target audience, use a larger font size and more line spacing (between 1.1 and 1.3 is customary when it comes to line spacing). Printing out a few pages of your manuscript is a good way to check whether you’re happy with your font and line spacing.

Setting up fonts correctly

In order to set up the preferences outlined above so that they apply to your whole document, we recommend making use of Word’s so-called ‘Styles’. To change the style of your body text, you’ll need to edit the ‘Normal’ option:

• Click on the ‘Home’ tab. Here you’ll find the ‘Styles’ section
• In this section you should see the ‘Normal’ option listed. Right-click on this option and select ‘Modify’.
• You’ll now see a menu where you can configure your selected style, including font and size.
• When you’re done editing, click ‘Ok’.

After configuring your style, you’ll notice that your chosen settings are automatically applied throughout the document. Should there still be text that doesn’t adhere to your new settings, select it and click on the ‘Normal’ option in the ‘Styles’ section. This should update the text.

Chapter headings, subheadings, and tables of contents

For chapter headings/numbers and subheadings, we recommend using the ‘Heading’ styles. These ensure that your chapter headings always have the same font and size, in addition to letting you generate a table of contents automatically. Furthermore, you can set up your chapter headings to always start on a new page.

What follows is a quick summary of the various styles and what you can use them for:

• Normal: Used for the body text in your manuscript
• Title: Used for your title on your title page(s)
• Heading 1: Used for chapter headings. Heading one is at the top of the page hierarchy in the table of contents. We’ve set up our templates so that this style always appears on a new page.
• Heading 2: Used for subheadings, if you want to divide your chapter headings into several different sections. In the table of contents, this style is subordinate to ‘Heading 1’. Subheadings are rarely used in novels, but in educational or management books they are quite common.
• Heading 3: This style can be used if you want to delve even deeper into a topic than you are able to with a single subheading. These are virtually non-existent in novels, but can appear in educational and management books.

If there’s something about these standard styles you don’t like, you can edit them via the ‘Styles’ section of the ‘Home’ tab in Word, using the same procedure as outlined above.

Table of contents

Once you’ve formatted your body text and headings using the aforementioned styles, you can generate the table of contents for your book automatically. Here’s how:

• Use the cursor to select the area where you want the table of contents to begin
• Click on the ‘References’ tab and select ‘Table of contents’; choose one of the options
• The table of contents will automatically be generated on the selected page.

Page breaks

You may want to continue writing on a new page without starting a new chapter. If so, you should insert a so-called ‘page break’. To insert a page break, select where you want the new page to begin, and press ctrl + enter (cmd + enter on mac).

Do not start a new page by repeatedly pressing enter; this will create a large empty space in the print-ready file and potentially lead to other formatting issues.

Images

You can of course add images to your manuscript. If you plan on doing so, it’s important that the images meet certain requirements in order to be printed properly. As such, keep the following things in mind:

• Make sure that the images you add to your manuscripts are JPGs or PNGs. In our experience, other image formats are more likely to lead to printing errors if used in a Word file.
• Make sure that the resolution of the images you’re using is high enough. We recommend a minimum resolution of 250 dpi, otherwise we cannot guarantee the quality of the printed images.
• Be careful how and where you place the images in your manuscript. If an image is too close to the edge of the page without actually reaching it, the printed result may not turn out right. We recommend placing your images in one of the following ways:
  • Option 1: place your image at least 1 cm from the edge of the page
  • Option 2: place your image such that it reaches all the way to the edge of the page
• Good to know: Word doesn’t handle B/W images very well. Images that look B/W in Word are actually rendered in colour. This means if you’re printing a print book in colour, even B/W images will be seen as colour images, meaning that the pages they’re on will count towards the total number of colour pages

Printing a spread (an image covering two pages)

If you want to print a spread, i.e. an image that covers two adjacent pages, you can do the following:

1. Cut your image into two halves; a left half and a right half.
2. Place the left half of the image on an even-numbered page (these are always on the left). Make sure the image reaches all the way to the edge of the page.
3. On the next odd-numbered page (odd-numbered pages are always on the right) add the right half of the image, making sure that it reaches all the way to the edge of the page.

Page numbers

Page numbers are included in our Word templates, where they begin on the 5th page (leaving the first 4 pages unnumbered, as is conventional). So, if you use one of our templates, you don’t need to worry about page numbers.

If, for some reason, you still want to add page numbers on a specific page, consult the instructions below.

Having page numbers start on a specific page

You can have page numbers kick in on a page of your choice. Here’s how:

• Place the cursor at the end of the page preceding the page where numbering should begin; i.e., if you want the numbers to start on page 3, place your cursor at the end of page 2.
• Click on the ‘Layout’ tab
• In the Layout tab, click on ‘Breaks’. In the dropdown menu, select ‘Next page’ under ‘Section breaks’.
• Now, place the cursor on the page where you want the numbering to start.
• While on this page, click the ‘Insert’ tab. Then click on ‘Footer’ and select the option ‘Edit footer’.
• Your cursor will now automatically be moved to the footer. The options at the top of the screen will also change, allowing you to edit said footer. Click on ‘link to previous’. to toggle it off.
• In the same menu, click on ‘Page numbers’.

Please note: If you want to place your page numbers in the header instead of the footer, follow the same procedure, but click ‘Edit header’ instead of ‘Edit footer’.

Alternating page numbers

Word allows for alternating page numbers. This means you can configure page numbers to always appear on the outer edges of your pages, as is common in a lot of books. Here’s how to set it up:

• Click ‘Insert’, then click ‘Footer’ and select ‘Edit footer’.
• Your cursor will now automatically move to the footer. The options at the top of the screen will also change, allowing you to edit said footer. Select ‘Different even and odd pages’.
• You can then click ‘Page numbers’ to insert alternating page numbers.

Remember: odd pages are always on the right, and even pages are always on the left.

Cover

Do not include a cover in your Word manuscript. You’ll be creating or uploading your cover later on, in the ‘Cover design’ step. If you’ve included a cover in the manuscript itself, it will be printed as part of the book block, which is probably not what you want.

FAQ

Can I upload my Word file directly or do I need to convert it to a PDF first?
You can upload a Word file to the platform directly. Our system will then convert it to a print-ready PDF. It’s very important that you check this PDF thoroughly before continuing, as the conversion process may affect the layout of your original file. If you find any undesirable changes to your original layout in the print-ready file, you can try converting your manuscript to a PDF before uploading it. You can do this in Word by going to ‘File’, clicking on ‘Export’, and selecting PDF.

Please note that we only recommend doing this if your book is meant to be printed in B/W. If your book contains colour pages, this method will often result in all of your pages being categorised as colour pages, driving the price of your book up significantly. In short, if your book contains colour pages, it’s best to upload your manuscript as a Word file.

Do I have to add the ISBN to my manuscript myself?
Yes, if you have an ISBN, you’ll need to add it to your manuscript yourself. You can place it on the colophon page (the second page in our Word templates). We’ve added a line marked ISBN there which you can fill in.

Can I add tables to my manuscript in Word?
Absolutely! You can create any kind of table you like directly in your Word document.

However, you should avoid adding rotated pages to your manuscript in order to fit a larger table (e.g. adding a landscape page to a manuscript full of portrait pages). This will likely lead to formatting issues during the conversion process. If you want to include a landscape oriented table to your book, we recommend making it in a separate document and saving it as an image. You can then add it to your manuscript and rotate it 90 degrees, so that readers can turn the book in order to examine the table.

Do I need to include my cover in the manuscript I’m going to upload?
No, you should not include a cover in your manuscript file. You’ll be making or uploading your cover in a separate step of the publishing process, called ‘Cover Design’. See the ‘Cover’ section above for more information.