Things to do #1 A, More about formatting

I'm still on formatting and your computer, and you may wonder why this is first. This seems like one of the last things you should do, right? I'm writing about this first because you will save yourself time and anguish later and you will need the information you get from formatting when you talk to a printer. One of the first things a printer will ask you is "how many pages?" That's how you will find out what it will cost to print your book. You can tell them X letter- sized pages and they can estimate - most printers are good at that, but you will get an accurate price from the start if you can tell them that you have X pages formatted to 6x9. And that is not the literal size - there is what is called a "trim size" that means it is a little less than 6" or 9". You will want to be sure that that size is the most economical - ask your printer - but I have always found that it is.

As I said in an earlier blog, you can take the letter sized pages of your completed manuscript and magically zip them into a 6x9 format at the touch of a key, but you can also select your format size frn the gitgo and type your manuscript into that size from page 1. I am doing that with my new ms. and it's the first time I have tried it this way. The one thing different is that my computer insists on making the space between graphs slightly larger than a single space. Your printer won't care - what you will eventually be sending to them is camera- ready and they print it as is. It will mean, however, that your ms. will be a little longer and therefore cost more, so you decide. And no, I can't figure out why my computer does that and I can't make it stop, but it looks good and makes it a little easier to read.

Other things having to do with book size: print size and font. I stick with Times New Roman for the text font. For chapter headings, achnowledgements and other titles, I use Caslon Open Face, but that is only because my book series uses that font on every cover. It has a vaguely old look. Experiment with fonts, but remember that just because you like it, it won't necessarily be a good choice for 200 pages or however long your book is. Some people like Arial because it is very clean. Look at some commercially printed books and see which have a good look to you, then find the closest font on your program. There are ways to download new fonts for free, but you don't need that for your ms. text. You have enough choices.

Many commercially printed books have a 10 point sized type face. I find that too small. I pick an 11 or 12. Many of my readers are "mature adults" like myself and they appreciate being able to read my books without a magnifying glass. You will find a top of the screen icon that lets you pick font and type face. If you don't know how to do this, use your sample pages I talked about last time and explore. Single space. Put a character's thoughts in Italics. The rule now is no extra spaces after a period, but I don't observe that. Brought up in the two spaces after a period era, anything else looks cramped and wrong to me. And hey, since I'm the publisher, what I say goes.

Blocks, headers, and those pesky extra pages in the beginning of the book. WW