Blocks, etc.

A block is four pages. When you pay for the paper a book requires, you pay by the block, which means that your total pages will always be divisible by four. You might use only three of those pages, but there will then be one blank page.

White paper is cheaper than beige, a lighter weight cheaper than a heavier one. Talk abou this with your printer. A 60 ppound paper is probably what you want.

I did a really dumb thing on the first book I formatted. I thought of a page as the sheet of paper, with a front and a back. If we said "Blank page," then I visualized a sheet of paper, blank on both sides. This is not what it means to a printer. A page is one side of a sheet. A sheet of paper equals two pages. That makes a world of difference. Some things you will want on the right side, as you hold the book open, such as acknowledgements and the first page of a table of contents, if you have one. Some people want all chapters to begin on the right. I did that once, and it cost a lot and wasted a lot of paper. Since I use section headings, those are always on the right and the back of that sheet is blank, so that the chapter starting off the new section starts on the right. After that, chapters can start right or left. Blank pages: enough and it looks custom and classy, too many and it looks amateurish. Look at books, well printed, expensive ones, and take your cues from them.

Headers. Really what you want is a way to place your page numbers. A header is more appropriately what you use on a traditional manuscript that you are senfding to an agent or publisher, but your computer may put page numbers into that category. If you are good with your computer, you can get a very sophisticated set-up with your name on the top of one page, the title on the next, and the page numbers alternating upper right and upper left. I am going to assume that if you can do that you don't need this blog. Go for the page number insert for center bottom of the page. Again, put up your experiment page and play around. Find your "insert" menu- it may be under "file" or "edit." Practice with it. It will automatically insert the numbers but it may not insert them high enough onthe page to show up when the page is printed. I had an entire book come back without page numers because they were below the bottom margin for that formatting size. Experiment and print out.

Coming next: You are a publisher: What you don't need to get started

There was a pause...

A quick check-in before continuing in my next post. Sorry there was a long delay between my last post and this one. I was proofing one book and writing furiously on another. That's the thing about blogging for me - it seems to take a lot of time, and when I am on a hot writing streak, blogging has to wait. Also, I was writing a major turning point in my book series, The Curtis Family Chronicles, and it was tough. Every book has an arc of emotion and action, and so does a series, and I am at the top-most point of that arc right now. (Apogee?) It takes it out me and doesn't leave room for much else, but I will be back with more of my step-by-step process later today. WWW