How to Layout a Book – 7 Steps to Format Perfectly!

Sophistication, professionalism, and cleanliness are the terms synonymous with a well-made book. A well-made book is one that tells a tale that amuses and amazes while being a joyous experience to read. Part of the experience is the words themselves that you will write. and the story as well as the characters that play a role in it is engaging. The other part is how nicely the text itself looks in the book. The text itself in a book must be made in a way that looks clean and easy on the eyes. If it fails to do these two basic things, then it will fail to be a terrific book. What makes a terrific book are a lot of things. in this blog, we will learn how to layout a book.

Among them are the simple facts that delightful book writing isn’t enough to make a book great, it must be accompanied by a lot of other side features that are often overlooked by new authors who are rookies in the field of book writing. Writing a well-made work of literary art is in no small order either, but crafting a book that is the epitome of excellence requires an approach that encapsulates everything from the writing to the design, to the formatting, and the editing. Join us today as we try to unravel the mystery of formatting a book to make it a joyous and wonderful reading experience as you rise as an author and a star of literature.

What is the necessity of formatting

As explained earlier we want to learn how to layout a book because bad formatting is a massive detriment to an otherwise spectacular book, even the best authors with huge followings cannot get away with this and the success of their books and their traction would be greatly effected negatively by lack of appropriate and adequate formatting such as having convoluted and tight margins, very large volumes with too many pages due to the inappropriate selection of page sizes. The fundamentals of book formatting need to be taken into consideration while you construct a masterpiece of a book. We will teach you today how to go through the many ways you can improve your book formatting, so you can learn how to layout a book properly.

You might be interested in the guide to formatting a book for publishing.

7 Steps to Layout a Book Perfectly

1. Work on your margins

Make the margins spacious, this will provide you with pages that aren’t so chunky and intimidating to read for the audience. Bad margins can even work to have your text become lost in the edges. Appropriate margins vary from book to book, for a 5×8 inch book try the five-eighths” margins, and for a 6×9” book work with a .75 margin. Make the margins larger so that the reader doesn’t have to open the book too much to read the words inside. if you are having trouble in formatting a book then you can also can also hire a book editor.

2. Set up pages

First, begin setting up pages by opening a layout of software.  Create a head page, this is a background and it applies to other pages throughout the book. It’s very convenient and a fantastic way to properly layout your book, it’s easy to add running headers this way.

3. Aesthetically pleasing fonts

Stick with a basic font like Times New Roman or Arial when authoring your book, never ever try to use something ridiculous, like Comic Sans for example. You want people to take your book seriously so work on the presentation as much as possible. The fonts should be easy to read. Not too eye-catching but fonts just need to be good enough that they don’t give eye strain. The industry standard fonts are Garamond, Janson, and Caslon.

4. Adjust font size

Don’t make the font size too big or small.  By making the font size too big, you’ll have a book that publishers call a “large print” edition. If it’s too small, then the font size is unreadable. So, make sure you get the font size exactly right. Size eleven is good for font size.

5. Justifying the text, you write

This is the act of making the text even and neat in a rectangle with both margins aligned so that the focus can be on the flow of words.

6. Utilize running headers in chapters

It’s better to utilize running headers in chapters to mark new chapters as it makes for a nicer experience to read versus not using them. It’s good practice and improves readability so stick to it.

7. Research your book genre

If you are planning to write a science fiction novel and then make a cover showing two dragons fighting. Whereas the book itself is a sprawling space opera with intrigue and technology in space. Then your book won’t be selling if this is the case. You need to research your competitors and look up five different books in the same genre that are doing well with audiences, then you need to go through their font sizes, font styles, and how they utilize running headers. Learn from the best and you can hope to succeed as a writer.

Conclusion

We hope that by now you understand the basics of formatting, it’s a key component of building a masterpiece. Formatting is the crux of authoring a book. Therefore without it a book would be a chore to read. This is why it’s necessary to have complete knowledge of how to layout a book.