The digital age is amazing. There are so many ways that everybody benefits, but writers have really experienced the great reward--the ability to get published as never before. Without the trials of query, rejection, vast amounts of time waiting for an acceptance that may never come--and not just because they aren't decent writers, or their stories are not up to par, but because they don't fit into the tiny mold that publishers have for subjects, and format of style.
These writers have found a great audience online. What they have often found out as well is that playing the part of "publisher" for themselves is a lot of work. Some just resign themselves to not having professional looking books in print. Others search high and low and spend tedious hours perfecting the craft of manuscript typesetting. It's the latter that reap the most benefits. Not only in sales, because their work shows such polish, but in pride of accomplishment.
Probably the most perplexing thing for most authors new to the world of self-publishing is the insight that manuscripts do not simply go from this:
To this:
Just by saying so. There is a lot of work that goes into making a raw manuscript appear in its final polished form.
As you can see, one of the things that will most impact the polish of your book is a clean crisp, but artful header. Headers can be placed in various ways. Take a look at several of your favorite novels or non-fiction books, and see which you prefer. Most word processing software now comes with the ability to produce lovely headers, but there are tricks.
How do you keep your chapter pages in place where they belong? Trick number one.
As the average writer types out his initial manuscript, he places chapter divisions, but usually just keeps them in line with the typing, and doesn't do anything special. He might start each new chapter on a new page, but is surprised later on to find if he's gone back and added, or deleted pieces that those titles have moved up or down. You cans top that by making a "hard" page break at the end of each chapter. The next chapter will always start on the following new page then no matter what you do to the content before it.
You still do not have to do this while creating your draft. When you go to create the published copy it is imperative, or you will make many more headaches for yourself as you go on.
How in the world do you keep some pages blank, while showing the headers on others? That's trick number two.
First you need to carefully examine some of your favorite books closely. There are things about the set up that the average reader doesn't pay much attention to. These are the things you may know, but don't really think about looking at, and learning, but will find yourself engrossed in as a self-publisher. Things like the first lead in pages of a book usually do not have headers. Chapter title pages usually do not have headers. It looks best if those pages do not have the headers on them so what do you do?
You need to learn all you can about section breaks. Those are the little tricks that will allow you to choose not to place a header on an entire section (as in the lead in pages), or on "first pages" of a "new section" as in chapters.
At the end of the lead in pages, I usually start at the bottom of the first page of the first chapter because it's on the second page of that chapter that I first want to see headers kick in, you need to create a section break--not a page break.
When you do that, and you go into your header, make sure to check off the box that says "different first page". That allows you to delete any header content on that first page of each chapter without erasing the header contents for the rest of it at the same time.
Do this for each and every chapter.
Page numbers as well go in the headers, usually on the outside of the page header area. Those too you need to skip on the blank header pages.
Each and every word processing program is different in the way they allow the headers to be manipulated, and some have more possibilities, and some less, but the basics are usually available in all of them. To go into any great detail beyond the tricks above would be futile unless we all worked in the same programs, and that's unlikely. It takes a little practice, and a lot of perseverance, but you'll soon discover what you can and can't do within the confines of your program, or programs. I use two separate programs, depending on what type of work I'm doing at the time, but find Microsoft Office Word to be my favorite for creating publishable novels.
The next little piece of creative polish is the drop cap. You've all seen it, even if you don't know what it's called. It's that creative first letter on the first page of every chapter, usually in fiction work.
Is it necessary? Perhaps not, but it truly adds a special polish to your work, and makes it look like a professionally published piece.
Not all word programs have the ability to create it specifically, although Word 07 is marvelous at it. Even if your word processor does not do it, you can manually create it by selecting just that one letter, and changing the size and font of it.
When you're finished you are well on your way to having created a beautiful manuscript ready for publication that you can be proud of.
Have fun. Learn, and be creative. And happy publishing.
