Paperback Cheat Sheet

This is more of a service to my fellow author-types than something that might be of value to readers, so if you’re interested in book doings… well, unless you’re reading this at a very specific point in history, you’ve already read about the Structophis announcement directly above this.

I do my own paperback formatting, and as such, I do it very rarely. Below is my semi-organized paperback formatting list. I hope you find it helpful. This is specifically for setting up for a 6×9 paperback at CreateSpace, but it should be fairly obvious where changes should be made for other sizes.

1. Select the whole document.
2. Go to Page Layout Ribbon
3. Click the “Page Setup” dropdown button thing.
4. Margins Tab
   1. Under Pages, make it Multiple Pages: Mirror Margins
   2. Under Margins: Top, Bottom and Outside are all 0.5″
      1. Inside varies by word count, but I usually do 0.75″

      2. Page Count	Inside Margin	Outside Margins
         24 to 150 pages	.375″	at least .25″
         151 to 300 pages	.5″	at least .25″
         301 to 500 pages	.625″	at least .25″
         501 to 700 pages	.75″	at least .25″
         701 to 828 pages	.875″	at least .25″

   3. Gutter 0″
   4. This applies to the whole document.
5. Paper Tab
   1. Change width to 6″, height to 9″
6. Hit Okay
7. After the title and Author name, insert a section break
   1. This is on the Page Layout Tab under “Breaks”
   2. In this case, chose “Next Page”
8. Go Back to the title page and click on the name, then click the page setup dropdown again.
   1. Section Start: Odd Page
   2. Headers and Footers: Different Odd and Even, Different First page.
   3. Page: Vertical Alignment: Center
   4. Apply to This section.
9. Hit okay.
10. Remove bold and make Title size 36 font.
11. Make Name size 18 font.
12. Put 4 “name” sized new lines between Title and Name.
13. Go to the next page, where your Copyright should be.
    1. We’ll be using a size 10 font, centered.
14. Copyright ©[year] [Author Name]
15. Blank line, then: All rights reserved.
16. Blank line, then: ISBN: [the isbn-10 for the paperback]
17. On the next line: ISBN-13: [the isbn-13 for the paperback]
18. After the ISBN-13 line, insert section break, specifically “Odd page”
19. Go back to the Copyright page and click the page layout dropdown.
    1. Should start on even page.
    2. Should be alligned vertically with the bottom.
    3. This section only.
20. Next page will be the Dedication.
    1. “Dedication” in size 14, Centered, All Caps
    2. One blank line
    3. The text of the dedication in normal body text size. (12, right now).
21. After Dedication text, make a new section that starts on the Odd page.
22. Go back to the dedication page and set the page layout
    1. Should be vertically centered.
23. Next Page will be your table of contents.
    1. Go to “References Ribbon”
    2. Click “Table of contents”
    3. I choose automatic table 2 (the one that says table of contents.)
    4. Optionally, fix the header to look like the rest.
24. After the table of contents start a new section on odd page.
25. This will be your Acknowledgment Page.
    1. “Acknowledgments” in size 14
    2. One blank line
    3. The text of the dedication in normal body text size. (12, right now).
26. After Acknowledgment Text, new section, odd page.
27. Back to acknowledgment page and center it vertically.
28. Double click the footer area:
    1. Unclick Link to Previous at the top.
    2. On the left of the ribbon, click page number, then format page numbers.
    3. For this page, it’ll be “i”, and click for it to start counting at i
    4. Ok.
    5. Click Page number again, and click Bottom of page, then plain number 2.
    6. Make sure you have done the same for Odd and Even Numbered pages.
29. Close Header and Footer by clicking that button or double clicking elsewhere.
30. Now fix your headers:
    1. Modify the style to be size 16, bold, centered.
    2. Don’t automatically page break.
    3. Add 72 pts before line.
31. Make sure that you put page break after the last line of each chapter. This will automatically space the next chapter (which starts with a heading) by 72pts (plus one line).
32. Be sure to update the table of contents for the new page numbers.
33. On page 2 (which should be the second page of Chapter 1, double click the header.
34. Type the author name in the header, centered, without indent
35. On page 3, type the title, centered, without indent.
36. With Header and Footers still open
    1. Click on each page upto and including the first page of the first chapter.
    2. Click the Different First Page box on the top of the screen.
37. Save the result.
38. Export as a PDF.