Getting the manuscript ready

One of the things that I haven't really covered in great detail so far is how to get the manuscript ready for the paperback. The reason for this is that it is not all that complicated and mostly a case of copy and paste.

But there are a few things to remember, even if you have done the layout of your own ebooks. So let me share a few tips with you. I'll base this on the experience I am having with setting this book up on Lulu.

Unlike me you will have the written material ready so this first part is alot quicker for you.

Basically, go to their website and grab the template file you want to use based on the size of book that you want to publish and save it to a book publishing folder for your book project. Open the file and paste in the book content. Next you have to write in the front matter.

The front matter pages go at the front and are usually organised in this order: 1 - Title page, 2- copyright, disclaimers and publication data page, 3- index pages and 4-foreword pages. If you have any other pages that needs to go in the front matter like advertising, a list of your other books etc, then put that between 2 and 3.

Now the fun part begins (or so my wife insists.) as at this point you have all the pages that will go into the book. Now you have to do the typesetting / layout which means you have to line up all the chapters, paragraphs and sentences so they look nice on every page.

You'll have to start every chapter on a new page. It's up to you if you want to start them on the right hand (odd) pages as you still have to pay for the blank pages. I would also suggest that you change the font at this point to something basic like times new roman as this will make sure the pdf process will run smoothly.

Chapter Titles and headlines are often best changed to Arial or some other basic Sans Serif font.

And you have to do this from page 1 - page for page - until you've reached the end. Fun. The final page number has to be dividable by 4 so if you end up with an "uneven" number like for instance 49 you have to decide if you're either adding stuff to 3 more pages or if you have to edit the spaces you have added to reduce the page numbering until you have a page number you can divide by 4.

Some of the providers don't mind and will just add the right number of pages to make up the difference, but if you are submitting a print ready pdf it is likely to get rejected if it has the wrong number of pages. Ok, so several hours later the book file is finally ready.

It is at this stage that you would go to the printer ( lulu in this example) and upload the content file in the correct format.

The next stage would be prepare the cover images. The ideal solution would be to pay someone to do it for you but if you are on a budget, use Photoshop to create the book cover.

I'm sure you've got a fair idea what to put on the front, but don't forget the back! If you're stuck for something to put there, use some of text off your sales page and the testimonials for the book information.

Make sure to follow the instructions in the templates if you do decide to do it yourself, but I would suggest that if you can't afford to pay for having a paperback cover done on elance you should seriously consider if your ebook is worth converting to a paperback in the first place! Unless you haven't made the ebook available for sale already of course.