Marketing - to Publishers Electronic Press Formatting

17 October 2011, Marketing - to Publishers Electronic Press Formatting

Introduction: I realized that I need to introduce this blog a little.  I wrote the novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon.  The working title was Daemon, and this was my 21st novel.  Over the last year, I gave you the entire novel in installments that included commentary on the writing.  In the commentary, in addition to other general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the way I built the scenes.  You can look back through this blog and read the entire novel.

I'm using this novel as an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel published.  I'll keep you informed along the way.  At this moment, I'm showing you the marketing material I put together for a novel.

Today's Blog:  In the case of self published works, the rule about formatting a book changes.  Usually, you never want to format a book prior to publication like a final book.  For a work you self publish, you must make the work look as much as possible like the final book.  You have to add in all the special pages, copyright page, introductions, lexicons, thanks, dedications, etc., etc.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, look at an example of any modern published book.  You want to design your own dingbats and put them in.  If you don't know what a dingbat is or how it is used, keep reading this blog.  I'll get to it eventually.

You can easily put in black and white pictures and potentially color pictures in electronic books.  You need to be careful with that too.  If you haven't noticed the many self published works filled with horrible amateur art work, you just aren't looking.  I'll say it again, if you self publish, your book must look exactly like a finished professionally published work.  I'll also repeat this warning--by self publishing, you may be crippling yourself as an author and a writer, but that's enough said on that subject.
More tomorrow about formatting electronically published books.

I'll repeat my published novel websites so you can see more examples:   http://www.ldalford.com/, and the individual novel websites:  http://www.aegyptnovel.com/, http://www.centurionnovel.com/, http://www.thesecondmission.com/, http://www.theendofhonor.com/, http://www.thefoxshonor.com/, and http://www.aseasonofhonor.com/. 

Formatting Your Manuscript

28 August 2011, Formatting Your Manuscript

One great question is how do you format your manuscript for a publisher or for marketing.  I'll show and tell you how I format mine.  This information comes from many sources, but is the way it was done before computers.  I haven't found anyone to give a really different formatting style, and my publisher hasn't complained.  So, unless you find something better, I'd use this.  By the way, this is for a novel and not a nonfiction work, although the formatting is similar.

I don't have the first chapter of Aksinya up on its web page yet, but you can see an example of how I have already formatted the first chapter at this link:
http://www.alfordhome.com/LionelAlford.com/documents/Warrior%20of%20Darkness%20Chapter%201.pdf
The link above will take you to the first chapter of Warrior of Darkness. 

First Page Header
Note that on the first page, the title is in the header on the left side.  The chapter number is in the header on the right side.  Every first page of every chapter should look like this.  This way if the manuscript is printed and gets out of order, the chapter and title are obvious.  While the manuscript is on the computer, this allows the reader to immediately identify the work and chapter of the work.  I bold the title and chapter.

Subsequent Page Headers
If you look at the second and following pages of the chapter, you will see the basic header remains the same, but below the title, on the left side, is the author's last name and the page number.  I don't bold the last name or page number.  I do place a double dash between them.  If you set up the novel as chapter files in the outline view, you can easily get the page number in the header.  I don't advise writing your novels entirely in a single file, but if you do, this is easy too.  The reason for the last name is to identify the author on each page.  The Page numbers is for the reviewer/editor/publisher to keep track of the pages.

Subsequent Chapters
The next chapter is two.  You can do this in Word by having each chapter be a new section and listing the section as the chapter.  There are some other ways of doing this, but this is the way I do it.  The header format is the same for each chapter. 

First Page of the Manuscript
Don't include anything except the manuscript.  It should not have a title page, a thanks page, an attribution, a dedication, an author's prolog, or anything except the first page of the actual novel.  All that other stuff comes later.  Don't put anything extraneous in this copy.

The author's information goes on the left.  Give your real name, your address, email, and phone number.

The novel information goes on the right.  This used to be the copyright information and the word count.  Now-a-days the word count is all you need.  Use the word count of the entire novel.  The copyright is implied and unnecessary unless you really have one.  The author and novel information is single spaced.

Title
Move down a few lines and put the title and the "by-line."  Use your pen name--if you have one.  This is the name you want on the manuscript when it is printed.

First Line
Move down a few more lines and start the text of the novel.

This is the way to format the novel for marketing.  When you send it or parts of it away, the only thing you need is the cover letter and/or the publisher's requested cover.  Many publishers have a requested cover they want to see with the manuscript.  I'll talk about that more when we get to marketing materials.

Notice, I mentioned that Aksinya already has its own website.  I'll discuss that tomorrow.