All about Book Formatting

sharee fondy
3 min readAug 18, 2018

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As an author, you must be knowledgeable enough on how to format your book, not just write and design it. In this article, you would be given some tips on how to format your book effectively. Find out for further details on these details right here.

1. Your book’s size — the first decision that you must make is to know your book’s size. The usual size is around 7 x 9 inches. If you happen to write a book for elderlies or kids, then it is best to make the trim size bigger. Moreover, you should put some illustrations and pictures too. Learn more about book formatting, go to this link here.

2. The margin — margins are very important for creating your book’s design. Margins can affect your page size’s selection. If you have a huge book, then the margins are also huge. For book’s sizes 6"x 9" through 9"x 10", the margins must be around 5" and 1.5".

3. Book parts — inside your book is known as the book block. It is actually divided into three, namely: front matter, back matter, and body text.

4. Front matters — this consist all the pages that are found before the body text. Front matters are conventionally numbered using roman numerals. The pages are counted; but, the blank pages do not have written page numbers. The headers, too, are uncommonly used in for this section. This page consists of the book’s title, publisher, subtitle, and the author’s full name. This is an optional page, but it has a very nice touch. The page two may be a blank page or the other books that are also written by the same author.

Also, the copyright page could be placed on the back of the title page. It consist information like copyright notice, publisher, date of publication, and place of publication. The main purpose of having a copyright page is to defend the author’s right for claim if there is plagiarism. The numbers of book, illustrator, and photo credits could also be placed there. The fonts are usually smaller in contrast to the main body text. Take a look at this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing for more information.

5. Main body texts — this is divided into three, namely: sections, parts, and chapters. If the introduction happens to be written by another person, it must be placed in the front matter but if the author himself wrote it, then it must be placed in the main body text. Main body text is numbered with Arabic numerals that start from number 1 up to the last part of the book.

The parts are normally bigger in contrast to the chapter and must start on a new right hand page. The parts normally have introductions to various related chapters. The section could either be smaller or larger than the chapters. The chapters are the division of majority of the book and must be sequentially numbered, even though they are divided into various parts.

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