At the moment’s visitor publish is by Sandra Wendel and Paul Nylander.

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Why would a ebook editor and ebook designer crew as much as write a weblog about design? As a result of too many copy editors and authors who assume they’re ebook designers really feel the necessity to unnecessarily fairly up their Phrase paperwork.

Simply cease. Cease taking part in artwork director and simply write the darn ebook. The manuscript shouldn’t be the place for design! Whether or not that’s your 90,000-word romantasy the place you envision flourishy fonts for drop caps within the chapter openings. Or your small business/management manuscript the place you need particular dingbats and grey containers. Or totally different font sizes and colours you assume are perfect for the varied ranges of headers.

The manuscript shouldn’t be the place to point your aesthetic preferences.

Even if you happen to didn’t play designer, have you ever spaced down with “enters” to interrupt the web page for chapters and adjusted line spacing as a result of you understand widows and orphans are dangerous, however centering numerous epigraphs and pull quotes is nice? You set areas on both sides of em dashes since you thought they regarded higher in Phrase, and, lastly, you added web page numbering and highlighted sidebars?

Guess what? All that fancy design stuff you probably did in your manuscript? It will get stripped out, anyhow. Poof!

When you may take nice satisfaction with the look of your manuscript pages in Phrase or Vellum or Atticus, you can be mighty disenchanted if you happen to ship your information off to knowledgeable ebook designer for canopy and inside typesetting. All that further “bling” you added or extraneous spacing and coding could cause large complications to your designer. Plus, a very designed manuscript is prone to value you extra, only for the effort issue to take away that formatting.

Ask the designer forward of time: “What can I do to make your work simpler or environment friendly and correct so you may focus extra on the design than the cleanup?”

What to debate forward of the design work: course of and objectives

When you perceive how your Phrase doc goes into your designer’s software program, you may keep away from creating issues for the designer, and the inevitable errors and additional duties that observe and thus save everyone time and also you cash.

Whether or not you’re the writer or the editor, there isn’t any have to create all these particular elaborations. These visible parts are design choices you and your designer make upfront when making a customized structure for the look of your pages. This design is crafted by the ebook designer sometimes inside InDesign, and when completed proper, your Phrase doc will circulate proper into that software program framework.

Usually, the essential beginning place for the designer begins by figuring out the completed dimension of the ebook pages (6×9 or 5½ x 8½ or one thing else), the kind of cowl (mushy, arduous, jacket), and variations (paperback and hardcover and e-book and audiobook).

These selections change the design choices, so they’re a giant deal; they’re based mostly partially on comparable books, bookstore and shopper expectations for ebook sizes, and the size of the ebook. (If you happen to specify too giant a dimension for a brief ebook in size, then the backbone width may be too slim for textual content.) Possibly you bulk up a shorter ebook with wider margins. Designers know these methods of the commerce, however they should perceive the objectives of the writer and editor too.

If you end up prepared to offer the designer your edited Phrase doc—the manuscript—observe these pointers.

Half 1: How finest to arrange a Phrase doc for manufacturing

Consistency is crucial characteristic of a clear manuscript: No matter you do to preformat, do it the identical all through.

Wait, you say. We simply stated to not format.

Format on this context shouldn’t be design. Format tells the designer what the construction is. For instance, what traces ought to be a heading, or a subheading, physique textual content, caption, block quote—not what you assume it ought to appear like.

That final paragraph is so essential, please learn it once more.

Examine along with your designer on their explicit preferences, however these are just a few good pointers.

1. Don’t go away monitoring and marginal notes in your ultimate Phrase doc. The designer’s job isn’t to reply lingering editorial questions between the writer and editor.

2. Present urged picture placement, file title, captions, and alt textual content (if EPUB) with a path within the manuscript like this: [photo 35.jpg: My sister (left) and I hiked the Grand Canyon in 2016.]

And plan to offer the precise high-resolution pictures, graphics, and illustrations as separate information in a folder, with naming/numbering to match the in-text callout. (Picture information for print are normally fairly giant and finest conveyed to the designer through Dropbox, Google Drive, or another file switch mechanism.)

3. Equally, different design notes could be known as out with a constant markup—brackets are a standard trick, since they’re hardly ever discovered within the basic textual content. [Design Note: next paragraph should appear handwritten.] Simply do not forget that any precise textual content type formatting (coloration or underlines, for instance) is discarded out of your Phrase doc when it flows into InDesign.

4. Click on on the paragraph image in Phrase>Dwelling>Paragraph to see symbols (these are hidden characters) within the Phrase doc.

So as an alternative of lengthy strings of enters that appear like this, you may delete them. Use web page breaks as an alternative (create a tough web page break with Management + Enter on a PC or Cmd + Enter on a Mac).

5. View the Types Pane, and activate “Present kinds guides” and “Present direct formatting guides” with “Checklist: Types in use” to see the doc’s construction.

Create construction inside your doc with headings and subheadings through the use of Phrase’s Types the place you will notice Title, Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3. Spotlight the chapter quantity and chapter title and make them Heading 1. The primary degree of subheading can be highlighted and set with type Heading 2.

Whereas the precise feel and appear of those headings is unimportant in your Phrase doc (the designer will change this on import), these kinds can protect the doc construction when shifting from Phrase doc to InDesign template and can be utilized to create a contents web page.

Particular formatting

1. Let’s say you insert a poem or a sidebar or perhaps an extended indented block citation. You may both use a Phrase type to delineate these sections, or you may point out the place these parts start and the place they finish with bracketed path like your picture captions. Designers don’t wish to guess or decelerate manufacturing by asking or guessing. Examples can be [box] [end box] [open block quote] [end block quote].

2. Likewise, focus on how you need to mark pull quotes along with your designer forward of time. Generally the designer desires the phrase or sentence bracketed. Then the designer can seize that wording and break it from the flowing pages the place it really works finest through the preliminary formatting move—not later when web page circulate turns into a way more essential headache. Don’t mark the pull quotes in your PDF proofreading step and anticipate the designer to reflow the pages round a last-minute design component.

3. Identical with these summaries that authors of enterprise books usually put on the finish of every chapter. Focus on deal with the look of these bulleted summaries—and another design component in your ebook if you and the designer create your web page template.

4. Does your textual content use spaced breaks within the chapters? These ought to be particularly known as out (say, a line of ••• or ***)—don’t depend on the designer catching an additional clean line, particularly if you happen to’ve littered clean traces all through the manuscript.

5. Did you chop and paste textual content from a web based supply? Properly, don’t (that could possibly be a copyright violation). However if you happen to did, the formatting embedded in that supply textual content comes proper together with it, together with hyperlinks. Unlink and insert the textual content solely, even when you need to retype just a few traces. Or use the Model Panel to clear formatting on the pasted textual content (spotlight and click on Regular).

6. Use the Phrase characteristic for a bulleted or numbered listing to create yours (below Dwelling/Paragraph).

7. Are you creating tables in your doc? Use Phrase’s Insert/Desk characteristic and never tabs. InDesign can protect that construction.

8. Do you’ve gotten hyperlinks? An index? Footnotes and/or endnotes? InDesign has help for importing a few of these particular parts as effectively. Discuss along with your designer upfront.

9. If you happen to love your designer, create a visible type information as a highway map to your collaboration. This can be a listing of the degrees of headings and different construction, and what you’ve gotten used to code them (reminiscent of Heading 1 and Heading 2). Embrace the way you present picture placements and captions, pull quotes and summaries. Point out particular design parts reminiscent of graphics or prospers and the place you need them.

10. Quirky punctuation:

• Though Chicago Handbook of Model type requires the ellipses to be three durations with nonbreaking fixed-width spacing . . . like this (not … an ellipsis character), ensure you perceive what your designer/typesetter wants within the manuscript, after which do it persistently.
• The em sprint is strong—with no spacing on both facet. Identical with the en sprint for 1923–2003. Don’t insert areas round it.
• About these citation marks and apostrophes. There are straight and there are curly (“typographer”) marks. Are you aware when every is used? Trace: “69” is the best way to recollect which approach the curls are imagined to go. However distance, time, and angle use straight marks. Alert your designer if you’re utilizing each.
• Make certain open contractions begin with a closing single quote—not the default for an autocorrect phrase processor. Catch ’em now within the copy edit.

11. Talking of areas, somebody might want to take away all double areas between sentences. It doesn’t matter what you had been taught in highschool typing class, place one house solely after punctuation—a rule that typesetters have adopted because the introduction of moveable sort. (Solely typewriters and textual content in fixed-width fonts—particular formatting—use a double-space after sentence ending punctuation.) Fixing it is a easy find-and-replace course of that the editor ought to be doing within the copy edit.

12. Additionally, no want to incorporate web page numbers, however if you happen to do, please be sure they’re in a web page header/footer, not the precise textual content. Maintain them in earlier drafts if you happen to like, for reference, however bear in mind they are going to all change when the manuscript is typeset.

13. Usually for books, it’s best to submit your manuscript as one full file. Not numerous chapters or bits and items to return later. This one-file strategy reduces the prospect for errors.

• The editor ought to be compiling all the weather and ensuring they’re all there, and that they’re formatted persistently, together with the pattern contents web page (no web page numbers wanted right here; these are decided when the ebook is paginated), copyright web page with all gadgets reminiscent of ISBNs and copyright discover and disclaimers.
• The one lacking component ought to be an index (solely whether it is crucial, and most books don’t require an index). Because the index is compiled with precise web page numbers, that is normally completed after typesetting, when the ebook is in PDF format (though it’s potential so as to add index markers in Phrase upfront). Do let the designer know that an index is coming, and embody the index on the Contents (we name it Contents, not Desk of Contents) web page.

As all the time, let consistency be your information for any editorial choices about design.

Half 2: Easy methods to effectively mark PDFs

By somewhat designer magic (and fairy mud and professionalism with InDesign), your Phrase doc comes again to you in precise stunning pages in a PDF format. As soon as typesetting is underway, you don’t make any extra adjustments to your Phrase manuscript—go forward and archive it.

When the writer and the editor or proofreader obtain the PDF, marking that file for errors, insertions, or deletions is a totally totally different recreation from enhancing a doc in Phrase. As an alternative of instantly making adjustments, you utilize PDF markup symbols within the Adobe Acrobat information to point (or “mark up”) the place the designer/typesetter ought to make corrections.

You can not make the adjustments your self, and it is a good factor.

This two-step course of is critical, because the designer wants to make sure that any adjustments don’t have an effect on the encircling textual content or the next pages. Even one thing as small as a comma can throw off a typeset web page, probably forcing a reflow of the whole chapter or the rest of the ebook. Use the Adobe instruments and instructions to point out insertions, deletions, adjustments. The markings present up in the correct margin, so as. It’s a easy matter for the designer, utilizing InDesign, to precisely ping proper by way of these adjustments if they’re marked correctly.

Proofers and editors or authors: When you can go away questions for one another in these marginal feedback, do resolve all of your questions earlier than returning the marked PDF to the designer. It isn’t the designer’s job to resolve an editorial query.

• Let’s say you’ve gotten this remark from the proofreader in your PDF [I found titles capped on page 87 but not here on page 156. For consistency, which should be capped?] It’s as much as the writer and editor/proofer to resolve these inconsistencies and mark up the adjustments earlier than the corrected PDF goes again to the designer. If not, the designer then has to cease, learn the restore in context, perceive what you are attempting to perform, and ensure they aren’t making a Whac-a-Mole state of affairs the place they repair one merchandise however create a completely new drawback.
• Make your feedback crystal clear, particularly if the designers you might be working with are non-native English audio system.
• Let’s say the designer can’t work out what you are attempting to do when the proofreader feedback: Wikipedia reveals this spelling as Smythe, not Smith. Which ought to we use? Then they must cease and ask, or make a remark to remark again, and also you’re assured to have yet one more spherical of edits. Your quote for design work could not have included two or three rounds.
• Know up ront what was included in your design quote and when the meter begins ticking with consulting time to be billed hourly with a number of writer adjustments. PDF shouldn’t be the stage to start out enhancing and revising. It’s a time for sprucing towards ultimate pages for printing.

Focused markup instruments are extra exact, so are typically most popular the place potential (for textual content adjustments, formatting adjustments, as examples). However basic feedback can be used when a extra basic assertion is named for. Drop the remark icon proper within the space you might be discussing. Don’t make the designer surprise what you might be referring to if the icon is sitting in a margin. Oh, there. Why didn’t you say so? Don’t make a designer attempt to learn your thoughts. They haven’t mastered that expertise but.

How we would like you to make use of this data

I (Sandra Wendel) am a nonfiction ebook editor who has written and revealed my very own books and have shepherded my authors by way of manufacturing, publication, and advertising and marketing. I don’t simply shove my authors out of the enhancing nest after our collaborative edit as a result of I do know they don’t know what comes subsequent. I even wrote a ebook about what first-time authors have to know. I simply see too many new editors whom I mentor who don’t know put together manuscripts for publication, and authors who assume they’re creatives.

Authors (and unaware editors) spend time formatting the Phrase doc, taking part in with fonts, and don’t notice all that fancy formatting strips out when a Phrase doc goes into InDesign to my colleague, Paul, who’s scripting this weblog with me.

I (Paul Nylander) am a multi-genre ebook designer working with small publishers, freelance editors, and self-publishing authors. So I do know the manufacturing technique of a ebook could be daunting. Nevertheless it can be so very rewarding. I consider within the energy of unbiased publishing to share concepts and underrepresented voices. That’s the reason I additionally work arduous to tamp down the well-meaning misinformation (and the frequent not-so-well-meaning predatory gamers) to assist authors reach no matter approach they outline their very own success.

Collectively, we determined to tell our colleagues on each the editorial facet and the design facet effectively and successfully information our shoppers by way of the method. The aim: a smoother design course of that minimizes pointless friction, saves time by eliminating miscommunication (amongst writer, editor, proofreader, and designer), prevents awkward design missteps, and customarily avoids stress and frustration all the best way round.

• If you’re an editor, you may convey this experience to your enhancing work.
• If you’re a ebook designer, you may ship this publish to the editors and authors you’re employed with.
• If you’re an writer, you need to know the place to effectively spend your time (writing the phrases, planning for advertising and marketing, not taking part in with fonts and colours and spacing).

We talked with different designers who had loads to say about their very own frustrations in working with edited manuscripts. Our bullet factors listed here are a compilation of their recommendation and ours. Because of our design colleagues for sharing their pet peeves: Lisa Pelto, Concierge Advertising and Guide Publishing Providers, conciergemarketing.com; Marko Markovic, 5mediadesign.com; and Rachel Valliere, PrintedPageStudios.com.