Before you submit your book to us, we ask that you follow the guidelines on this page. It must be formatted according to our guidelinesbefore you send it to us. The guidelines below are not difficult, but it will require attention on your part.
The books you
submit to us must be a Microsoft Word file.
Page Layout
1. 1" margins all around
2. No headers or footers
Headers and Footers are crucial in books in print, but they are useless in an ebook. Every device uses a different sized screen, so page numbers in a header would be useless. And whatever other information you might put in a header will take up screen real estate badly needed for the book itself. If you have already established headers or footers in your book, delete all content within them. If your book eventually goes to print, we'll put the headers back.
3. No page numbers
4. No section breaks
Ebook formats don't recognize section breaks.
5. No indents at
beginning of paragraphs-no tab markers
Some ebook formats don't recognize TABS. This would have disastrous results if paragraph separation depends on indents separating paragraphs. No doubt you've already used TABS to indent and now you're thinking, "Help! What do I do now?" This is what you do--
1> First single space the entire document. This is very important.
2> Put the cursor at the beginning
of the document.
3> Open the Find/Replace window.
4> In the Find field put a paragraph marker followed by a TAB character. To
do this, find the "Special" dropdown menu. (It'll be there somewhere, although how you reveal it varies from one version of Word to
another.) At the top of the list you'll see "Paragraph Marker" and "Tab Character". Select one, then the other until they are both
in the Find field, paragraph marker first, tab character second, and there should be no space between them.
5> In the Replace field
put two paragraph markers, once again using the Special dropdown menu to access them.
6> Click the "Replace All" button.
6. Single space lines within paragraphs
7. Single space after periods at the ends of sentences
Do a quick find and replace to fix this. Search for two spaces and replace with one space, and you do this in the find and replace box. You need to click the Find/Replace button, repeating the find-replace, until "0" appears in the box. When you see the zero you will know that all double spaces have been replaced by single spaces.
8. Double paragraph return/hard break at end of each paragraph
Double paragraph return refers to two lines separating each paragraph with no indents (Tab characters) used. If you don't know how to delete the Tabs and replace with a double hard return between paragraphs using search and replace, go to 5> above.
9. Center chapter heads in BOLD type using FORMAT CENTER, not
tab key; and put one hard break before and after it. Do not use the TAB key to center text! When centering, use the format button available
to you in the menu bar, or on the format dropdown menu which is now used in the newer versions of Word. Using the TAB key does not
center. It only approximates. Centering using TABS will be unrecognized in most ebook formats and that formatting will be lost. So
please don't center this way.
10. Spell out number of chapter (i.e., "Three" not "3"). Use 12 point font. BOLD TYPE.
11. Center scene breaks using FORMAT CENTER, not the tab key; the preferred format is ~ * ~ one hard break before and after and a space before and after the *.a page break
12. Page breaks: should be used after last paragraph in a chapter, insert one hard break then MANUSCRIPT
STYLES:
PUT A TITLE ON YOUR BOOK! You would be amazed how many authors send us manuscripts without a title!
PUT YOUR NAME BELOW THE
TITLE! Again, you'd be surprised how many authors forget to tell us that they are the author! Also,put your EMAIL address below your
name. This won't be included in the published version of your book, but it will help keep track of your book
13. Use Arial, and set it for 12 point.
14> Turn off all special formatting (like curly quotes and em dashes).
If you don't know how to do this, we'll fix it on our end, but before you send your file please search for the long em dash and replace it with two standard dashes. Ebook formats don't recognize the em dash so we want two short dashes to "stand in" for the unrecognizable em dash. Word help also explains how to change curly quotes to regular quotes.
15> Do not use styles. They will have to be removed for formatting. Electronic publishing requires a very 'stripped down' file to work with. So, please, if you already have styles in your book file, Select all, then choose "Normal" for the style. You might have to put back attributes like italics and centering,
16> In fiction numbers are generally spelled out. Some numbers are acceptable, such as year (1863, 2005), a full date (25 January 1973, July 4, 1776) military time (0745, 2230), house numbers (421 Main, 20512 East Thirty-fourth Street), but when in doubt, check a good style manual or English composition text.
17> Avoid the use of symbols or abbreviations whenever possible (e.g., percent, not %; Avenue, not Ave.).
18> Foreign words should be italicized.
Be careful about diacritical marks; they are often important and a wrong or missing one can make a word's meaning change. Foreign
names and place names are usually not italicized. If you must use them, keep them to an absolute minimum.
Many readers don't enjoy
plowing through words with accent marks they don't know how to interpret. Foreign words will be left as is. We will not attempt to
correctly spell or change an incorrect word to the correct one. Same goes for references to popular culture or technical jargon of
any type. Further, we discourage authors from overusing these references (foreign languages, etc.). While the author may understand
the term, many readers might not and may be turned off to a book because of them.
19> Use italics instead of underlines for inner thoughts, emphasis and foreign characters/words. Do not use underlined characters. We seldom use underlined characters in novels.
20> Avoid using em dashes. Instead use 2 simple hyphens--the character you access with a simple press of the hyphen key--in place of the one long em dash, instead of using parentheses for parenthetical expressions. They should be 2 hyphens with no spaces before and after. If you use spaces we could end up with 2 hyphens on its own line because they can break into the next line at these spaces and orphan themselves from the preceding parent sentence. Dashes are used exactly like parentheses--to add information or to introduce momentarily a different topic--and as discussed below. Don't overdo them; they're distracting.
Warning! MS Word has an automatic em dash so that when you type 2 hyphens, Word will automatically replace them with 1 em dash. Please turn off this irritating feature in your Word preferences. Just type in 2 hyphens, with no spaces between and no spaces at front or back. The 2 hyphens should sit--between words like I've just illustrated.
21> Use ellipses for omissions in quoted material or for showing incomplete thoughts or faltering
speech or thought.
Do not format ellipses and do not space between the periods in an ellipsis. (i.e., ... not . . .). Spaced periods
will wrap around from the middle of an ellipse. Then we have half the ellipse at the end of one line and the other half at the beginning
of another. Warning! MS Word has an automatic ellipse. Please turn it off in your Word preferences. Just type in 3 periods, no spaces
between and no spaces at front or back. The 3 dots should sit...between words.
22> Ending sentences. Whenever possible, stick with periods or question marks to end sentences. Use exclamation marks sparingly; they have far more effect that way. When a sentence ends with an ellipse, (3 dots) you can leave it as if it is deliberately or grammatically incomplete (e.g., "If you ever..." or "I wish..."). There are instances where adding a fourth dot, a question mark, or an exclamation point is correct, but they are rare, so the rule here is not to do it unless you are absolutely certain it is correct. When in doubt, use a period and you'll probably be safe.