Ebook publisher
"Great Books, Affordable Reading "

How to Prepare Your Manuscript for Publication

Read our contract! By submitting to us, you will automatically accept the terms of the contract.  If you don't understand something, ASK.  Or consult your attorney.

These guidelines were written for a standard novel or non-fiction book. Some things obviously don't apply to other works (poetry for instance).

You probably created your manuscript for submission to a traditional publisher: double spaced, lines, two spaces between sentences, underlined italics and so forth.

Make a copy of you manuscript in Microsoft WORD 2000 format, or Rich Text Format (RTF).  No other format will be accepted unless we approve it first.  Then:

1. Highlight the entire body of the document and change the paragraph format to single spaced, first line indented 0.17", no extra spaces between paragraphs. Don't use manual spacing or tabs to indent the first line of a paragraph (please remove them).
2. Now, go back and fix the chapter headings and such that shouldn't have been converted. In WORD use Heading 2 or a similar consistency.
3. Do a mass change to replace two spaces with one (to reduce the inter-sentence gap).
4. Change the type style to Georgia, 12 point (to see what it will look like in our html format - this page is shown in Georgia if your browser handles it, as most do).
5. If you automatically numbered your chapters, go back and number them manually. Our conversion software can't handle auto numbering.
6. Find all underlined words in your mss and convert them to italics where appropriate (Word actually has a non-intuitive option for this in its find/change box).
7. Make sure your illustrations remain in the correct location.
   For the following items, refer to a similar book in your shelves for content and style.
   Many items are optional.
8. Add your front material.  Such things as:
   1. List of books you've previously published (especially if we published them) , grouped by subject, series, or publisher.
   2. Title page - required (We'll probably fool with it, but at least give it a shot)
   3. Copyright page - required. (we'll add our publishing notice, but you retain the copyright).  Don't forget your disclaimer for fiction works (All characters are fictional. Any resemblance blah blah is purely coincidental, etc.). If your book is libelous or slanderous, we may add a phrase of our own, washing our hands of the contents.
   4. Dedication if any (To my 4th grade teacher who inspired me to do better in spite of her, my dog, mom, grandma, and so on).   Don't say anything that will get you sued!
   5. Table of Contents if needed or you just want to for the heck of it. Use the automatic function of your word processor so the page numbers will change when the format of the document changes. Generally not needed for fiction, but do what pleases you.
9. Add your end matter:
   1. Bibliography
   2. Author's notes
   3. Sales pitch for other books you've written or next in series. Here is a good place for a sample from another book.
   4. Biography or "About the Author"
10. Create your "back cover" sales text. We'll use it on the book's listing page.
11. Zip the whole thing up (book, internal art, cover art, notes to us) and email it as an attachment to an email address we'll provide when we accept your project.