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).
If you don't understand something or have trouble, ASK.
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, including docx, unless we approve it first. If you have a newer version of WORD, don't use the native format, our software won't handle it, especially the .docx format.
Then:
- Remove ALL section breaks.
- Remove header and footer materials
- Hopefully, you've used "normal" for most of your book. If not, we'll work on it later.
- Use the various heading styles (Heading 1, 2, etc.) consistently and don't reformat them unless you know how to do that by changing the style itself. We're going to change that anyway.
- Use headings if you need a table of contents. We'll generate one automatically using the heading tags.
- If you automatically numbered your chapters, go back and number them manually or remove the numbers. Our conversion software can't handle auto numbering.
- 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.
- Add your front material. Such things as:
- Inside page "teaser" (sample). A one-page excerpt from the book (around 200 words).
- List of books you've previously published (especially if we published them) , grouped by subject, series, or publisher.
- Title page - required (We'll probably fool with it, but at least give it a shot)
- 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 or we may reject the book as too financially risky (we don't have deep pockets to defend against a liable suit). We'll use our basic copyright page and add any special notes you included here. This is also a good place to give credit to people who helped you (such as graphic designers, etc.) e.g.: "cover art by Pablo Picasso".
- Dedication/Acknowledgments 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!
- Table of Contents. Just note where it belongs. Some of our formats have their own idea of what a TOC should look like. Since most can "flow" text as the reader changes fonts and sizes, it's essential to do it "their way" so the TOC will change with the text reflow. We'll generate one for the pdf version.
- Add your end matter:
- Author's notes
- Biography or "About the Author"
- Sales pitch for other books you've written or next in series. Here is a good place for a sample chapter or two from another book.
- Create your "back cover" sales text. We'll use it on the book's listing page. Actually, we need pitches with the following limitations: 200 characters, 300 characters, and a full description (try not to write a novel here, just enough to describe the work in a manner that will present it in the best light and make the customer want to buy it). We'll probably get fairly involved in the final form of these sales pitches.
- Zip the whole thing up (book, internal art, cover art if you have one that you "just have to have", notes to us) and email it as an attachment to an email address we'll provide when we accept your project.
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