There are plenty of websites offering advice on typesetting a book, but there’s always an element of experimentation when you don’t have the final result to view. I took a long time checking and typesetting Make a Move, but I was still nervous as I unpacked the first shipment of books; until you can see the results, you can’t be sure you made the right choices. I’m writing about my experiences now so you can compare my layout decisions with an image of the final text – the first page of the book, to the left – and hopefully that will make your choices easier. I did all of my typesetting in Microsoft Word, which does everything an amateur typesetter needs, and doesn’t cost anywhere near what Adobe InDesign (the accepted industry standard) does. Just to add a caveat at this point: I’m an amateur typesetter writing for an audience of amateur typesetters; if you spot something in my process that could be improved, or disagree entirely, please wade into the comments and let me know.

Bear in mind that all of my layout decisions were made with one eye on the cost implications, which is something you’ll understand once you’re self -funding a print run, so if my decisions ever seem conservative, that’s probably why. For example if your margins increase, so will your page count and, hence, your unit cost.

One warning based on my own experience: there’s some difference in page measurement between Word for Mac 2008 and Word for Windows 2003, which caused the text to reflow when I moved the file between versions. I had to use Windows to gain access to Adobe Acrobat, and I ended up having to layout the text again. If possible use the same version of Word from start to finish.

Step One – Page Setup

Setting up the page size in Word is easy: just enter the page dimensions based on the size of paper you’re going to print the book on. Most standard book printing sizes aren’t offered in Word, so you’ll need to set up a custom size. Go to File > Page Setup, and then select Manage Custom Sizes from the Paper Size dropdown. In the Custom Sizes dialog, click the + icon and enter the Width and Height into the Paper Size fields. Double-click on the Untitled entry in the list and name the new size (use the name your printer uses for easy reference). For example, Make a Move is printed on Royal paper size, 156 x 234mm. Click OK, and then click OK again to close the Page Setup dialog.

You don’t need to worry about bleeds on your text. The files are centred and the pages cut equally on all sides, so just enter the exact pages size.

Step Two – Page Margins

This is one of the harder choices to make, as you’ve no way of predicting how the book will behave, in a mechanical sense, once it’s printed: how wide will the reader need to open the book so that the left-most text is visible? How much will the pages curve, obscuring that margin? My printer suggests a minimum of 10mm on all margins, but that doesn’t take the number of pages into account, which can effect the curve as the book is opened. I chose 18mm for the Left, Right and Top margins, and 30mm for the Bottom. I set the Footer to 18mm (which left my page numbers a comfortable distance from the text and the bottom of the page) and set the Header to 0mm as there isn’t any header text.

Step Three – Justification

Select all of your body text and justify it (aligning both left and right margins flush to the edge of the printable area). Your intro pages will probably look best centre-aligned, but the rest should be justified. Just look at any published book for confirmation.

Step Four – Fonts

You may want to mix fonts in your text, either using a different font for intro pages, or maybe to highlight a particular scene in the story. Whatever you decide to do, apply your fonts as they are going to appear in the final book now. Font changes later on can push your text out and leave you needing to layout the book again.

You can use any font you want within certain rules, the most important being that is has to be easy to read. That seems obvious, but try reading a page or two with your chosen font to make sure it’s not tiring or just confusing after a while. There are plenty of suitable fonts in a standard installation of Word on Windows and Mac, so just choose a serif font that you like. If you’re using any unusual characters in your text, read my post Font-slapped: A Cautionary Tale before you start. As for font size, 12pt is a good starting point for most serif fonts. Remember that larger print is more readable, but it increases your page count and your unit cost, but don’t go too far the other way and produce a cheap, but unreadable, book. Make a Move uses Times New Roman in 12pt, and I’m very happy with the readability and appearance.

Step Five – Hyphenation

Hyphenation is the process whereby Word breaks long words over two lines to avoid spacing a line out to much, leaving lots of white space. You can hyphenate manually, but Word does a surprisingly good job with some tweaking.

First, select all of the text in the document, then go to Format > Paragraph and deselect the option Don’t hyphenate. You can reselect it for specific paragraphs later if needed. Next, go to Tools > Hyphenation and select Automatically hyphenate document. Click OK, and inspect your text. You should see words broken with a hyphen pretty soon, if not on page one. You need to decide how much hyphenation is acceptable to you. I looked at a lot of books, and decided that three hyphenated words per page was my limit, and that I didn’t want to see more than one hyphenated line in a row. In the Hyphenation dialog, set the Limit consecutive hyphens to option to your chosen value (1 in my case) and click OK. From here, it’s a process of trial an error. Read from page one until you find a page with more than your upper hyphen limit. When you find one, go back into the Hyphenation dialog and increase the Hyphenation zone setting by a small amount before clicking OK. Start reading again until you find the next page with more than your limit of hyphenation, then repeat the process. I think it took me six runs to get the hyphenation to within my limit.

Step Six – Widows and Orphans

Widows and orphans occur when the first line of a new paragraph begins at the bottom of a page, or the last line of a paragraph begins at the top of a new page. Word avoids this by default, moving lines around to join these isolated chunks of text, but this leaves pages with one or two blank lines at the bottom, which looks bad. Disable this automatic behaviour by selecting all of your text, then going to Format > Paragraph and deselecting the Widow/Orphan control option (you can do this earlier, but it should affect your hyphenation much, if at all, doing it after). You’ll now be stuck with (hopefully) a few widow/orphan lines. There are two ways to deal with this.

• As you’re the writer, and have creative control, you can look for lines with only one or two words, or that miss breaking onto a new line by one or two words, and rewrite to force the addition/removal of a line. This sounds flaky, as who would place the needs of typesetting above the integrity of your text, but it can be valid if the change is small and yields the results you want.
• You can adjust the line spacing for a few lines near the bottom/top of the page in question. This is the “proper” way to do it, but you need to be careful to make tiny changes to just enough lines, so that the difference in spacing is invisible to the reader. To change the line spacing, just select the lines you want to change, then select Format > Paragraph and add a point of spacing Before the selected lines.

Summary

Again, I want to reiterate that I’m not a professional typesetter, but I achieved great results using these techniques. Most self-publishing authors can’t afford the services of a professional typesetter, and might see this phase of production as an insurmountable obstacle. I want to dispel that myth, but I’d also love for any pros with advice to comment, even if they shoot down my techniques. I learned by experimentation and got to where I needed to be, but I’m still ready to learn more.