self-publishing

How to Format a Paperback Novel for the UK Market

Using Word to Format a Paperback – UK

I make a part of my income from formatting novels for other writers, so obviously it would be madness to give away the secrets of how I do that, right?

Well, maybe that is actually wrong. Some people have time but no money, others have money but no time. If you are one of the latter, and you want your novel formatted just reach out to me and I will do a professional job for you at a reasonable rate.

If on the other hand, you are time rich money poor, then below is the secret laid out for you in full detail. It’s my first final draft (We all know what a first final draft is, right? It’s the one you think is perfect but it isn’t really) so if you spot any mistakes, or if it raises more questions than answers, please tell me.

And just like how some restaurants will supply the recipes for their signature dishes, safe in the knowledge that many customers would sooner leave it to the professionals, I am happy to let you see how I do what I do. If nothing else, some of you might appreciate why my charges are actually a little on the cheap side.

How To Format a Novel in Word

Okay, here’s the link you need. This is a .DOCX file so it is only going to be useful to people using Word 2013 or later. Also, your computer will warn you not to open it unless you are sure it’s from a safe source. I can only tell you, there is nothing sinister in there and you are just going to have to trust me. I can’t prove a thing. But most people coming here probably already know me, so that’s cool.

BasicNovel129x198

This file is set up exactly like a novel with the correct page size and general layout conventions. In addition, instead of consisting of generic lorem ipsum and Insert Title Here, text, the document itself is a step-by-step instruction manual for how to tweak and adjust the settings to suit your own personal aesthetic preferences.

When you open it, I recommend you save a copy with the title of your novel, and then set about dropping your text into place while keeping the original version to check back in case you did anything wrong.

What is an ISBN, and Do I Need an ISBN for My Book?

Does my UK Published Book Need an ISBN?

You might think the answer to this is a resounding yes, and in most cases it will be. In fact, technically the word “published” pretty much presumes you have an ISBN. However in some cases, the answer may surprise you.

Read on for more information.

As always, please note, this article is written in the UK for self-publishers who need a UK perspective on the subject. Readers in the USA or Australia may find the general information useful, but not the specific UK bits.

What is an ISBN?

An ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is like a birth certificate for a book. It means that the book is a recognised entity in the world. But if a human is born and, for whatever reason, does not have a birth certificate, then they are still a human being and every bit as real and legitimate as someone who does have one.

And just as a human needs a birth certificate, or some form of official recognition such as a naturalisation certificate, to participate in all aspects of society, so a book that wishes to be part of the big wide world of Goodreads, Amazon, Waterstones, and other major retailers, needs an ISBN

However, a book is still a valid thing – a product – which can, in certain circumstances, still be sold even without an ISBN.

When is it okay NOT to have an ISBN?

If your book will be sold exclusively by you; within your personal network, via your own website, at events and talks, or through third party selling sites like eBay, then is does not require an ISBN.

In addition, if you have a good friend or relative who owns a shop, and they have promised to stock your book, and they will buy copies direct from you, you do not need an ISBN. Even if the local bookshop wants copies and they are happy to buy them from you, then you probably don’t need an ISBN although the absence of an ISBN could really put them off.

When do I NEED an ISBN?

A barcode and ISBN on the back of the book makes it look more professional, so even if you think your local shop will buy direct from you, it might improve your chances if you have the ISBN.

You DO need an ISBN if you hope to see your book stocked in any book retailer that you can’t directly supply (and usually even if you can), or in any official organisation that sells books, e.g. the National Trust gift shops or any museum gift shop. These organisations will not (except in extremely rare circumstances) buy direct from the author. They also NEED a barcode in order to use their scanner at the point of sale.

N.B. – being ABLE to order your book does not mean that a particular shop will ever hold stock. That’s another big side issue.

You need an ISBN if you hope that your local library will buy a copy. Without an ISBN they simply can’t buy it at all. Also, without an ISBN you cannot claim any public lending rights royalties. (see below).

They may be persuaded to accept a donated copy, but you should check first because libraries do not usually accept unsolicited books to their collection. If your book has a lot of useful local content they are more likely to accept a copy and put it into the system. Even if you give them a copy, some libraries may still require a barcode, which realistically means you need an ISBN.

You also need an ISBN if you want to see your book listed on Goodreads, or to list it normally on Amazon. And, of course, if you are using any print-on-demand and distribution service, like Amazon KDP or IngramSpark then you can’t proceed without allocating an ISBN.

Amazon will, eventually, create a page for any book that has an ISBN. So will Goodreads.

You can add it yourself, or wait until it gets added, but it will be there when, or in case, anyone wants to review it or discuss it on Goodreads, or sell a second-hand copy on Amazon.

The Pros and Cons of an ISBN

Cons

ISBNs cost money to purchase (quite a lot if you only buy one! See “How do I get an ISBN in the UK” – below)
Once your book is published you have to give some to the legal deposit libraries.
It’s a bit of extra hassle

Pros

Your book looks official (because it is)
Your book can (in theory) be stocked in bookshops
Your book will (eventually) get listed on Goodreads and Amazon

That’s … more or less it, in a nutshell. I feel as though I have missed something here but I have to publish at some point.

How do I get an ISBN in the UK?

First of all, if you are self-publishing or being traditionally published with Blue Poppy Publishing then we handle all of this for you.

If you are self-publishing independently then you will need to purchase one or more ISBNs from Nielsen.

You can ONLY purchase UK IBSNs from Nielsen.

If anyone else offers to sell you an ISBN then your book will be officially published by them. The main exception of which I am aware is that Amazon KDP will offer you a free ISBN. While that technically means they are the the publisher of your book, it doesn’t mean a lot and you are still in control. However, if you are going to publish your book with a print run, or with IngramSpark either as well as, or instead of KDP then you need your own ISBN and you may as well apply it to KDP as well. (There is still some debate over this but it’s a side issue)

Here’s the link for the Nielsen ISBN store https://nielsenisbnstore.com/Home/Isbn

As soon as you go there you will note (at the time of posting) that the pricing system is just about the most unfair looking scheme ever.

1 x ISBN = £91
10 x ISBNs = £169 (or £16.90 each)
100 x ISBNs = £379 (£3.79 each)
1,000 x ISBNs = £979 (98pence each)

I expect there is a valid reason, but I can’t fathom it. Probably to do with processing fees. Heaven only knows how it works for Amazon, or Harper Collins who must use tens of thousands of ISBNs

Anyway, there’s nothing you can do about it, but do not be tempted to buy an ISBn from a company offering them to you for a tenner, or whatever. As I say, they will then officially be your publisher and you will almost certainly have difficulty listing your book properly on the database.

How do I get the book barcode for my ISBN?

Rule ONE: Don’t pay for this service.

The ISBN you get from Nielsen doesn’t come with a barcode. But you need one on your book. Luckily, there are plenty of websites that will make a barcode for you free of charge. My favourite one to use is BooksFactory who are a printer based in Poland. I love their quotes form, too, because it is instant and doesn’t require my email to get a quote. Also they are usually cheaper than everyone else’s, especially on very short runs.

Anyway, their barcode generator is here; https://booksfactory.co.uk/index.php?cPath=78_80
just copy and paste the number into the form and hit go. It will generate a B&W PDF of your barcode at the correct size – 25mm (1″) high – to insert into an InDesign or Photoshop (etc.) cover file.

Registering your book on the Nielsen database

This will need an article of its own at some point. If you want it and it’s not here then ask and I will try and motivate myself to write it.

In brief. Nielsen’s websites have terrible UI and I spend a lot of my life screaming at the screen. There are two main parts.

https://www.nielsentitleeditor.com/titleeditor/ for adding new titles to the database
https://bookorders.nielsenbooknet.com/ for informing you of any new orders from wholesalers.

Nielsen isn’t a wholesaler, they are a data service. You list your book/s on their Title Editor site with the correct ISBN, title, author name, cover, and all the other pertinent information and they serve it to the wholesaler which seems now to be just one comany, Gardners, who then provide that same data to the retailers, Waterstones and the rest.

If Waterstones want a book they place an order with Gardners who then send you and order through the Book Orders site. You raise an invoice and post the book to Gardners in Eastbourne, and they then open the package and add it to the order from the branch of Waterstones in your High Street. I know it seems crazy, but not as crazy as Waterstones ordering books from thousands of different athors.

Anyway, it’s a massive minefield and one of a number of good reasons to self-publish through a small independent publisher like Blue Poppy Publishing.

What is Legal Deposit?

As soon as you create a book-baby with its ISBN birth certificate you also have to give, free of charge, a copy of your book to the British Library. This is a legal requirement and you don’t get paid a penny for it. In fact you have to cover P&P as well.

Legal Deposit Office,
The British Library,
Boston Spa,
Wetherby,
West Yorkshire,
LS23 7BY

In addition they will probably ask you to send 5 copies to the other Legal Deposit Libraries. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Cambridge University and the Bodleian at Oxford.

If they ask, you are legally obliged to send them, but you don’t have to volunteer.

Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries,
Unit 21 Marnin Way,
Edinburgh,
EH12 9GD

Again you can’t charge and you have to pay for postage. It is, however, worth using a signed for service. From personal experience, they haven’t always been 100% perfect in acknowledging receipt. Sorry to have to say that.

If you are using a Blue Poppy ISBN then this will all be handled at this end, and you don’t need to worry.

What about Public Lending Rights – PLR?

If your book is stocked in an offical UK library, and if even just one person borrows it, then you become entitled to PLR.

It’s not likely to be a fortune, possibly a few pence, perhaps a few pounds, but it’s every year, it’s free to sign up and if you don’t then you don’t get anything.

This is another area that could do with expanding into more detail but if you visit https://www.bl.uk/plr you can find more information. If you already have a book in print with an ISBN of course, then you should register, and claim your title.

Some notes on editing a self-published book.

As well as being a writer, and a publisher of other writers, I used to present a radio show called “Book Club” on The Voice, a local community radio station in North Devon
(as a volunteer).
I see lots of self-published books. Most are reasonably well edited, but one or two have come to my attention which appear to have been written for school homework and not even marked. One of the worst had an error in the dedication and multiple errors on the first page. That book and, many like it, are not just embarrassing to the author, they also give the world of self-publishing a bad reputation that the rest of us have to work twice as hard to shake off. Sorry if that sounds overdramatic.

I know a few authors who do a passable job of self-editing although I would never recommend it (few of us are blessed with the ability to see our own mistakes, as a cursory glance over the articles in this website will illustrate!) Many more will pass their manuscript over to a trusted friend or family member who has a talent for spotting mistakes, but by far the best option is to get a professional editor. It need not cost the earth, and is money well spent if you aim to sell beyond your closest circle of friends.

There are three broad types of editing as follows. Unfortunately, the terms used and their definitions are not universally agreed on, as a brief serach of the internet will reveal. I am using the following terms and will explain each below.

Structural/developmental edit
Line edit
Copy edit
Proofreading

A structural edit or developmental edit will look at the overall structure of the book. If it is a novel, the editor may suggest removal of entire paragraphs or even chapters, adding new chapters, changing the sequence of chapters, changing the ending, the motivation of the main characters, removal of excessive characters, speeding up the pace by removing description, changing “tell” to “show” etc etc.

N.B. We’ve never consciously done this at Blue Poppy Publishing partly because our authors are already pretty good at telling their story, and partly because we don’t work to a formula. That’s not to say we will never go down this route, but I don’t expect to any time soon. What almost always happens, however, is that the author will send their first draft to a few trusted Beta readers who will, sometimes, read it and provide feedback. If the author agrees with the feedback they will make changes, usually before we see the M/S.

A line edit is more about checking for things like overall sentence structure, e.g. avoiding run on sentences, clunky grammar, etc. , consistency, e.g. do the heroe’s eyes change colour, or does a supporting character change name part way through the book? The line edit will also correct spellings, grammar, and punctuation as it goes through but this is also considered in more detail at the copy edit stage.

The copy edit, also sometimes called proofreading, is the final nit-picking stage. This is where, we hope, the last stray spelling error, abberrant
or superfluous comma, and missing full-stop is corrected. I say “we hope” because while we aim for perfection, I suspect that typographical errors are a little like bacteria; you can only reduce them to an acceptable level, and never eradicate them completely. As an example, after three passes of editing, and during the formatting stage, I noticed that “St. Pancras Station” in London, had been rendered as “St. Pancreas”! I corrected that, but we still found four or five things that were arguably incorrect after printing. The book concerned currently has 55 reviews and an average 4.4 stars on Amazon, so I think we got away with it.

Proofreading, this is a specific stage which does exactly what the name suggests. This is the stage of reading the proof copy. This used to be a physical printed copy but these days it is more likely to be a PDF. There shouldn’t be anything wrong by now, but there always is. The proofreader will catch most of those sneaky bits that got through every other stage. They will also note anything that doesn’t look quite right in the layout. A single word on a new line when it could be re-jigged to get it on the line above, for example.

In the main, because we have to work to a tight budget, we usually get a general line edit and copy edit rolled into one, then a proofread before printing, just in case.

You should anticipate costs of at least £10 per thousand words for a decent job of editing. More if your manuscript requires it and a LOT more if you also need a structural edit. The better your own editing is, the less it’s likely to cost.

Most editors will edit a few pages of your MS and give you a clear idea of their costs once they know your style and the work likely to be involved. This will also give you a clear indication of the sort of improvements they are likely to make.

Recommended editors.

We have used a number of editors in particular Sarah Dawes thankthecat@gmail.com who edits all of my (Oliver’s) books.
Sarah is a member of the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders and is always my first choice.
I can wholeheartedly recommend Sarah. She will not only pick up obvious typographical, punctuation, grammar, and spelling errors, as you would expect, but will also fact check all sorts of things, from historical details and anachronisms, to foreign words and phrases (she sent my Latin to her old Latin teacher for marking! Oh the shame!)
She will also pick up on continuity errors, and will frequently rewrite clunky sentences in vastly better prose than I could conjure up. (Her experience as a ghostwriter probably comes in useful here).

Helen Baggot edited “And the Wolf Shall Dwell”. Her website is helenbaggott.co.uk/
It is worth noting that Helen works a little differently from most editors usually doing a series of passes for a lower rate per thousand words, and then passing the MS back to the author for approval. This is a useful method for self-published authors on a tight budget because if they feel confident enough in their work that they can get away with only one or two passes of editing, then they may save money. It also allows them to spread out the cost of editing; usually the largest single expense apart from printing, over a period of time.

Another lady who has edited and helped to publish other authors, in Ilfracombe and North Devon, is Paula Good at PG Office Services who offers a range of services beyond editing including formatting and print services.

You may want to check out Susan Sugden. She sent me a lovely email and CV in search of freelance work, but I don’t produce enough to keep one editor fully occupied. Here website is here.

It is worth noting that all good editors are ruthlessly efficient, but don’t be afraid. They are on your side! I will add others here as and when.

In a perfect world, with unlimited money, you would have three or four separate pairs of eyes, one for each stage of the editing process, but we don’t live in a perfect world, and writers like to eat food just like normal people. You can get a good full editing job done with one editor for around £10-£20 per thousand words (at the time of writing).

Formatting

Formatting is still partly editing, but is also a separate stage in which the priority is no longer correcting mistakes. This is the part where your raw manuscript, possibly still typed out in double-line spacing and the default font of your word processor, is turned into a beautifully laid out book and exported as a PDF ready for printing. There is a cheap way of doing this which involves pouring your text into a formatting software app and accepting whatever comes out the other side. The better way is to format it properly by human hand and eye. You can learn to do this yourself, or pay someoen like me to do it for you. At the moment I cahrge £1 per 1,000 words, so even if it’s a massive tome of 100k words, you’ll only be forking out a ton. If money is really tight (I know the feeling) then I’ll be writing a “how to format” article soon.

Proofreading

Strictly speaking, the term “proofreading” refers to the process of reading the “proof” copy and checking for any last minute errors, in particular any errors which only manifest themselves when the book is printed. This could include abberrant punctuation or spelling errors that somehow got through the entire process of editing, but it is more about making sure the gutter is wide enough, the pages are all actually assembled correctly* and that everything looks as it should before we give the final instruction to the printer to proceed. This is a step which most self-published authors probably miss but if you can take the time at least to check every page and the front and back cover for any last minute inconsistencies then it may save you an expensive mistake on a long print run.

*Yes, we once had a consignement of books in which the last 64 pages were in the wrong order – not our error, thank goodness!