Formatting for CreateSpace – Part 1

Nanowrimo has finally come to an end. Okay, so it came to an end several weeks ago now, but I’ve been recovering and getting busier with other things. If you’re a winner and are planning on getting your proof copy (or if you didn’t win or even participate and want to buy a proof copy of some of your writings) then this post is for you.

Last year was the first year that I got a free proof copy and I was so completely happy with the results of it.  However when it came time to format it I was a little lost at what I was doing and went through lots of confusion and old message board posts on the CS website so I wanted to save others some of the hassle.

If you are using your Nanowrimo promo code then let me tell you that it is absolutely FREE.  Just set it up and they will send it to you.

NOTES:

• I use Open Office to format all of my novels so if your using a different program then these directions may be slightly different.  I really like OO for this though because it easily exports to a PDF which is the file format you need to upload to CreateSpace.
• I like to go with a 5.25′”x8” book and that is what I have formatted all of this for.
• I am not a professional at this and therefore will not be held responsible if this doesn’t work for you
• I don’t use a table of contents in my novels so I don’t have instructions for that here. Just take a look in your favorite novels for how and where they lay theirs out and use that.  I figured the layout for mine out by looking at some of my favorite books. (A Barnes & Noble Classicswas one).

The first thing you need to do is to set up your overall page formatting.  (Format > Page…)

In this screenshot I already have my setting for a 5.25”x8” book set up.  The next thing to do is to set up your margins.  These should be:

Inner: 0.75”
Outer: 0.50”
Top: 0.70”
Bottom: 0.50”

The only other thing you need to change here is the page layout which should be set as ‘mirrored’. You can go ahead and make sure that all of the other settings look the same as in my screenshot, but they should.

Above you can see that the footer is turned on.  However for default formatting do not have either header or footer on.  We will get to that later.

Now things may get a little confusing when you are looking at your pages in a mirrored set up, especially since that’s going to affect your books entire layout so let me explain. When you look at this picture

it is NOT a spread (though in the bottom right corner of OO I can change how this is displayed, I guess I just got used to the confusing way so that’s what you all have to live with).  What you are looking at now is really the front and back of a SINGLE piece of paper.  So the page the title page is really on the right and the copyright information is on the back or the left of the next spread. If that makes sense. See this post on CS for another explanation.

Before we do anything we need to create a new format – I named mine blank. Just so the first few pages before the actual novel are marked as different than the rest.

In the upper left there should be a place with the formatting for the page.

Click on that.

Make sure that you’re on the page tab and click the ‘add’ button, the little plus sign on the paper and type the name of your new style (This is a screenshot before I created EMPTY, that’s why it’s not there).  Right click your format and apply it to that page.

Now the first sheet of paper in a book is usually white on both sides so you want to skip ahead to what your word processor says is page 3. (The best way to do this is to use Insert > Manual Break > Page Break as it keeps a page between the text you wrote and what you write after the break even if you go to the previous page and add onto it later.  Then the text on the next page won’t move. When you get to the page break though, make sure that you click on EMPTY so that it sets all the pages to that format until I tell you otherwise).

Page 3 will be the title page of your book. Remember that it’s really going to be on the right hand side of your printed book.  Odd numbered pages are always on the right.

About 11 or so lines down I typed the name of my novel – this is where you can do fancy font or whatever.  Last year I put a decorative separator underneath. Leave page 4 blank.

Pages 5 and 6 are what I copied in the screenshot above. The plain title page and the copyright page.  The plain title page should just be your plain title.

Now it was suggested to me that Georgia would be the best font to use so that is what I did last year and I am very happy with how it turned out. (I used 12 on the title above, 11 on the main content of the book, 10.5 on the copyright information).

The phraseology for the copyright was taken from some of the books on my shelf. Don’t forget to use a page break between it and the plain title page.

After another page break we come to the dedication page (page 7) the back of which is again blank.

Part two will contain information on how to format your chapter.

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~ by JennaChristine on December 16, 2010.