You can choose any size you like for your book. Just check out similar types of book sizes first. Here are the rules:

 

• Make sure your text is uniform, ie the body and headings are all using the same format. To do this you must use the styles in your word-processor.

  • Fix the default size first, be it Times New Roman, Arial or whatever. You may need to modify this style to be what you want. A good size for the font in a printed book is 12 point.

  • Next choose a heading style, modify one to suit, graduating the font size above the default size of 12 point. Eg Main Heading 16 point, sub-heading 14 point.

  • Select your entire book text and make it the default text.

  • Go through and make your headings the styles you chose above.

• Re-size your page size in your word-processor. The paper format. Usually found under format options. All word-processors default to either A4 size or US Letter. This must be changed in your page styles/or format. Example for a 6”x 9” novel.

Note; When you re-size your page, it may throw all your text and images out of place and may create blank spaces you don’t want, so you may have to go through and correct this.

• Change the Page Layout to “right and left” This is to allow for an inner margin for the book binding.

• Change your margins. The recommended margins are:

  • Left: 1.91cm

  • Right: 1.27cm

  • Top: 1.27c

  • Bottom: 1.45cm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Change your font to be the one that will appear in the printed book. To make sure this stays the same you must embed the font into the document. This is normally found in the File properties eg:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Fix your images (if any).

  • Align any images to the finished position (right/left or centre)

  • Change the resolution to at least 300dpi. Unless you have an imaging program and the knowledge on how to do this, it’s best to find a photographer to do it for you. This is very important if you are putting images in your book. They must be good quality. Can you imagine a coffee table book with blurry or bad coloured pictures?

  • Check the size of your images. Do they look nice on the size of page you have chosen?

  • Create page breaks for new chapters. It’s okay to have paragraphs running over a page, but not a new chapter. (Page breaks are not used for Kindle books as Amazon converts the word file to suit the kindle, ipads, etc.)

  • Insert Page numbers

  • Create an index/ table of contents. This is best done using a table and you will need to manually add the page numbers, so make sure your book is finished before you do the index.