Formatting Your E-Book

Formatting an e-book for publication is a simple matter, though it can be tedious. Here are the steps I follow when formatting.

Step 1 - The Text

Select all text in the document and change it to a size that looks a little too large. For blind folks like me, 12-point font is not always easily readable on a tablet. It can also appear small in an online e-book sample, like the kind you see on Amazon. I choose to err on the side of caution when selecting a text size. I favor 14-point. Better to possibly have a reader scale down the text size on their e-reading device than to have an Amazon sample that looks like crap.

The font style is important, too. You want something easily readable but not dull. I am a fan of Times New Roman. Something about it just looks... right. I can't explain it. Avoid mono-spaced fonts (all characters are the same width) like Courier New. While these are great for editing, because mistakes are more noticeable, they are not pleasing to the average reader's eye.

Once you have landed on a font style you like, scroll somewhere in your document that contains italics or bold lettering. When you've located a suitable area, make the font style change. Some font styles wipe out formatting like Italics; you don't want that. You can always undo the change if this occurs, but you want to notice it immediately.

While you're at it, and have all the text highlighted, convert it to single spaced if it isn't already.

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Stay tuned for more from indie author and blogger Kendall Bailey (@KBaileyWriter) on how to properly format an e-book, later today on The Official Prose. Blog at: blog.theprose.com/blog.