The following excerpt is from $uccess, Your Path to a Successful Book by Maralyn D. Hill and Brenda C. Hill.
When dealing with a small publisher or print-on-demand (POD) publisher, be sure to request their guidelines. If they are not specific, keep asking questions. Many prefer to handle your formatting and charge you. You will discover many of your own oversights if you can do some of this yourself.
When checking out various PODs, we got many different answers. What you send in is what you get unless you pay for additional services. Most of the companies had guidelines either on line or in the form of a book they send. Some are complete and some left us with many questions. The publisher we picked, Infinity Publishing Company, was complete, easy to follow, and detailed.
Some things you need to know:
- Know the margins recommended for the size book you are publishing (each company may have a slight variation). You will go to page set-up in the file pull down menu in Word. This page will allow you to set margins, paper size, and layout.
- Section breaks are important as you want to separate the beginning of the book with the copyright page, introduction, and special thanks from the body of the book. You must put in a section break. In Word you go to insert on your tool bar and indicate the type of break you want.
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Maralyn D. Hill and Brenda C. Hill
