How to Format and Print a Book / eBook

This tutorial may look long, but it is not really. There is no extraneous writing; It's just that we have layed out every step exactly.

We will use:

- LibreOffice for formatting
- Photoshop (an older version) for making the cover art
- CreateSpace for creating, printing, and distributing to retailers

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Before you start - Plan out your book. Think about size: Is it a 6x9 or 5x8 standard size (which works well for all sellers) or a back-pocket 4.25" x 6.87"(this size can be distributed to Amazon, too, but not all retailers) or a big 8.5x11? (Expect 6x9 to be, generally, cheapest to print, easiest to read, and easiest to sell (e.g., it'll fit on bookstore shelves) in this size.) Will you have headers on top of each page to show the name of the book or author? Is it color or black and white: If it only has a few illustrations, you may chose to make them black and white because you don't want to print your whole book in color just for those images (which is what you would have to do with CreateSpace, unfortunately). Do you want white (kind of blinding but good for textbook-style books sometimes) or cream (most common for books, and it's also a little thicker) paper? What will the cover and back-cover look like (CreateSpace automatically prints all covers in full color, with the option of glossy or matte, at the same price)? If you can get a book that is as much like you want your book to look for reference, it will help.

Before you start - Are you using a Table of Contents? If so, do not add text styles to the items you want to appear in your ToC until AFTER you have selected each one and made it "title" or "heading1" or whatever, because when you set them to anything other than "paragraph" the font styles you added will be removed and it will adopt the regular "title" or "heading1" style, which you will have to re-style.

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STEP 1: Format the book in Libre Office (or MS Word, but the functions might be in slightly different locations).

STARTING POINT

Paste the text of your book into Libre Office and save.


PAGES BEFORE PAGE 1

Before you do anything else, if you think you might want to have pages before the page numbers begin, or if you want a navigation panel for chapters and a ToC, do this: Click on the first page and change it from "default" to "index." info

Then put your cursor right before the first thing you want on your book's page 1 and "insert - manual break." Then select "default" from the dropdown and make it page number 1.

Now you can put anything you want to be before page 1 above that "manual break." Remember, now that you have done this, you have 2 types of pages. If you add styles to one type (by clicking on one of its pages and doing something to it, like adding headers, footers, sizing the pages), it will not apply to the other set of pages. You will have to do that separately.


LOOK AT YOUR BOOK WITH 2-PAGE VIEW

Click "multiple-page view" in the bottom-right corner, and then zoom out.

PAGE DIMENSIONS

Set the page size with "format - page." You can set margins here, too. (I will use 6x9 for simplicity o this tutorial, but after I finish it I will save another version at "letter" size to print 2 book pages per print page, and for this I will resize fonts, change margins, and otherwise make it look decent at that size).

HEADERS AND FOOTERS

If you wan the title of the book on each page at the top, page numbers at the bottom, or something similar.

Go back to "format - page" again and go to the "Header" and "Footer" tabs.

You might want to uncheck "headers same on both pages and front page. I did this for headers, because I want no header on the front page, and I want the title on the left-side headers and author name on the right-side headers. After you set this, you just click onto the headers you've now created on your document and type what you want to see there. You can set alignment here, too, or italics, font-style, etc. I centered mine.

For page numbers, put your cursor in the footer you just created and use "insert - field - page numbers."

REMOVE STUFF THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE IN AN E-BOOK

To remove any indentation spaces in front of paragraphs, "find and replace," and there expand "other options" and check "regular expressions," and then you replace all instances of ^T (called "tabs") with nothing.

To remove spaces between paragraphs (which were created as if someone hit "enter" twice) "find and replace all instances of ^$ with nothing. Once you do that, you can highlight all, right-click "paragraph" and pick a number for spacing under paragraphs. The reason you do this is because if you just have "enter" style breaks between paragraphs, you will end up with those spaces at the tops of pages. info

LINE SPACING

Change the line spacing by selecting "fixed" and picking your number. info

DROP CAPS

Add drop caps with by highlighting the letter you want to make big and "format - paragraph - drop caps." Each letter has to be done individually. It will look grey when you set it, but it isn't really grey, as you can see on a "print preview" info

If you are printing a manuscript or other book with no chapters, you might now be finished. If you want a TOC, keep reading.

SELECT ANYTHING YOU WANT TO APPEAR IN NAVIGATION (FOR E-BOOK MENUS)

As I said at the start of this article, you should have set anything you wanted to appear in the ToC navigator with "title" or "header1" or whatever (not just "paragraph") right at the start. You can see what things are in the navigation menu with "view - navigator." 

After you've done that, you can add text styles to these elements.

FONTS

Select fonts for your text, title, chapter headers, etc.

Common fonts for novels, according to Google:

FORMATTING SPACING FOR CHAPTER APPEARANCE

The last thing you want to do is set the spacing for each chapter. If you want to start the chapter titles half way down the page, don't do this until you have done everything else.

That's all.

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STEP 2: MAKE COVER ART (with photoshop or something else)

Because we're going to publish our book on CreateSpace, and they have easy-to-use cover-makers there, you don't actually need to do this on Photoshop. You do still need any pictures you want to use, and you have to think about what elements you want on your front, back and side. Again, if you can get a book you like the look of to copy, it will help.

The advantage of using Photoshop is if you want to print you book cover anywhere besides CreateSpace. That said, you might still want to look at CreateSpace's premade covers as something to copy.

A lot of these designs would be fine, except they don't allow you to change title sizes, add logo images for your publishing brand, etc.

Since the front, back and sides are all on one image (saved as a single-page pdf to use on CreateSpace), remember that the size of this image will vary (in width) depending how thick your book is (how many pages it has).

Look at this image info:

Your image will have to look like this. It's front, back and side on one image, saved as a single-page pdf.

The "Trim Size" is where they will cut the book. Your image can extend to that. The "Safe" zone is just an area that they recommend as absolutely safe to put your image in and not risk it being cut.

Your image will have a certain height: In this case 9" because I'm making a 6x9 book.

The width will vary depending on how many pages, and this requires calculation.

Minimum width and height: 12.385 x 9.25 (Text and images must be at least .125" inside the trim lines ). For books under 100 pages, they don't allow images on the side. For less than 130, they recommend not using one.

The calculation for the side size, and therefore overall width of your image:

For 6x9 black and white-interior books (color is a little bigger):

White paper: multiply page count by 0.002252 (inches)

Cream paper: multiply page count by 0.0025

Example of spine width calculation for a 60-page black and white book printed on white paper: 60 x 0.002252 = 0.135"

Looking at the image above, this is how your cover image must look, for a 6x9 (and will vary depending on how many pages). They use a 60-page (black and white) example:

WIDTH: Bleed + Back Cover Trim Size + Spine Width + Front Cover Trim Size + Bleed

0.125" + 6" + 0.135" + 6" + .125" = 12.385"

HEIGHT: Bleed + Book Height Trim Size + Bleed

Example calculation: 6" x 9": 0.125" + 9" + .125" = 9.25"

They will automatically place the barcode on top of your cover image. It will be a 2" by 1.2" white box in the lower right-hand corner of your book's back cover.

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STEP 3: Printing and distributing a book with CreateSpace

How to Set Up a Website and Social Media

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A lot of people have been asking me about setting up a website, social media, and other internet things for them.

I am going to talk to my web development guys and figure out a price that this can be done for, but I'm also going to just show you how to do it for free.

The free way means you'll follow the video tutorials, which will not be exhaustive, but will cover the basics, and if there are things you don't understand, you will at least have the terminology to do further web searches to figure those things out. Expect to put in from several hours to days to do all this, depending on the amount of content you want to use as well as how much customisation you want to do to your website.

I'm going to figure out a pay scheme for people who don't want to do it themselves and would prefer to pay someone to do it for them. This pay scheme will have several points that you can pay for or opt to not do or to do yourself.

OUTLINE:

FREE WAY: 1) Sign up for a blogspot blog using your gmail account. 2) Customise your blogspot website to the degree allowed in the blogspot options. 3) Add your pictures and content to your blogspot blog. 3) Create your own social media accounts. 4) Create new posts on your blog as you want, and then share those blogs (as well as images and videos) to your social media channels.

THINGS SOME PEOPLE WANT WHICH COST MONEY:

- Custom domain address (yourdesiredname.com or .ca or whatever instead of yourdesiredname.blogspot.com).
- Hosting for your domain (all of these types of domains / websites pay a monthly fee to have their website "hosted," which means it is stored on the internet).
- Have someone else arrange for your domain address and hosting, and just pay them for the monthly fee for hosting and yearly fee for the domain. This includes having them fix problems when there are any with the server, website, etc, so the website won't have any problems and will always be "up."
- More customised website look (pay for a website appearance, or "theme," or have someone find an appropriate free theme for the look you're going for.
- Have someone else customise the website according to the general look and sometimes specifics you want to see (fonts, pictures, arrangement of website elements), sharing buttons, mailing lists, etc.
- Have someone else put your content up on your website for you (you just send the text, pictures, videos, etc to us by email).
- Have someone else create and set up your social media accounts.
- Have someone else update your social media channels with your new content (when you have new content created on your webpage or when you email an update, whether a message, picture, video, etc.

APPROXIMATE COSTS:

- Domain: Common domains like .com, .ca, .org, .net etc are around $20 or $30 per year. Hosting: Usually around $8 per month ($96 per year) for basic hosting, but we can do this for $50, which will cover most needs) We'll charge $20 per year to set this up (as well as take care of the site and hosting if anything goes wrong) and you can pay us for 1 year or more. The first year fee includes set up.
- Custom website: Many themes are free, but some cost between $20 and $70 (one time purchase fee). We'll try to find a free one (most cases possible). As long as the theme customisation is fairly basic (your choice of fonts, pictures, layout), we can do this for $50 (as long as there is a free theme). If you want special (which are unusual and require research as well as skilled work), we will charge more. If you later on want to change your theme or layout, we'll probably charge around $40 or $50 at that point, but you can also do the modifications yourself for free.
- Websites might also require special features to do special things. If you tell us what you need, we will figure out a cost and you can OK it or no-go it. NOTE: If you want a sales website - a website you can sell products from - this is a much more complicated thing, and will cost more: We'll figure out a cost and let you know.
- Content creation / management: Depending on the amount of content, we can probably do this for $50-$100, and you would just provide the text, images, video links, sound links, etc.) If you want us to do this on an ongoing basis after the website is set up, we will figure out a monthly rate for approximately how many items you want to do each month.
- Set up social media accounts: $20 each, and you will provide images and content. If we're doing a lot of these, we'll discount the fee.
- Manage social media channels (update them with content): Depends on the amount of content. Probably around $20 a month for basic needs, and you would email us what you want for updates.

Basically, to have us do everything, it would cost around $300 - $350 initially ($140 for the domain and hosting, $50 for an uncomplicated website, around $75 for content creation, around $50 for three social media accounts).

It would cost $140 each year thereafter for the domain and hosting.

If you had us doing your content and social media, this would mean another $50 or $100 per month.

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As you can see, the least you have to do to have a website and social media is tell us what you want, what it looks like, and then email us your content. This costs the most because it involves a lot of labor and skilled work.

The least you have to pay is free because you can set up everything yourself if you want.

>>> HERE IS THE WAY TO CONTACT US ABOUT DOING THIS WORK FOR YOU (CLICK HERE)

Note: This isn't the business of DFPS, -- we make our revenue otherwise -- so we're not going to try to make as much money as possible on doing this, but we will charge a fair rate in order to fairly compensate skilled workers assigned to doing it.

Website and Social Media - Hiring Us

This is the information we need to get started if you are wanting us to do anything for you as far as building, setting up, managing, etc. a website or social media.

Just copy and paste the following into an email and send it to douglasfirpublishing[a]gmail.com and we'll assess it and get back to you. Make sure every heading is followed by some information, preferably brief and to the point.

If you're on this page and wanting to hire us, you must have already read our website setup and social media blog post (if not click here).

Copy and paste the following (it is in capitals because they offset against the regular sentence case you will use for your information):

1. DO YOU WANT A CUSTOM DOMAIN (LIKE DFPS.CA)? IF YES, WHAT DOMAIN?

2. DO YOU WANT ANYTHING SPECIAL/SPECIFIC WHEN IT COMES TO THE APPEARANCE OF YOUR WEBSITE? IF YES, PASTE LINKS TO SIMILAR WEBSITES AND DESCRIBE THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS YOU WANT ON THE WEBSITE.

3. WHAT CONTENT DO YOU HAVE THAT YOU WANT TO PUT ON THE WEBSITE? (FOR EXAMPLE, 100S OF PICTURES, DOZENS OF PICTURES, THREE VIDEOS, 10 ARTICLES, 10 AUDIO FILES FROM SOUNDCLOUD, ETC.) DO YOU HAVE A TINY AMOUNT OF CONTENT OR A LOT?

4. DO YOU WANT US TO HANDLE YOUR CONTENT AFTER THE WEBSITE IS CREATED, AND YOU JUST EMAIL STUFF TO US? OR ARE YOU GOING TO DO IT YOURSELF?

5. WHAT SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS DO YOU WANT US TO SET UP FOR YOU? (FOR EXAMPLE, FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, TWITTER, PINTEREST, YOUTUBE, DEVIANTART, TUMBLR, ELLO, ETC.)

6. DO YOU WANT US TO HANDLE POSTING NEW CONTENT TO YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS AFTER THEY ARE CREATED? OR ARE YOU GOING TO DO IT YOURSELF?

7. ANY OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION BEFORE WE GET STARTED OR THAT WE WILL LIKELY WANT TO KNOW AS WE PROCEED?

8. IS THERE A MAXIMUM BUDGET (WE'RE NOT GOING TO BASE OUR RATE ON THIS NUMBER, WE'LL GIVE YOU A FAIR RATE, BUT IF THERE IS A MAX WE CAN TELL YOU WHAT THINGS CAN BEST BE DONE FOR THAT NUMBER)?

Film Process

A lot of people wonder what all is involved in the creation of a film or TV show.

I've put together this list of the stages and the elements of each stage involved in the making of a film. Depending on the size of the film, a lot of these elements can be cut out. For example, in indie film all you need is an original script (or not), actors (or not), and a director/camera person. You then want to add a sound person, an editor, a producer to arrange everything, and legal and accounting help. And it goes on from there.

Here's the list of stages of making a film and the elements within each stage:

Pre-production

Production
   Securing rights
   Choose screenwriter
   Financial
      Private and foreign investors, TV companies, lottery, government, product placement
   Planning / scheduling
Legal
   Contracts
   Shooting limitations / requirements
   Tax regulations (with production)
Accounts and payroll

Production design
   Locations
   Editing room
   Equipment and power
      Cameras
      Sound equipment
      Lights
      Booms
      Dividers
      Cover / umbrellas
      Generators
      Batteries
   Transportation
      Vehicles, insurance, fuel, maintenance
   Catering
Art direction
Costume design
Make up and hair
Staffing
   Director
   Assistant director
   Camera operator
   Sound production
   Lighting / gaffer
   Director of photography
   Editor
   Colorist
   Sound designer
      Sound effects
      Synths, samplers, plug-ins
   Second unit
   Stills photography
Casting

   Actors

   Extras

   Stunts
Animation

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Production

---

Film is complete

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Post-production

Editing
   Directors cut
   Final cut

Marketing
   Marketplace knowledge, cultural trends,tracking
   Marketing strategy (prime target audience and USP) (with Distribution for preview screenings, social response)
   Posters
   Trailers and 30-second TV spots
   Press kit
   Interviews
   Talent visits
   Photographs
   Industry kit
   Press
   Festivals and awards (with Distribution)
   Social media graphics and videos
   Crowdfunding (with Distribution)
   Groupon
   Promotional merchandizing
   OST
   Arrange portfolio
Advertising
Events management
   Promotional, business, and social events
   Researching and booking venues, contacting suppliers, negotiating prices, listening to clients, ensuring health and safety, publicising events
Distribution
   Logistics
   Know who's going to show up opening weekend
   Find the right opening weekend
   Industry screening (cast and crew)
   Preview screenings
   Free and advanced public screenings
   Find distributing agents, nationally and internationally
   Screenings in theatres (Community, Arthouse, Multiplex), TV, DVD, Netflix, BFI, online, (YouTube, Vimeo)
   Future backers
   Festivals and awards (with Marketing)
   Crowdfunding (with Marketing)
 

More information at: Sideplayer,

Film Production Group Organization

Besides the independent films we'll be doing, we'll also be organising people interested and skilled in the various roles of film production. This will serve ourselves and also other people who want to spearhead or be involved in film projects in the area.

Anyone in the area can put their name down for whatever roles they would like to take on. Once the roles have enough participants, we'll set about organising people to produce films.

Click on the role(s) listed below and then comment on the page with any relevant information, such as skills, location, availability, interest.

Actors

Directors

Writers

Sound (mics)

Camera operator (videographer)

Lighting (gaffer)

Editor

Sound designer (post production)

Distribution (exhibition)

Events manager

Producers

Investing (film finance)

Accounting (payroll)

Legal (financial)

Marketing (advertising)

Planning (scheduling)

Animation (and special effects)

Stunts

Art director

Costume design

Make up and hair

Still photography

Casting director

Colorist

Production design

Social Media and Other Links

https://www.facebook.com/Douglas-Fir-Publishing-153313085200230/
https://plus.google.com/u/0/115510491856036545585
https://twitter.com/DouglasFirPub
https://www.instagram.com/douglasfirpublishing/