"The Final Page" Tip of the Week: Avoid common typesetting mistakes.

"The Final Page" column provides a weekly tip for avoiding common self-publishing mistakes. A professional final product makes the difference between being reviewed on The New Podler, or being one of the millions of books that sink through Amazon's sales rankings to languish below the 4-million mark.

"Do it yourself" shouldn't scream "I did it myself!"
Graphic designers are expensive. In my years as an editor, however, I have learned that they don't charge half of what they are worth to authors, and that a $700 book cover or $500 layout job ought to buy them a pair of angel wings. In an increasingly savvy indie marketplace, an ugly book will embarrass you and hurt sales.

Mama may have said, "Ain't nothing is free." Listen up. If you are publishing a book without the help and expense of a graphic designer, what you don't know will cost you. You can typeset your book in Word, but there are reasons not to. The industry-standard software, Photoshop and InDesign, will cost you more than a designer who knows how to use them. Whatever program you use, be sure to avoid these common mistakes.

1. The page margins must be set correctly. There are certain proportions the margins should conform to; specifically, the margins that face the center fold should be wider than outer margins, to leave room for binding.

2. Running heads and page numbering are often cluttered, and sized either too large or too small.

3. Chapter titles, subheads, and epigraphs often look disproportionate.

4. Paragraph's indents should not be a full half-inch. Two to three spaces is usually enough.

5. Tracking may be too tight, and the leading, too loose. Tracking is the space between lines, and leading is the space between letters.

6. Readers will lose patience with ugly, hard-to read font. Although standard for manuscripts, twelve-point font size is a bit excessive for the body text. Be keenly aware of how big or small your font will appear, realistically, in the published version.

7. Your typing teacher may have taught you to put two spaces between sentences. But in the age of computers and nice readable fonts, the accepted standard is only one. Do a find-and-replace for double spaces.

For more reading on the subject, visit this article and this one. And if you prefer to spend your money on Adobe software instead of a graphic designer who knows how to use them, at least drop $12 for this book on typesetting in Microsoft Word.

Sarah Cypher is the author of "The Editor's Lexicon: Essential Writing Terms for Novelists" (Glyd-Evans Press, 2010) and runs a two-woman editing and book design shop, The Threepenny Editor.

"The Final Page" Tip of the Week: Think 10 years from now.

"The Final Page" column provides a weekly tip for avoiding common self-publishing mistakes. A professional final product makes the difference between being reviewed on The New Podler, or being one of the millions of books that sink through Amazon's sales rankings to languish below the 4-million mark.

If you want it now, that could be a problem.
This month, my freelance editing business received several requests for a free sample edit. In some of those requests I saw a trend; thanks to the ever-rising profile of self-publishing, many writers are ready to get their novel into print, and want an editor to make it ready for publication in one pass. The catch: What if it's not ready to be line-edited?

I could eat up a lot of space in the column merely listing the reasons why a novel might need heavy structural revisions. But the crux of the problem is simply that it makes little sense to pay an editor to prep, scrub, and polish your novel until you know that its beginning, middle, and end doesn't need rewriting. Otherwise, you and your editor are just writing on water.

Think 10 years from now.
One of reasons writers write is the desire to say something permanent, something that remains true or entertaining over time. Ironically, the easier it is to convert those words into immortal print, the greater the temptation to do it too soon. Ten years from now, that rushed book may not the proud accomplishment you meant it to be.

So, take your time. If the manuscript needs another year, or two, or three, give it time. If your editor advises you to join a good critique group, do it. If, despite your truly accomplished writing or topical plot, the manuscript has an Achilles heel that trips it up at the climax, then back off, cool down, and rewrite those chapters from scratch.

In a world where money will buy authorship immediately, patience is tough. A published book may make you an author, but the bookstore has plenty of books by authors who are experts, celebrities, journalists, and politicians--people who probably wouldn't call themselves writers, per se. If you aren't an expert, celebrity, etc., then you need to be a writer before you're an author. Repeated failure, continuing improvement, and patience are what makes a person a writer. This is probably the hardest lesson I've had to learn, and from what I can see, it's not just a lesson for beginners.

Sarah Cypher is the author of "The Editor's Lexicon: Essential Writing Terms for Novelists" (Glyd-Evans Press, 2010) and runs a two-woman editing and book design shop, The Threepenny Editor.

"The Final Page" Tip of the Week: Use the "find" function

Last week I spotted a self-published book lying on a cafe table. It was a promo copy, and it got my attention—in a bad way. First, it had four typos in the first three pages. Second, it was a hardboiled mystery, but it had a creepy kitten on the cover.

Starting this week, "The Final Page" column will provide a weekly tip for avoiding mistakes like these as you get ready to print your book. A professional final product makes the difference between being reviewed on The New Podler, or being one of the millions of books that give self-publishing a bad rap.

Tip #1: Use the "find" function.
Even though I am an editor, my proofreader caught many small typos in my 80-page manuscript. Whatever program you use for writing, its "find" function will save you the twinge of humility you'll otherwise feel when you start noticing typos in your just-published book.

1. Double periods (..) When you cut sentences, the second period often gets overlooked.
2. Punctuation outside of quotation marks (",) (".) ("!) ("?) All punctuation goes inside, no matter how funny you think it looks. Refer to Strunk and White's Elements of Style for the very few exceptions.
3. Space around dashes ( -- ) All your long dashes, or em-dashes, should be right up against the words before and after them.
4. Fake em-dashes (--) You should also replace all double- or triple-hyphens (--) (---) with a true em-dash (—). Using the "find and replace" function in Word, go to the drop-down menu "special" and select em-dash.
5. Peak, peek, pique. Do yourself a favor. Look up all three of these words right now. Use "find" and correct the ones that are misused.
6. Hyphenate e-mail (email) The style guides agree: there is a hyphen in e-mail.
7. Internet is capitalized (internet) Anybody who works with books will identify this rookie mistake right away.
8. Double tabs. Search for "^t^t" to find over-indented paragraphs. You will also want to do a visual scan of each page, since some double tabs result from a tab space used on top of an automatic 0.5" first-line indent.
9. The d-less conjunction (an) We type "and" a lot. It is inevitable that we miss the D once in a while, and spell-check won't catch it.
10. Pubic humiliation, a.k.a. TMI. Search for "pubic." You meant to type "public," I know, but you might have missed that L.

Sarah Cypher is the author of "The Editor's Lexicon: Essential Writing Terms for Novelists" (Glyd-Evans Press, 2010) and runs a two-woman editing and book design shop, The Threepenny Editor.

Editing and writing help

It is hard to find good editing and writing help. Fortunately, there are good writers and editors out there. One is Stephen Shugart. Check out his website for more information. Shugart offers self-publishing consulting as well.  Shugart also offers writing classes.

(Disclosure: I received no compensation for this mention nor am I going to receive any portion of sales resultant from this mention.)