Interior Book FormatTing

Guess what. You need to format the interior of your book too. A great cover is important to capture the reader and convince them to buy the book, but interior formatting is an art as well. Being a technology guy, I decided to purchase a program for the interior formatting work. I am using Vellum. Vellum makes the chore of formatting the interior of your book dramatically easier. Here are some examples of the things you think about when formatting. First, the opening sentence of the chapter. A drop quote is nice... Do you want it to be cursive, or block? Also, the first paragraph is usually not indented, where following paragraphs are...

Here's another example. Note how the first couple of words in a new scene are a slightly different font. Also, let's not forget the artistic mark between scenes. I'll want to do something fun with that.

You get an appreciation for the attention to detail it takes to typeset a book. Fortunately for me, computers have made that much easier. Vellum allows me to adjust many different interior formatting elements easily and consistently across the entire manuscript (which is now over 300 pages). Here's another simple example, block quotes. This quote is from my  foreword.

So, there you have it. I'm doing interior formatting, getting a cover designed, and doing final edits. (I really need to wait until the final edits are done until I complete the formatting, but I've got my arms around what is required so that I can do it quickly when the time comes!)

For more on Vellum, see www.vellum.pub

Till next time,

Greg