I love December – it’s the start of summer, my favourite season, it’s Christmas time and here in Australia almost everyone takes at least two weeks off work for the summer holidays. The first half of the month I spent typesetting my book (learning how to do that as well!) and producing the final files ready for print. The second half of the month was spent relaxing and having fun with family and friends (I’m posting this article on January 7th, as this is the first day I’m back to work!).
So, back to December and what I learned about publishing:
How to Typeset a book for print
Having worked in graphic design before, I’m very familiar with the Adobe Suite of products. This was great, as Adobe InDesign is a fantastic program for book formatting. Having never formatted a book before, it was a simple matter of finding the right YouTube video – I used this one by Euan Mitchell, which was perfect for what I needed.
Other aspects of formatting, such as styling, were a simple matter of going through some of the books currently on my bookshelf and working out what I liked and didn’t like. For font choice, this article by Joel Friedlander was super helpful - and if you’re wondering, I went with Minion.
For the front and back matter, again this was a matter of checking out other books and creating my own based on what standard information was included. This article by the Alliance of Independent Authors (which I also joined in December!) was the most useful, and I used their recommended text for the copyright warning part.
This whole process took me about 2 days to do, mainly because I spent so much time researching to find the right information, and a lot of it was trial and error. Next time, I’m confident I’ll be able to format a book in a matter of hours. The typesetting part was also extremely fun – I love the fact that as an Indie author I get to do this all myself!
Book Production update
Once the typesetting was done, I printed the whole manuscript and gave it to my proof-reader for a final read-through (thanks Mum!). When she returned it, I made the final changes and then it was time to upload my files and order a real copy of the book! I created my Ingram Spark account and set up Laura the Explorer in there. There’s a lot of information that goes into setting up a book aside from the cover design file and book interior file, but the exciting part is that once it’s done you can make your book available globally with just a click of a button. It took a day or two for Ingram Spark to email me the proof to check (I think I uploaded my files on Christmas Eve!) then when that was done, I ordered myself a printed copy of the book. And here it is!
I’d just come home from helping my brother-in-law move apartments and was super sweaty and hot, but so pumped to open this package up and hold my book in my hands for the first time. Definitely was a weird/surreal moment!
I couldn’t be happier with the final book, and am now moving on to setting up all the ebook files on their respective platforms ready for my January 24 launch date, as well as setting up the print book in Amazon as well. I’ve definitely got a busy few weeks ahead!
What I’m reading
With December holidays comes so much reading time, which I love! This month I read:
Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty
The Dry by Jane Harper
Iron Garland by Jeff Wheeler (I LOVE this series!)
Sensation: Adventures in Sex, Love and Laughter by Isabel Losada. (Great book! Definitely gave me a few ideas for LTE2)
That's it for December, and for 2018! I'll be trying to do more blog posts in 2019, and hopefully will have more exciting news to share throughout the year!
Main Photo by Vicko Mozara on Unsplash