To Build a Book | Part One - Drafting your book
XPress Access | June 2023
Building a book is essential to every writer’s journey to publication. In this post, I’d like to provide an overview of the main components necessary to go from a working draft to a printed book. This will double as a framework for follow-up posts in the “To Build” series.
Writing a book can be daunting. It’s like entering a pitch-black tunnel without knowing when you’ll reach the other side. With this guide, I hope to ignite your idea headlamp so you can use it to dispel the darkness ahead.
The Storyletter has been running a series called “To Build,” emphasizing the basic tenets surrounding writing fiction online and establishing yourself as an independent creator. If you’d like to read the topics covered thus far, here’s the list:
Drafting the Book
Your objective when seeking publication is to have a finished product. Whether it’s working with an agent, editor, small press, traditional publisher, or indie publishing, you should have a manuscript on hand. Therefore, your initial mission will be to finish your story. Even if it’s just for you, completing the book is an accomplishment worthy of your time and effort.
Set goals. Establishing a plan solidified my decision to progress toward something tangible. Without a goal in mind, there’s minimal direction. The goals don’t have to be huge; they should be one step in the overall process, and checking off these goals allows you to feel more accomplished along the way.
Stay consistent. If you’re not writing consistently, reaching your goals will take much longer. It doesn’t need to be a 5-hour session; even 5 minutes gets you closer to finishing your first draft. Daily writing is highly recommended, but rest days can be healthy, too. Discover what works for you.
Find your aesthetic. I mention this because I prefer writing in an enjoyable environment. That environment could be a virtual one through favorite writing software, a hardware component such as a keyboard, or a physical setting like a coffee shop. Whatever gets you to sit down and focus on the task at hand.
Remove friction. Distractions are the number one cause of project death (probably). As with aesthetics, choose a location or mode of writing that allows for the least distractions. Writing in the early morning works for me because there’s something about accomplishing things while others are sleeping and the world is quiet.
Maintain momentum. Working on anything book-related keeps your mind on the mission and the momentum to finish what you started. Jot down notes relating to your characters, the setting of your story, and the themes you’re shooting for. Draw if you want. Anything as long as you’re involved in some aspect of story creation.
Revision is key. Writing the story is one thing, but editing is a different beast. Make sure to add or cut things to make your story better. This process could mean deleting entire sections of your book. That’s okay. The first draft is meant to be an exploratory framework. Knowing what you do and don’t need to keep is part of the journey.
Seek assistance when necessary. The great thing about writing is that it doesn’t need to be a solo endeavor. Guidance and critiques from fellow authors can be the wind in your sails that you need to move forward. Beware of bad advice or overcorrecting based on outside input.
Professional services are an option. Hiring an editor is easier than ever in the digital age of writing. This might help if you don’t have time to edit, aren’t sure where to find a community, or want to ensure the writing quality reaches a certain standard. Grammarly is another option that may help with basic line edits to take your writing to the next level.
Once you have a finished manuscript, you can begin refining it. The goals should now become more straightforward and tangible. The timeline can be set as the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel has appeared as a mere twinkle in the distance.
Designing the Book
Interior
You’ll want to complete the interior formatting of your book before you deal with the cover. The cover’s dimensions will depend on your finished manuscript’s page count. Some of the steps in this guide can be done out of order, but this one, in particular, will cause you a lot of busy work if your page count changes at the last minute and you need to resize everything.
I’m not a professional at formatting. I’ve acquired Adobe InDesign but have only watched a few tutorials. It will provide incredible customization for the small touches I couldn’t achieve with my current formatting software. I used Atticus to format my first book, “The Weight of the World,” but since it was a collection of short stories and poetry, I needed to have different formats for each, and Atticus only allowed one for the whole book. I implemented workarounds to make the book look decent in print. If I had used Adobe InDesign, I could have made those tiny improvements, and the book would’ve been more polished.
Atticus is still an excellent resource for simplified formatting, and I’ll likely still use it for more standard novels. It breaks your book into sections on the lefthand side of the software for easy navigation, such as the Front Matter: Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, and Table of Contents, then allows for the Body to become chapters that can be moved around in any order (perfect for a collection). Then, the software presents the Back Matter: Special Thanks, Also By, and About the Author, among other options. Additional key features like adjusting Alignment, Margins, Font Size, Line Spacing, and Ornament Breaks can be done instantaneously with little-to-no effort.
I’ll go into more detail with an in-depth formatting post next, but if it helps to state it now, my book was formatted with the following specifications:
Alignment - Not justified (due to poetry) with hyphens
Margins - Inches (0.875 inside and 0.75 outside)
Font - Source Sans Pro, 12pt
Line Spacing - 1.35
Trim Size - 5x8 inches
Title and Chapter fonts - Cinzel Decorative and Cinzel
Exterior
It is said not to judge a book by its cover. However, when I pick up a book in the bookstore, it’s almost solely based on the cover or if I recognize the author. I assume a lot of people operate this way. A cover is critical in conveying the type of story you’ve written to the reader. The last thing you want is to spend hours upon hours to finish a manuscript only to have someone grimace at the cover and put your book down.
But…the point I’d like to make here is that your cover shouldn’t prevent you from achieving the end goal. There have been plenty of traditionally-published books that have had reprints and redesigns after the book was released. An excellent example of this was The Lightbringer Series by Brent Weeks, in which the first novel had a portrait of a man on the front but was later altered to display a mysterious, hooded individual to match the other four installments. Don’t think you can’t publish your book because your cover doesn’t meet a certain standard.
Hiring a professional artist or designer is ideal, but I refuse to believe an industry should be gatekept behind a monetary barrier. Plenty of ways exist to create your cover for free or cheap. Canva has been my go-to program for nearly all of my design needs. GIMP (GNU Image Manipulator Program) has been popping up lately in my feeds, and I’m curious to check it out. Adobe Stock used to be a trusted source of stock photography, but with the flood of AI-generated imagery, it isn’t easy to filter out those illustrations if that concerns you. If AI-generated artwork doesn’t bother you, Midjourney is another alternative to creating unique imagery.
Other ways of acquiring your book cover:
You can search for free images in the public domain or under Creative Commons licenses on websites like Pixabay, Unsplash, or Wikimedia Commons. These images can serve as a starting point for your book cover design.
Some websites offer free or low-cost book cover templates you can customize with text and images. Examples include DIY Book Covers and PosterMyWall.
Consider hiring a freelance designer on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork. While some designers charge higher rates, you can often find talented designers at more affordable prices. Check their portfolios and reviews to ensure they meet your needs.
Reach out to local art schools or design programs and see if any students or aspiring designers are interested in collaborating on your book cover. They may be willing to work at a lower cost or even for free to build their portfolios.
Consider what genre you’re writing in and how the cover might appear to your target audience. Familiarize yourself with your genre’s common design elements and visual styles. For example, a romance novel may feature an embrace or an image of a couple, while a fantasy novel cover may showcase magical elements or fantastical landscapes.
The final dimensions of a cover are tricky. Not only do you need to know the page count of your book to determine the width of the spine, but the bleed and safety margins at the edges come into play. With IngramSpark, they need you to submit the page count, and then they email an image with the dimensions. This was too confusing for me to decipher. Amazon KDP offers a digital template you can use to line up and check to ensure it looks correct. However, the software wouldn’t tell me the exact dimensions BEFORE I uploaded the print PDF. I had to upload the document first; only then would they provide the dimensions to fix it. I re-sized and downloaded the image through Canva, and then it worked. Phew.
The exact dimensions for my PDF were 10.86 x 8.25 in for a 5x8 book at 220 pages.
Thank you so much for reading! In part two of To Build a Book, I’ll cover formatting your book.
