Professional Book Layout

A big thank you to everyone who responded to the recent post with a positive attitude. Over a third of the submissions in the current queue will now be read from hard copy books, which will certainly help matters. I think this is a good change for the blog, and it will certainly keep things moving at a steady pace. The submission guidelines have been updated to reflect the inclusion—and preference—of hard copy books.
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Professional Book Layout

Now to the meat of this post. I have stressed the importance of the look of a book’s interior in the past, but I have to reiterate here for those who missed it. There is nothing worse than a sloppy, unprofessional interior book layout. NOTHING. Oh, “sloppy editing is worse” you say? Believe me, the layout is the first thing that will give away the quality of your book, and the editing, if it is substandard, will only be the next thing in line (perhaps behind the writing, if that proves to be bad also). A decent cover is usually easy to slap together, if you limit the graphics, license an attractive image, and keep the text neat and elegant, or appropriately stylish, depending on the overall design aspect.

A few self-published authors have submitted books to me that had covers that were designed by them—decent looking covers at that—but the interiors of each of these books had certain deficiencies, owing to the authors’ inexperience in this area. Of note, there were too many spaces between the words of many of the lines, because text wrapping breaks weren’t applied (see image below), or else tabs were off, and ellipses points were spaced incorrectly or placed inappropriately (they should be spaced like . . . that, and not like… that). Sometimes the font was poorly chosen or oversized to artificially enlarge the page count (for shame).

I will, in future, address any new problems that arise in layout and interior design within a given review, if that problem hasn’t been covered already (I do hate to repeat myself, even though I tend to do so at times). The same goes for any editorial or writing errors that will eventually crop up. I’ll try to address the ones that haven’t been belabored already.

My advice on an interior layout is always: hire a professional. They're usually cheap. Book covers can fly if they’re done properly enough, but interior layouts should be handled by professionals, as a reader will spend more time in the book’s interior, going line by line through your story. Their reading experience should be a smooth one, unimpeded by niggling design flaws. There are certain publishing standards that should be met when laying out a book, and if you want people to take you seriously, you will, as I like to say, give them a few good reasons to.