Amateur To Published: The Fiction Writer's Guide To Publishing

5 - Preparing Your Paperback

Many self-publishers see more sales with their eBooks and therefore choose not to have a paperback. However, as little as paperback sales may be, they're still sales. Furthermore, many readers still love the feeling of having a paper book in their hands. You need to cater to them too.

Formatting the Paperback version of your book is a bit more technical than it is to prepare the eBook, and you might need to hire someone to do it for you. However, even if you don't have the budget, you can produce a decent paperback all on your own.

STEP 1: STUDY PAPERBACKS IN YOUR GENRE

Pick a few paperbacks from the library or your bookshelf and look at how they've been formatted.

- What pages appear before Chapter 1 and what do they say?

- What pages appear after the last page and what do they say?

- Where do the page numbers appear? Top of the page? Bottom ofthe page? Is it the same side on both the even pages and odd pages?

- Are there any words in the page headers e.g. the author name or book name?

- What fonts are used? Are there differences in theChapter Heading fonts, normal fonts, headers, footer etc?

The answers to these questions will help you decide on thekind of book you want to produce. Select the book you most like and set it asthe blueprint for your own paperback.

STEP 2: PREPARE THE FRONT MATTER

If you checked out different paperbacks by differentauthors, then you should've noticed that the book usually doesn't begin rightfrom the first page, there's some 'stuff' in the beginning. This 'stuff'may include:

- Excerpt page. This usually appears on odd page and contains a veryshort excerpt of the book. That excerpt has to be short enough that it won'textend past that page. It also has to be really interesting that the readerwill want to know what happens immediately after or what happened before.

- Other Books by Author page. This usually appears on even page and willcontain a list of the author's other books (if they are not too many) or booksin the same series as the one you're writing.

- Title page. This usually appears on odd page and has thebook title and the name of the author. If the author is different from thepublisher, it will also contain the publisher's name.

- Copyright page. This usually appears on even page and willcontain the copyright statement, publishing details like when the book waspublished, contact details of the author like their website etc.

- Dedication page. This usually appears on an odd page and will includea one or two line dedication to whoever inspired or really helped out with thebook. Other authors choose to replace this with a favorite quote or a line fromthe book.

You don't need to have all these pages. In fact, only the TitlePage and Copyright Page are essential. The others are optional.

STEP 3: PREPARE THE BACK MATTER

Once the book ends, there is space for promotion of yourbooks or yourself. Most authors have the following pages right after the bookends:

- Author's Note page. This will usually be an informal letter from theauthor to readers. It may include a thank you, a note about some fact about thebook, an introduction to the next book in the series or the authors otherworks, ways to contact the author, encouragement to review or join the mailinglist etc.