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Dear Indigo,
I’m trying to format my book for printing. I wrote it in Word (or Pages) and inserted photos and captions along the way. It started off fine, but the more I get into it, if I try to make any changes to the text or the photos, sometimes the photo jumps all the way to the next page, sometimes it disappears completely. I just can’t get it to cooperate. I’m pulling my hair out!
Can you help me figure out the best way to design my book?
Signed,
Balding Book Lover
—–
Dear Balding Book Lover,
Don’t despair! There is an easier way, though it’s probably not the way you think.
It’s tricky because Word and Pages are word processing programs. Remember the old word processors that were basically typewriters with tiny digital screens? I know Word and Pages have become more advanced than that now, but that’s really just on the surface. Fundamentally, each is still a word processor, not a design program. It might work all right to insert photos and captions for a page or two, but those are all linked to the lines of words in the document, which makes any longer documents go haywire when any non-text elements are inserted. Even for text, though, Word doesn’t allow for fine-tuning that helps with readability in a printed book.
For book design, the industry standard is to use InDesign, which is a much more robust program that allows for design layers that can be adjusted independently without affecting everything else on the page. It also has advanced features that go into play when it comes to book printing, such as CYMK or RGB colors, reader-friendly fonts, and more. That said, InDesign can be spendy, and it can have quite the learning curve.
All that to say, contrary to popular belief, book design is a very difficult DIY skill set. The easiest way to have your book designed well is to hire a book designer to do it, which will not only help save you the headaches of trying to make photos and captions and text all play nicely in Word, but it will also help ensure that your text is laid out per publishing industry standards to balance both the art of font and the science of readability. Consider the following two examples:
Example 1
Example 2
The pages in the first example have dense gray rectangles for their text blocks, whereas the second example features an appropriate amount of space between letters, words, and lines in order to allow the reader’s eyes to move smoothly across them. More reading, less eye fatigue. The book from example 1 was laid out in—you guessed it—Word. The book in example 2 was created by a professional book designer in InDesign.
Good news! We have professional book designers to help you! You can read more about our custom book design services here, and you can submit your information to receive a free bid here. Please also feel free to attend my Monthly Publishing Q&A to discuss more questions like this!
Ali Shaw
she/her
Executive Editor
Indigo: Editing, Designer, and More
Ali Shaw scours front-of-bookstore displays, looks up award winners, and writes book proposals for fun. When she’s not editing, producing audiobooks, teaching Entrepreneurship in Publishing, or, you know, reading, she’s probably playing with her dogs, planning epic road trips with her family, or gardening.
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