6-Step Guide to Format Your eBook Like a Pro
Did you know that there will be around 1.12 billion ebook readers by 2027? Did you also know that you can capture the attention of a high proportion of ebook readers by publishing a well-designed ebook?
A well-designed ebook has the potential to expand your reach, strengthen your connection with your target audience, and boost your profits. To fully harness the advantages of a well-crafted ebook, it is essential to dedicate time to its formatting.
Formatting an ebook is pivotal in differentiating your ebook from poorly designed ones. After completing the final draft of your ebook, the formatting stage is what ultimately transforms your book into an enticing and visually appealing digital publication.
Table of Contents:
Why Do You Need to Format Your Ebook?
By now, you know a bit about the importance of ebook formatting. Let’s go in deeper to understand why formatting plays a crucial role in the ebook creation process.
Correct formatting helps you with the following:
- Increases the readability of your ebook by ensuring a consistent and smooth reading experience
- Enhances the accessibility of your ebook by making it easy to navigate for everyone, including people with disabilities
- Ensures adherence to the ebook publishing guidelines of several digital publishing houses and platforms
- Creates an ebook that looks not only eye-catching and aesthetic but also professional
- Develops a unique brand authority and recognition across the world for your identity as an author
How Can You Format Your Ebook?
Now that you know how vital ebook formatting is – let’s understand how you can format your ebook.
Before starting the formatting process of your ebook, you need to zero down on ebook formatting software. The latter could be Microsoft Word, Kindle Create, Adobe InDesign, or other formatting software.
Once you have selected the software, follow the six steps below to format your ebook:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd371rM-uFo
Step 1: Dispose of All the Formatting
You need to remove all the formatting you did while writing the manuscript. This means removing all the page breaks, automatic numbering, and bullet points, changing the font of the text to common ones like Arial, setting the font size to 11, etc.
Clearing all the formatting from your final manuscript is the first necessary step, as it paves the way to format your whole ebook in the right way. It ensures the content of your ebook gets formatted cohesively and consistently.
Step 2: Format the Front Matter
The front matter is the content that comes before the body of an ebook. What is included in the front matter depends on the type of ebook written and the author’s personal preferences. For example, for a fiction ebook, including a title page, copyright page, dedication page, and a table of contents page is more than enough.
On the other hand, for a non-fiction ebook, whose front matter is usually longer, you can include a list of other works, accolades, a preface, etc. To format the front matter, add page breaks correctly between all the pages so that different parts/sections begin from a new page.
Step 3: Format the Body
The body includes the main content of an ebook. Format the body to make it look readable and professional by doing the following:
- Setting the font style of chapter headings: You can select fun font styles and bold or underline the headings.
- Setting the font style of the body text: You can select standard font styles like Times New Roman and Courier. Keep the style uniform for the ebook.
- Setting the font size of chapter headings and body text: It’s better to avoid large sizes and stick to sizes 14-18 for headers and 10-12 for the main text.
- Including the headers and footers: You can include the book title and author name in the header, footnotes in the footer, and page numbers in either header or footer.
- Adjusting indents, line spacing, and margins in your ebook: You can indent the first line of every chapter, set the line spacing between 1.2-1.5, and the margins to around 0.5″ on both sides of every page.
- Adjusting the paragraphs properly by removing widows and orphans: Widows and orphans are words that get detached from paragraphs and thus need to be attached to complete the paragraphs.
- Including the images: You can include in-line images between two paragraphs. The images should be of equal sizes in the formats of .jpg and .png. and contain captions below them.
Step 4: Format the End Matter
The end matter is the content that comes after the body in an ebook. Like the front matter, you can decide what to include in the end matter. For example, for fiction ebooks, including an acknowledgment page, an about the author page, and an afterword page is more than enough.
On the other hand, for a non-fiction ebook, you can include a glossary page, discussion questions page, bibliography page, etc. To format the end matter, use page breaks to divide new pages correctly and keep their font style and size the same.
Also Read: Top 5 Factors to Consider While Choosing the eBook Conversion Service Provider
Step 5: Add a Table of Contents Page
Once you have formatted the content of the front matter, body, and end matter, add the table of contents page. Create an index and hyperlink all the chapter headings. Also, mention the number of pages each chapter occupies.
After you finish, check the hyperlinks to see whether they work properly. If you encounter any error, correct it by hyperlinking that particular part again.
Step 6: Run a Test and Convert the File
Run a test on the file by seeing a preview of the formatted version of the file. If the formatted version is up to the mark, decide on a conversion format for e-publishing. Converting the file into any one of the formats, such as EPUB, MOBI, PDF, etc., brings the ebook formatting process to an end.
Also Read: Why Do Ebooks Need Automated Quality Checks?
Conclusion
Ebooks are here to stay. You need to create well-designed and well-formatted digital publications to capitalize on this market.
Since formatting an ebook can be quite time-consuming, you can take the help of the best ebook formatting services to save time and effort.
Hurix offers custom book formatting and conversion services to help you reach your readers quickly. Hurix can transform your ebooks into formats like the fixed layout and reflowable layout. Besides this, Hurix offers digital publishing services to help you publish and securely distribute ebooks to your readers.
For a seamless ebook formatting service experience, connect with Hurix.
Gokulnath B is the Associate Vice President – Editorial Services. He is PMP, CSM, and CPACC certified and has 20+ years of experience in Project Management, Delivery Management, and managing the Offshore Development Centre (ODC).