In this “Indie Author Minute Video,” book designer Kaitlin Quigley talks about the unsung hero in your book’s journey to a professional publish: interior formatting.
What is interior formatting?
People often come to us with lots of question and misconceptions about interior formatting, so let’s start by getting one thing clear: formatting is not editing. Interior formatting is the process by which a professional book designer uses publishing software to lay out and design your edited manuscript to turn it into a visually pleasing and well-organized book.
When done right, formatting does so much more than simply put words neatly on a page. It turns your manuscript into a professional-looking product that stacks up against everything else on your bookshelf by enhancing the visual appeal of every page, making it easier to read and comprehend, and injecting the emotion and personality your content deserves.
Formatting enhances readability and comprehension
A professional designer is going to consider the best way to enhance the readability of your content. BookBaby designers spend years studying every element of typography: from layout, line spacing, and letter spacing to the minute details that distinguish one font from another. We utilize every aspect of our training to ensure your book is going to provide the best visual experience for your readers.
A well-formatted book will also aid in the comprehension of your content. Your novel’s fonts and chapter headings should help convey the tone and substance of your story. When it comes to business books, academic books, or cookbooks, the information must be well organized, every image should complement the text, and like sections need to be treated with similar styles, colors, and hierarchy.
Formatting gives your book personality
Of course, your content is king, but interior design has an enormous effect on how your readers are going to experience your book — it’s what they see every time they open it up.
Formatting is their companion the entire time they are reading your book, so it’s important that the personality and the emotion of your words are expressed — not just through reading the words but also by the visual experience. Seriously, custom interior formatting is that powerful!
As you know, the book marketplace is flooded with competition. A great cover design will grab a reader’s attention, but a well-formatted interior will keep your audience reading. By choosing to use a professional book designer to format your manuscript, you are going to gain the edge you need to help your title stand out as a professionally published book.
From a design perspective, formatting is an opportunity to weave elements from your cover design into the body of your work. Carrying over fonts, graphics, and even color palettes can enhance the overall appearance of a book, making it a cohesive, well-thought-out piece of art.
Your book deserves professional interior formatting
When you pick a book off a bookshelf, you might not say to yourself, “Wow, this is an excellently formatted novel!” And that’s okay! We’re not here to take the spotlight away from your content.
When done right, it means the designer did a great job laying out the type and elements so that you didn’t think twice about it.
However, when a book is not well-formatted, it shows. Perhaps the spacing is too tight, or the font is too small or too large, or there are odd paragraph breaks between pages, or maybe the chapter pages are uninteresting — all of which can make a book more difficult to read and enjoy.
Interior formatting elevates your book to a professional level and makes it stand tall alongside any traditionally published work.
You’ve put a lot of time and effort to make your book’s content worth reading, and it should look like it on every page. You want everyone to love your book as much as you do!
See all our Indie Author Minute videos on the BookBaby YouTube channel.
As an avid reader, I can affirm that many of us don’t necessarily consciously acknowledge a well-formatted book, but we absolutely notice one that is poorly laid out. Indeed, as you point out, the sign of a good designer is when their work blends seamlessly into the reading experience, adding value without overtly drawing attention to itself. One aspect that you touched on, which I find particularly compelling, is how formatting can not only enhance readability and comprehension but also add personality to the book. The idea of the visual presentation complementing and reinforcing the emotion and tone of the words is something I had not consciously considered before. This adds an entirely new dimension to the reading experience for me.
Well written, but then, intellectual theft is real, here I think is the main issue. Who is guaranteeing the literary work of the author is protected.
Thank you from a fellow interior book designer— you did a great job explaining what we do and how important our work is!
ps
I always recommend BookBaby to the self-publishing authors I work with for so many reasons.