Book Interior Layout Design

When the time comes to begin formatting your manuscript, the following tips will ensure a smooth process for you and your designer.

• Editing should be complete.
• If your interior will contain images, they should be high resolution, and collected before formatting begins. Major editing, or searching for/inserting missing images after your manuscript has been fully formatted can cause delays.
• The front matter (title pages and everything else prior to page 1) should be in Roman numeral page numbers.
• While this topic is up for debate, most books follow this rule: page #1 should begin on the first page of chapter one, or the introduction. Blank pages should not be numbered.
• It is preferable to use either indents or line breaks—not both.
• When choosing your interior font, there are many opinions regarding serif versus san serif, but most importantly—it should be legible.
• Professionally formatted interiors use justified column text (flush left and right) for body paragraphs.
• If you have a long author biography, it is appropriate for this to be inserted in the interior as an ‘About the Author’ section.  Generally this is placed in the very back of the book.