Are you writing a book of 50 to 200 pages?
Do you plan to find an editor to work with you to ensure your book is professional in all ways?
Do you plan to self-publish?
Are you concerned about cost?
If so, here are more ideas for saving money:
1. Before you write, decide how you’ll physically structure your content.
2. Will you have chapter titles and subtitles or any other internal section ones?
3. If so, what size and specific font do you want for each? Often titles are in a plain font such as Arial with the text in a different font, such as Times.
4. What color will the titles be? They could be just plain black, like your content probably is, or you might want them to be in a different color to stand out.
5. Will you bold them? Italicize them? Underline them?
6. Will they be on the left side? In the middle?
7. Will you use any punctuation after any of them like a colon (:) or a dash (–)?
8. If you use dashes, will you have a space before and after each one … or no space?
9. Will you have checklists at the end of each chapter for readers to jot down their thoughts? What will they look like? Colorful? Not? Size?
10. If you have different sections, will you indent them or leave them at the same left margin? If you indent, how far? Two spaces? Five?
11. Will you have a summary page after each chapter?
12. Will you have case studies?
13. Will you have a glossary of terms some readers might not understand?
It takes a lot of time for an editor / copyeditor to go back through 100+ pages and check for each of these, and it can be costly.
As the author, it’s your money or your time: I can certainly check for these issues in the draft … or you can decide upfront what you want and save yourself a bundle.
So, if you are writing a book, you have a bunch of things to think about!
For an earlier post on this topic, click here.