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Page lay-outs

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  • On line-spacing, I've become less keen on 1.5 and much prefer double spacing if it can be accepted.

    That will increase the page count and affect your royalties.
  • Just a further point, and with all respect to BB, Cuttle has mentioned a word count of 37,000-38,000. I hope BB will agree with me that any smaller than a 12-point will result in a very thin book. Certainly, you can increase the 'white space' but you don't necessarily want the book to look too padded out.
  • I would never do 'padding out' either in the sense of spacing or in adding unnecessary chapters. I believe a story should be as long, or as short, as it takes to tell it. I'm not bothered whether a book looks thin. Plenty of successful stories (no need to name them) have 'looked' thin. It's the quality of the writing that matters.

    Incidentally, my current page layout happens to be 28 lines of text, double-spaced, when printed out on A4, which is all I have to go on at the moment. I have no idea what a 'typical' book-page is either, as a brief survey of my own shelves a couple of months ago (selecting fiction at random) of several publishers showed no similarity of spacing, font, etc. Margins also varied quite a lot in size. Some books actually looked crammed, and very off-putting to read.
  • Just a further point, and with all respect to BB, Cuttle has mentioned a word count of 37,000-38,000. I hope BB will agree with me that any smaller than a 12-point will result in a very thin book.
    It should be the length it needs to be and displayed in a clear font. A larger font will look odd.

    I believe a story should be as long, or as short, as it takes to tell it. I'm not bothered whether a book looks thin. Plenty of successful stories (no need to name them) have 'looked' thin. It's the quality of the writing that matters.
    Exactly.
  • Have had quite an informative feedback from CreateSpace support, to several points about possible book layout, but I still feel apprehensive about going ahead with loading the novella just yet. I can see there is flexibility about the contents page and about chapter headings or not, but I probably need to read through Joel Friedlander et al advisory notes, to grasp more about headers/footers, and pagination.
    It would be just like me to get some aspect of page-numbering wrong, As I understand it so far, title page, dedication and contents pages aren't numbered. Has a blank to be left for a publisher's page as well? And is author info. optional (I might leave it out).
    I find on desktop that I can start the main body of the text on page 1 all right, but any previous pages have a 0 on them, and I don't know how to get rid of it.

    Observations on any of this from experienced members would be useful.
  • Also I don't see yet, how an empty page space between successive stories in the same book could be made to have no page number the way I want, as my pdf on desktop would keep numbering them whether blank or not.
  • When I mentioned author info above, of course I was referring to author history and background, etc. I don't wish to make an entry of that kind in page notes, back cover, or anywhere else. Only my name with the title.

    I don't want chapter headings either.
  • Generally, for formatting a new sequence of page numbers, you have to place a section break at the end of the preceding chapter. You can then 'edit' the next section of numbers by going to headers or footers (as the case may be) and 'formatting' page numbers. In the case of needing a blank page between successive stories, you need to click on the header and footer tolls 'different first page' box. That will delete the blank page number.

    This info assumes you're using Microsoft Word.
  • Does it really matter to readers whether you use double or single speech marks with CS?

    I was taught to use double speech marks when writing and continue to do so, unless single speech marks are stated as required.
  • Don't know about CS just yet, but I use single speech marks anyway, if I haven't been told to use double. I'll look out for that in the CS help notes.
  • I use single throughout Mrs C's Army. CS didn't complain. It's really important to be consistent, but note that in general US habit is to use double for speech, and the UK habit single. If you are the publisher of your own book, you set the house style, so go with what suits you.
  • I distinctly remember posting several comments on a discussion thread headed 'Publishing on Amazon', but when I looked today to post something further, there's nothing there beyond 2015. Where has it all gone?
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