Happy New Year’s Eve to everyone (and apologies for the late post this week). Recently I was asked about book and manuscript formatting. While I previously posted some Layout Tips to make your book look more professional when laying out your text yourself, I thought I would now offer a template as a late holiday present.

As a winner’s gift, Createspace offers NaNoWriMo winners a code for free copies of their book when uploaded to Createspace. While I don’t intend to self-publish my NaNo novel (especially not while it’s still a rough draft) I thought it would be fun to at least see what it looked like in book form for now. Thus, not wanting to spend too much time on it, I changed the story format from manuscript to book format. For anyone who is likewise intending to turn their manuscript into a book, I present you with the template I created:

Book Layout [.docx]

While (if you’re intending on full self-publishing at professional quality) this template no way replaces what a professional might do, it is a good start for beginners, including all the headers and section breaks you need to upload a word document to a self-publishing platform as a book.

For those who are looking to submit their manuscripts to agents or publishers (after editing, please, please, please) here is my general manuscript formatting (check each agent’s/publisher’s guidelines before submitting, in case they ask for something specific, but a good all-around format to look professional when submitting):

Manuscript Layout [.docx]

If anyone has problems downloading the files, please contact me and I’ll be happy to help.

Happy Holidays!