A badly formatted EBook will alienate readers more quickly than a badly designed print book. At best, it will look amateurish; at worst, it will be difficult to read or "navigate." Fortunately, you can create a professional "look" with just a few simple Word commands. You'll need to consider the following elements:



Page size Most books aren't formatted to an 8.5x11-inch page. Ebook are typically between 5x7 and 6x9 (with 5.5x8.5 being a typical format). Your first step, therefore, is to set a custom page size in Word's "Page Setup" menu.

Margins Use Word's "Format: Document" command to set margins to a minimum of three quarters of an inch on all sides. (You may wish to set top and/or bottom margins slightly larger if you plan to use a header and/or footer.) Since Ebook don't have "left" and "right" pages, turn off the "mirror margins" option.

Headers and Footers Place a "running header" at the top of each page. The easiest approach is to simply include the title of your book and the page number. You can place this information flush left, flush right, or centered nor place the title flush left and the page number flush right I recommend using a slightly smaller font size for the header, and (if you like) using italic or bold. I also like to use the "border" command to draw a line between the header and the text. Another option is to put the title in your header and the page number in your footer.

To make sure that your header doesn't appear on the first page of each chapter, you'll need to use the "Insert: Break: Section: Next Page" command (rather than a page break) to separate chapters. Then, make sure that you've checked "different first page" in the "Format: Document: Layout" menu. You can also create a new header for each chapter (e.g., using the chapter title rather than the book title); to do this, turn off the "same as previous" option in the header command.

Font It's best to use standard fonts such as Times, Times New Roman, Century/New Century Schoolbook, or Palatino. Non-serif fonts such as Arial or Helvetica are good for chapter headings and subheads. Use a minimum of 11 points for your text, and 12 to 14 points for subheads. (Keep in mind that the reader can increase the display size of your book when reading it onscreen.) Since some fonts look better onscreen than in print, and vice versa, test your fonts both ways!

Front Matter Your book doesn't really start with "Chapter One, page one." It starts with "front matter," including:

1. A title page

2. A copyright page. The easiest way to generate one of these is to check the copyright page of any print book and type in the same information, substituting your own name, book title, date, etc. Don't include the "Library of Congress" information or the numbers that indicate the "edition" of the book. Don't bother with an ISBN unless you actually plan to offer physical copies of the book (e.g., on disk) through electronic bookstores like Amazon

3. Acknowledgements, if desired

4. Table of contents (you can generate this automatically in Word by using "headings" formats for your chapter titles and subheads).

While many print books number front matter separately from the rest of the book, this can be awkward in an Ebook. The easiest approach is to treat the first page of your book (even if it's the title page)