Preparing Your Manuscript to Meet Technical Requirements for Print
Book manuscripts flow through multiple phases to reach the final printed form. As discussed in Your Corporate Biography, Part 1, the content must be gathered, assessed, organized and written. After the composition phase a rigorous proofreading will be needed. Do not rely solely on software-driven spelling and grammar-checking and avoid the temptation of mass changes except in limited cases. Think about how auto-correct works (or doesn’t) when you’re texting or emailing. Let those programs guide you through making corrections, but check every single one.
After the manuscript content has been cleared of errors, you can move on to the design and layout process. Part 2 of Your Corporate Biography listed the parts of a book that need to be designed. But while you can conceptualize how you would like your book to look and do mock-ups in many different ways, in the end you will need to produce files for your printer.
Software or Templates?
Professional graphic designers use software programs that generate files that will be accepted by commercial printers, such as Adobe InDesign for book layout. While writers can use any word processing programs during the writing process, these programs do not have the capability of producing the files needed for the professional printing of a book. Indeed, commercial printers will typically not accept files created in Microsoft Word or Publisher. They will accept PDF files, but not all PDF files are created equally: an Adobe InDesign file exported as a PDF will have everything the printer needs; a Microsoft Word file exported as a PDF typically will not. So, the biggest challenge non-professional book designers face is getting their files into an acceptable form for printers.
Fortunately, many printers provide online templates you can use to create the files needed to print your book. These templates typically offer the ability to: set margins and set up page headers and footers; designate colors, load fonts, etc. With templates, you can work with content you’ve composed in word processing programs via cut and paste. You may find that you need to remove returns that create awkward line-breaks or other artifacts from the word processing program. Sometimes it’s best to save your work as simple text and copy and paste from that file because it won’t bring software-specific artifacts into the template. It depends, too, on whether the templates accept text that has been formatted (bolding, italicizing, indenting, etc.) or whether the formatting needs to be done in the template. If the latter, working from a simple text source is better.
If you aren’t using a professional to layout your book call us at 330-597-8560 to find out how best to proceed. Knowing up front which direction you will need to go for the printing of your Corporate Biography will save you time and labor.
