Top Tips

Over the last twelve years that I’ve been involved in writing, and typesetting, specifically for the Writers Anonymous writing group, I have learnt a hell of a lot. Suffice to say typesetting was not really something any of the group thought to get involved with – we thought someone else could do that; and when we paid for our first collection of short stories, and the formatting, and everything else – back in 2005 – it was a lot of money.

At that time I’d got 20 years IT under my belt – started as a programmer, then in support, mainly with Microsoft products – I really knew how to use MS Word, and get around its annoyances; I’d already suffered them enough, enough to know what not to do. So this is when typesetting became a remit of the writing group – and we saved so much money when undertaking the work ourselves for additional collections of stories: it’s a lot different today. And I’m please to say that Microsoft Word, though still having some foibles, is a damned good word processor.

In the next pages, in this section, I’m going to try and distill, in the simplest form, the things I have learnt about typesetting, for traditional publishing and Kindle publishing. So if needs be, you can save some money by typesetting your own work for the formats you wish to publish in. One thing I will not be doing is advising you on style – this is not something I’m particularly good at: for me it’s hit and miss, and you’d best seek out other advise on that.

 

Tip #1 – Proofing your work; Tip #2 – Cleaning Up your Manuscript