Congratulations – you’ve done the hard part and written your book. Now you want to turn your manuscript into a real paperback – but where to start?

As a professional print company, Precise Print has published over 100 books, ranging from novels to memoirs, non-fiction to children’s books, poetry and short story collections to educational textbooks, and much more.

We often have clients contact us and tell us that they’ve written a book, but they’re not sure how to get it ready to print. Sometimes they’ve just finished and can’t wait to get it out into the world, and sometimes it’s been gathering dust in their bottom drawer for years.

Here are five steps for getting your book ready to print, and ensuring you’ll have a finished product that you’re proud of.

Step 1 – Preparing your manuscript

There’s nothing quite like that moment when you first hold your book in your hand – but your dreams will come crashing down fast if you haven’t proof-read properly. Just imagine flicking through your novel for the first time, only to suddenly notice a typo that you never caught…! Sadly, this happens all too often when people jump the gun on sending a manuscript to print.

So BEFORE you take your manuscript to a printer, make sure that it’s the best possible version of it that you can produce with as few errors as humanly possible. (Even professionally published books sometimes have typos that have been missed.) One or two typos are forgivable, but finding mistakes every three or four pages becomes very distracting for a reader, and makes your book seem unprofessional.

There are very few people who can effectively proof-read their own work, so it’s worth the time and effort to make sure it’s as correct as possible before taking it to a printer.

[Refer the proofreaders listed with the NZ Indie Publishing Directory]

Remember, it will add time and cost more money if you make major changes after you have submitted the manuscript, so you want it as polished as possible before you hand it over.

Here are some ways to minimize the number of errors in your manuscript:

• Run a thorough spelling and grammar check. Double check the spelling of words, including place names. (Note: Spell-check will pick up some typos, but it won’t always notice if you’ve made grammatical errors, repeated a word or used the wrong word, e.g. maim instead of main.)
• Read the manuscript aloud to yourself or someone else. This is a time-consuming process, but it will also help you to pick up on repetitive words and clunky sentence structures. You can use Adobe Reader or AI programs to read the text aloud to you, and listen back to it.
• Pay a professional to proof-read your manuscript. There are several people on this website who can provide this service for you. They will be looking for typos and errors, but not providing feedback on the book/story/structure overall.
• If you want more feedback on the story itself, you can hire a professional editor to review your manuscript. This does cost more, but a good editor is worth their weight in gold and their feedback is generally well worth the outlay.
• Let other people read it, too! A lot of people are too shy to let others read their manuscripts, but if you want people to buy your book, you can’t keep it to yourself forever. Friends and family are often willing to read the manuscript for free, but they may not be comfortable providing constructive feedback. There are writers’ groups online that you can join who may be willing to read your manuscript for free. They will be more likely to pick up typos or errors than you as well. Remember, you would rather know about mistakes, typos, or factual inaccuracies before it is printed than after!

Step 2 – Choose your specifications

Once you’ve found a designer, ask them to talk you through options for your book. Ask to see some samples of books they have printed for other clients so you can check out the quality, and decide what size, paper stock etc appeals to you and will suit your book best (e.g. buff/cream paper is common for novels but is not suited to reproducing photos).

Discuss:

• Printing specs – Book size (e.g. A5, 6×9, etc.), paper stock & weight, binding.
• Internal formatting – Font size, spacing, margins etc. Consider your audience and what will appeal, e.g. a children’s book should use a font that is easy to read.
• Cover design – Start with an idea of what you want it to look like. Bring in sample books with covers in the style that you find appealing. Photographs or images supplied for the cover should be as high resolution as possible. The cover sells the book, so don’t use a blurry photo or poorly formatted cover, or people may not even give your book a chance.
• Cost – ask for a quote, including an estimate for artwork. Generally designers will charge an hourly rate, and give an estimate of the hours it will take to typeset your manuscript. Remember this is a guideline only – see Steps 1 and 3 for tips on how to prevent these costs from blowing out.

Step 3 – Turning the manuscript into a formatted document

Most designers will prefer your manuscript to be submitted as a MS Word document as this is easily imported into a professional design programme (e.g. Adobe InDesign) to format the internal pages.

Typically, your designer will format the first 10 or so pages of your manuscript and send you a PDF to check that you are happy with how it is looking. They may also send you a couple of different font options. Print the sample pages out and make sure the font size looks right (get feedback from others as well). Once that is agreed upon, the designer can continue typesetting, and will send you a PDF of the full book to review.

Typesetting is a labour-intensive and time-consuming process, which is why it’s super important to have followed Step 1 carefully. As a designer, there’s nothing more frustrating than spending hours formatting a book, only for a client to say: “There were so many changes in the text that I’ve sent you the whole Word document again!” This is a great way to double your artwork costs.

Note: While your printer might notice a typo during the typesetting process, unless you are paying them extra for proof-reading, this is not part of their job. It’s up to you to proof-read your work carefully (see Step 4).

Here are some common issues to avoid:

• Not using page breaks – You should press Ctrl+Enter to go to a new page. Don’t hit the Enter key twenty times!
• Placement of images – If your book includes images, you can either type a note into your text (e.g. insert Uncle John.jpg here) or embed the pictures into the Word document to show where they should fit into the text. However because the Word default page size is A4 (or US Letter) it might not be possible for the images to be placed exactly where you have put them in the final book if it has smaller pages.
• Low quality images – Images embedded in Word also often come through as low resolution, so it’s best practice to supply the images separately to your printer in as high resolution as possible. Make sure to label your images accurately — your designer can’t put the photo of Uncle John on page 44 if the photo is named IMG_0013.jpg.
• Double spacing – It used to be common to use two spaces between sentences (a throwback to typewriters). This is no longer common practice, however if you feel strongly about it, let your designer know to keep the double spaces.

What if I’ve done my own formatting and just want the book printed?

This will reduce your artwork costs – however it doesn’t allow your designer to make any changes to your design, page size or content, so you have to be 100% sure that it’s right before sending it to print.

Pre-formatted files should only be supplied as print-ready PDFs, not Word documents, as text and images will likely move around when opened on a new computer.

If you’ve used Canva, make sure you are sending the files as a Print Ready PDF. Double check the page size. Ask your printer if they want you to include crop marks (they may not – most digital printers do this during the print process).

If you design your book in Word as an A4 document, but want it printed in paperback size (e.g. 6×9), you will need to use a larger font to allow for the pages being scaled down.

Make sure you adjust your internal margins to allow for perfect binding (the inside margin should be wider than the outside).

If you have designed a picture book or any book with images that go over the edges of the page, you will need to include 3mm bleed around each edge. This will be trimmed off when the book is cut down to size so make sure there is nothing you want to keep within the bleed area. Include crop marks for files with bleed.

Step 4 – PDF proofs

Typically, your designer will format the first chapter (or 10-20 pages) of your manuscript and send you a PDF to check that you are happy with how it is looking. Once that is agreed upon, they can finish formatting and send you a PDF of the full book to review.

Inevitably, mistakes will slip through and you’ll find changes you want to make when you receive the PDF.

There are a few ways to do this:

• Use the Highlighter and Add Comments features in Adobe Reader.
• Print out your PDF and write your alterations in pen on the paper. Please use red pen (black pen and pencil are very hard to see) and place an X in the margin next to any line that has a change so that the eye is drawn to it. If you’re adding something small, like a comma or full stop, circle or highlight it to make it visible. 
• Type up a list of changes (e.g. page 31, remove comma after sadly in paragraph 3, line 2).

Make sure you collect any changes into one batch – most designers will have a minimum charge for any alterations, so if you find three separate errors and email them through on three separate days, your designer will have to open the document, make the change, PDF it again and send it back – three times! This will be much more expensive for you than sending all three changes in one email.

Step 5 – Hard Copy Proofs

Once the PDF proof is approved, ask for a hard copy proof of the book and cover. There is likely to be an additional charge for this, but it’s well worth doing before you give approval to print 100 books and realise the front cover is too dark or there is a formatting error you didn’t notice onscreen! (Some printers may not do perfect binding in house, so check beforehand whether the proof copy will be bound. Unbound proofs should cost less.)

Read it carefully. Make sure you’re happy with how it looks, and note down any final alterations to make.

Ready? Let your printer know that your book is signed off  to print – then eagerly await the finished product!