How to prepare your book for typesetting

Many people ask me how to best get a manuscript ready for typesetting. For example, can they send it as it’s ready? Does it need to be one file? What software to use? Does it matter which fonts? Can we use Google Docs?

My recommendation before starting the editorial process is to check with your typesetter these various points and remember there are always exceptions to the rules.

So let’s start with software. In my experience, Microsoft Word for Windows is usually the absolute best software for the editorial process as far as typesetting is concerned. For any other software, check with your typesetter first.

Now I would recommend assigning paragraph and character styles to the text in your manuscript to communicate what is to be set as a title or an extract. When using styles, only the style name is used. Your editor can choose any font, size or leading that they please to make the editorial process more efficient, such as double line spacing. Below are a couple of videos on how to create paragraph and character styles.

Assigning styles is not essential, but it can make the process more efficient for the author, editor and typesetter. At a minimum, make the role of each paragraph visually clear. The amount of preparation needed will depend on the manuscript’s length and complexity.

If your document is going to have other character sets, for example: Hebrew, Arabic, Cyrillic or Greek, or even special terms that might be set in a different font, then either use a character style or simply choose a color (but be consistent and don’t use the highlight feature) to differentiate these words from the rest of the text. During page layout, the green text can instantly be made into a character style for say, Greek with the appropriate typeface and hyphenation rules.

Typically the typesetter will want the entire document in one go. Although the document might be later broken up into separate files for a very large job which might have many images in it, for the first stage of document preparation, it is more efficient to work with the entire manuscript in one Word file. This also ensures that chapters don’t get lost!

There may be information in the prelims (see The Anatomy of a Book) that is not yet available, such as an ISBN or Library of Congress data. Agree these exceptions with the typesetter. Also check how to prepare the table of contents: I like 000 at the end of each entry as a page-number placeholder. The main text and the foreword, preface or introduction should otherwise be complete before typesetting begins.

It’s important to test a representative sample before relying on Word features transferring to InDesign. Check cross-references, index markers, footnotes and endnotes, especially in tables or complex material. Current InDesign can import live Word endnotes; they do not inevitably become static text. The software version, import settings and document structure all matter.

A word about images: Word can compress or downsample them, depending on the settings, so supply the separate originals at the highest available resolution. For photographs, 300 pixels per inch at the final printed size is a common target; other artwork and printing methods may need different specifications. Put each filename, including its extension, in its own paragraph, with any caption in the following paragraph. For example, use 001 image.jpg and apply consistent paragraph styles to the filename and caption. A script can then place the original image and its corresponding caption.

The “cleaner” your manuscript is, in other words, the more times that it has been proofread, then the smoother the process of typesetting will be.

If you have any more questions about preparing your manuscript, please feel free to get in touch with us or leave a question in the comments below.