Making it look Professional - I

Are there enough blank pages in your book?

A book is going to be printed on both sides of paper. Hence, before submitting your book you must check whether the content is coming on the right page. If one side is to remain blank, you must insert a blank page in your document. For example, if you have a "Title Page", which includes the name of the book and comes just after the cover, then you would want the back side of the page to be blank. A "Dedication Page" or "Table of Content" starting from Page Number 2 would not look good. So, you should have a Title Page followed by a blank page, followed by other content.

Similarly, if you have Table of content running into odd number of pages, you should leave a page blank after that, so that the actual content does not start on the back side of the page containing the table.

See an example here.

Have you included some standard content?

Title Page

This should be the first printed page in your book. The name of the book should appear prominently on it. Optionally name of the author and other information can be there. Leave the page after it blank or include the "General Information" mentioned next on it.

General Information

Have a page giving information about copyrights, publishing and printing. This page can be there at the back of the title page. We have created a sample, which we can use after inserting your name in the suitable places. Find it here.

Dedication

You may want to dedicate your book to someone. In that case have a page for that. Leave the next page blank.

Preface and Foreword

Preface is generally written by the author to introduce the book to the readers. This can be a place for a heart to hear talk with the readers. Having or not having a preface depends on the individual style of the authors.

Foreword is usually a introduction written by someone else. If you know someone who can write a good foreword for your book, it is a good idea to include that.

For both of these, if they take up odd number of pages (1, 3 etc.), remember to leave the next page blank.

Table of Content

A table of content makes it easy for the readers to locate the content. If you are formatting your book in word-processor, you can use the word-processor's features to create a table that does not need to be updated manually. You can find information about how to do it in MS word in this article.

Once again, if it runs into odd number of pages, leave the next page blank.

Formatting of the book

There are a number of things you can do to ensure that the content of your book is formatted well. Some of the tips for MS word can be found in this article.

Download a template showing all of the above here.