Kevin J Moriarity

A well organized Word document will make turning your work into a Kindle or print book far easier if you simply follow some basic suggestions. This post is about how to set up heading styles. Set up your styles before you begin typing a single word! Most fiction only needs one heading for the chapters. Sometimes there are subheadings within a chapter, but that seems more common in non-fiction. Word provides multiple heading styles. I encourage you to use the default styles: Heading 1 and Heading 2.  The Word table of contents creation feature defaults to Heading 1 through Heading 3. Using the default styles makes creating a table of contents super easy. Most novels don’t really lend themselves to a table of contents, but Amazon / KDP requires one for the Kindle version, so use the default headings and make it easy on yourself. (I usually put the Kindle table of contents at the end if it is just Chapter 1, Chapter 2…) What if you just cannot stand how the headings look? You can chan...

A well organized Word document will make turning your work into a Kindle or print book far easier if you simply follow some basic suggestions.  I have formatted many books of poetry and have seen the same problems over and over. Poets care more about the look of the work than most authors. The shape of the poem is occasionally important. The line lengths matter. The problems stem from the fact that poets compose on an 8.5" x 11" screen for a book that will be 5" x 8" or 6" x 9".  I recommend poets change the page size and margins before they compose. This way they will see how the poems will look on the final printed page and can make informed decisions.  Before you start typing, choose the Layout tab on the toolbar. Click Size on the Layout toolbar. Change the size to your desired book size (5 x 8 or 6 x 9 are very popular options). Make sure Whole document is selected where it says "Apply to".  Then click OK. Choose Margins from the Layout tool...

I just finished writing a number of posts about using Word to write books. I gave advice to make it easier for the author to format the book themselves, or to make it easier for their hired formatter to create both a Kindle and print book. The advice also would have created a nice, low-hassle writing environment for the author.  I wanted to do the same thing for Google Docs. Google Docs has some of the same features. It has pre-defined styles that are mostly suitable for writers. Plus, they can be modified to your taste in terms of font, size, line spacing, paragraph spacing and so on. It's easy to create a new page using Ctrl-Enter, just like Word. You can add page numbers and get them to start on the right page. It does a lot of things right. But, when I tried to create a Kindle book I ran into problems. I exported it as a Word document and it looked OK in Kindle Previewer, but it didn't show the title at the top of the screen. I could not find a way, despite many Google sear...

A well organized Word document will make turning your work into a Kindle or print book far easier if you simply follow some basic suggestions. Sometimes you want to indent a paragraph within your book to make it stand out. Please don't use the tab key or the space bar to move the sentences to the right! There is an easy way to do this.  First, write the paragraph. Then, highlight the paragraph. Go to the toolbar and click the tiny little arrow below the Paragraph section of the toolbar.  The Paragraph settings window will open. I recommend you leave the Alignment at justified. Set the Left and Right Indent settings to .5". I like to add a little extra space before and after an indented paragraph when I format a book, so if you like that look set the spacing before and after to 12 pt. Click OK. Done! When you press enter to get back to regular paragraphs, you may have to click the Normal style in the toolbar. 

A well organized Word document will make turning your work into a Kindle or print book far easier if you simply follow some basic suggestions. Before you type the first word you should modify the Normal stye to your liking. Once it is set up the way you want it, make sure the body of your book uses the Normal style. You can override the Normal style with italics as needed, or indent text if needed (see my post on how to indent paragraphs). If a large part of your book is going to be in a completely different font (for example, you might want to emulate emails or text messages as part of your narrative), adjust the Normal style first and then create a new style with that as the base.  Right click the Normal style in the toolbar and choose Modify. The first screen to appear will be the font selection screen. You can pick whatever font you are comfortable with. The beauty of using styles is that you can modify the style later to choose an appropriate font for book printing with just a...

A well organized Word document will make turning your work into a Kindle or print book far easier if you simply follow some basic suggestions. If you followed the guidelines I wrote in previous posts about the use of Heading Styles  then creating the table of contents will be very easy. If you didn't use heading styles, go back to my post and fix your document. The Word table of contents creation feature defaults to Heading 1 through Heading 3. Using the default styles makes creating a table of contents super easy. Most novels don’t really lend themselves to a table of contents, but Amazon / KDP requires one for the Kindle version, so use the default headings and make it easy on yourself. (I usually put the Kindle table of contents at the end if it is just Chapter 1, Chapter 2…) Click the References tab on the Word toolbar. Next, click Table of Contents on the left. Then choose Custom Table of Contents at the bottom. Adjust the number in Show Levels. If you only used Heading 1 in y...