Indie Life: Resources to Help You Format for CreateSpace

Hi there! It's time again for Indie Life, a chance for indie authors to post about indie life, find each other, offer support, encouragement, news, helpful hints….an all around enjoyable time getting to know what it means to be an independent author. We're posting the second Wednesday of every month. To join us, go here.

I mentioned in a recent blog post that I'm stalling on formatting my novel for print, because it scares me. Several people mentioned they were hesitating on this process as well. I think it has to do with how beloved our paper books are. I've been ballsy enough to publish ebooks, but this will be my first paperback -- the first of my works that I'll be able to hold in my hands and show a friend, or my grandmother. And it's just me, trying to get it right. So, in keeping with my general principle of NOT stewing on my own as though the rest of the world has never encountered a problem I'm facing, I've been hitting the good old Google for some resources on this.

Here's what I found:

The instructions from CreateSpace on creating your interior PDF.

Great article on formatting manuscript from Jenyfer Matthews.

A video with one take on formatting a manuscript specifically for CreateSpace. I found the visual helpful, though I have no idea why he's using such a clunky word processing program.



Very helpful tips from Indie Designz on creating a copyright page.

Free PDF from 12on14.com called Build Your Book that gives examples of fonts and the verbiage used to talk about book formatting, which I find confusing as heck, thank you very much.

I hope these resources are helpful to some of you. If you've seen another great resource on formatting for CreateSpace, feel free to mention it in the comments so we can all check it out!