Andrew’s Comments (group member since Sep 20, 2013)

Andrew’s comments from the Help with Book Formatting group.

Good luck and sorry I couldn't help :-)

That's becuse you're trying to replicate what a computer program does.+

I think yur easisest solution is to just lay it out as I suggest and get your local printer to print out a copy for you. We charge token $20 to our authors to help them 'checj' their book and I think it's a really dirt cheap price as we check the artwork, provide feedback and they get a properly printed copy to hold as well. I'm sure you can find a digital printer near you that can help you out.

Hi Jo,
Your program choice will usually depend on the format you want to output your book.

Photoshop (for images) and Indesign (print, POD and eBook possibly) is a great choice. It's used by 95% of designers so if you need help at any point, you can just pass over the file which will save you a time and money.

The other posts have given you great ideas for if you want a DIY solution but I prefer to use a professional service to give me both .mobi and .epub versions at the quality I want. For a couple hundred bucks, it's cheaper for me to use to use a professional than spend the time doing it myself - and get a better outcome too.

Alternately, you can always use services like smashwords.

A word doc is always best to work from of course.

Hi, I'm not sure why you're doing that but I think you want to see what your book will look like when it's properly printed.

As long as have set up your document as single pages (not spreads), desired page size, reasonable margins and in consecutive order, you don't have to do much more.

When you print out your book at home it will be on an A4 sheet but if you've set up your page size and margins properly, the printed text will give you a good idea of what the finished size will look like.

You can the provide your word document to your printer/publisher, they'll do an page imposition in pre-press before they go to print.