Day: 22 November 2022

by Dr. Andrew C S Koh

In this article, I will walk you through the process of how to format a word document into an amazon paperback that is ready to be uploaded to the Amazon bookshelf for publication. If you follow these steps closely, you should be able to format the document. Here, I am using an apple mac book. If you are using windows the steps may be slightly different.

First, type out a clean Microsoft word document.

Highlight the whole document by pressing Command + A. On the Word menu table, click Home, and click Normal. This will clean up your whole document.

Create the following sections for your paperback manuscript

Title

Copyright

Foreword

Preface

Table of Content

Chapters

About the author

Other books by the author

Sections 1 to 5 are the Front matter, section 6 is the Core matter, and sections 7 to 8 are the Back matter.

Setting the trim size and Margins:

On the Apple Word menu, (the top most horizontal blue bar), click Format, select Document from the drop-down menu. Select Margins, enter the Margins in cm for Top, Bottom, Inside, Outside, based on your page count which can be found in the article http://www.amazon.com, “Build your Book, format a paperback manuscript” ( Word for Mac or window). In this article, I am using Word for Mac, using a MacBook, but it should be quite similar if you are using Windows. Follow the margins for no bleed, unless your book has bleed.

Gutter margin, enter 0 (zero)

Pages, Multiple Pages- select mirror margins.

Apply to: whole documents

select OK.

Select Page Setup, Format for, Any Printer.

Paper size: for the trim size of 6 x 9 inches, enter 152 mm x 229 mm. For any other trim sizes enter accordingly.

scale, 100%, Click OK

Apply to the whole document, click OK

Setting Normal style for book body:

On the Word menu, (top horizontal menu bar), click Home, right-click Normal, select Modify from the drop-down menu, set font size to 12, select Format, select Paragraph from the drop-down menu, set alignment to justify, Indentation, left and right to 0 cm, Special, First line By, 0.5 cm, Spacing, Before and After, to 0 pt, Line spacing, to single.

Click OK, twice.

Applying Normal Style to book body:

Place cursor before the first word on the text of the Copyright page, then hold down shift + page down to highlight everything below the cursor. Keep everything highlighted. On Word menu, click Home, Click Normal.

Setting Heading 1 Style:

Click Home, right-click Heading 1, select Modify from the drop-down menu, set Font size to 12, set colour to black, Select Format, select Paragraph from the drop-down menu, set alignment to justified, indentation, left and right, to 0 cm, Special, First line, By, 0.5 cm, Spacing, Before and After, to 0 pt, Line spacing, to Single, Click OK, Twice.

Applying Heading 1 Style:

Apply Heading 1 Style to the Headings of Copyright, Foreword, Preface, all the Chapters, About the author, and Other books by the author.

Highlight the heading of Copyright. Click Home, click Heading 1. Repeat the same steps for the heading of Foreword, Preface, Every Chapter, About the Author, and other books by the Author.

Adding section breaks:

Add a section break after every section.

Place the cursor at the end of the last word on the Title Page. On the Word main menu, click  Layout, click Break, select Next Page from the drop-down menu.

Repeat the same steps for Copyright, Foreword, Preface, Every Chapter, About the Author, and Other books by the Author.

Formatting the Title Page:

Type out the Title, Subtitle, and Author’s name on one page. This is the book’s first page.

Highlight Title. On Apple main menu (top horizontal blue menu bar) click Font, set Font Size to 28, set Font set Style to bold, select OK.

On the Apple menu, click Paragraph, set alignment to centre, indentation, left and right to 0 cm, Special, to none, Spacing before to 32 pt, and After to 16 pt. Click OK.

Highlight subtitle. On Apple main menu, click Font, set font size to 24, set style to italic.

On the Apple menu, click paragraph, set alignment to centre, indentation, left and right to 0 cm, Special, to none, Spacing before to 16 pt, After to 16 pt.

Highlight the author’s name. On Apple main menu, Click Font, set the font size to 20, set style to Normal.

On the Apple menu, Click Paragraph, set alignment to centre, indentation left and right, to 0 cm, Special, to none, Spacing before to 16 pt, After to 0 pt.

Formatting the Copyright page:

Highlight the text of the copyright page and set alignment to centre. Add a call to action below the last line of the text by adding your email link and website links.

On Word menu, click insert, click links, select link, select email address, enter your email address into the box, click OK.

Repeat the same steps, select link, select webpage, enter your blog URL address into the box, click Ok.

Repeat the same steps to add your URL address for Amazon author central page, the URL address of the Facebook page, Instagram page, Twitter page, etc. Test the link to make sure there is no error in the URL addresses! The URL address should start with https://www…….

Formatting Other Books by the Author:

On this page, you can add a call to action by adding the URL links to all your books. The link should start with https://www.amazon.com/dp/B………followed by 9 alphanumeric digits.

Make sure there is no error in the URL addresses!

Adding page numbers:

Place the cursor anywhere on the title page. On Word main menu, click insert, click page number, select page number from the drop-down menu, position to Bottom of the page, Alignment to Centre, select, show number on the first page.

Select Format, Number format, to 1,2,3. Page numbering, to start at 1. Click OK twice. Page numbers will be added to the bottom centre of the page.

Creating a formatted Table of Contents:

This is the final step of the book formatting.

First, create a blank page before Chapter 1. Place the cursor before the first word in the heading of chapter 1.

Click Layout, click Break, select the next page on the drop-down menu.

On the top of the blank page type, Table of Contents.

Highlight Table of Contents.

Click References, click the table of contents, select custom Table of Contents, select- show page number, select- align page number to right, deselect- Use links instead of page numbers. Show levels- select 1. Click OK.

Congratulations!

You have successfully formatted an Amazon paperback print book. Convert this into a pdf format and upload it to the bookshelf, book content when you are uploading your paperback print book.