(The sound of a pen scratching.) LOGO. Hellooo everybody!
Today I'm teaching you how to format your book. If you're not familiar,
formatting a book means preparing the pages of your manuscript so that it
looks like an actual, professional, readable book. It's basically taking a
massive Word doc and turning it into this. This topic was requested by one of
my patrons over on Patreon, Timothy. Timothy wanted to know all about
interior book design, what is needed in the finished formatted copy of your book,
and I figured, “Hey, why not break down the whole formatting process from start to
finish?” So that's what we're doing today! If you want to learn even more tips
about the writing and publishing process, please be sure to subscribe to my
channel and ring that bell. I post content on Wednesdays, with bonus content
on Mondays! We have a good time here! You should join us! And don't forget, my
upcoming dark fantasy romance novel The Savior’s Sister is currently available
for pre-order in ebook, hardback, and paperback. And I am hosting a massive
presale giveaway! If you pre-order a copy of TSS, you are eligible to enter my
giveaway. Everyone who enters will receive the first five (5) chapters of The
Savior’s Sister. Plus you will become eligible to win one of over thirty-five (35) amazing
prizes! One of those winners will be announced at the end of today's video,
and they are walking away with a signed copy of Divinity Falling by Nour Zikra. If you don't know Nour, you must be living under a rock. She is a fellow fantasy
writer and a Youtuber. She is sweet and funny and hysterical! I love her!
I've got Nour’s info linked below, as well as all the details regarding TSS
and the TSS presale giveaway! Definitely check it out! But before I reveal the
winner of Divinity Falling, I'm going to teach you how to easily format your
book so it looks beautiful and professional. “But Jenna, you said we
should hire a professional formatter to format our books!” Yes, I did say that. But
I am a flawed human being who reserves the right to change her mind. I had my
first two books professionally formatted, and while I'm happy with the end product,
it was a really long process - I'm talking months. At the time, I felt like the juice
was worth the squeeze, because I had acquaintances who formatted their
books themselves. They said it was extremely frustrating, that there was a
very hard learning curve, and then after all the blood, sweat, and tears, their
formatted books didn't really look that good.
No thank you! However, the writing industry evolves over time and necessity
breeds innovation. When I entered the formatting process for The Savior’s Sister,
I had a lot of issues. The formatter I hired was really difficult to work with
and they kept hitting me with a lot of upcharges and hidden fees. My friends
Meg LaTorre and Sacha Black asked me, “Why don't you just use Vellum?” What the fuck
is Vellum? They told me it's a program you can use to format your book yourself.
It's very easy to use and the end result is very professional. At that point I was
desperate to part ways with my formatter, so I downloaded Vellum, I gave it a shot,
and long story short I will probably never hire a professional formatter ever
again. Meg and Sacha have converted me! I am forever indebted to their genius! Full
disclosure, this video is not sponsored by Vellum. However, I do have an affiliate
link. This means if you click the link in my description and decide to purchase
Vellum, I will receive a small commission. Please note I do not accept sponsorships
or affiliate agreements with companies that I would not personally use or
recommend, regardless. If you guys saw my publishing vlog from awhile ago, then you
already know that I've been using Vellum for a while. I love it, and I was
recommending it long before I had an affiliate link. If you're not comfortable
with affiliate links, you do not have to click it. But if you don't have an issue
with it and you like the sound of this product, then I appreciate the support
‘cause this bitch has medical bills to pay! Now that that's out of the way, I'm going
to break down some of the details regarding Vellum and the benefits, as
well as the negative sides to self formatting. Then I'm going to walk you
through the formatting process step by step. First and foremost, what's the
lowdown on Vellum? Vellum is a platform that allows you to format ebooks,
paperback books, and hardback books. You download the platform, it loads to your
desktop, and then you can format your book completely risk-free. You only have
to pay for the product once you've decided that you like the format you
created, and you want to export and publish it. What are the benefits of
Vellum? Number one: it's risk free. You can format your entire book
without paying a cent. I did not pay for Vellum until I had formatted the ebook,
paperback, and hardback versions of TSS in full. In other words, you can try out
all of its features, and if you don't like it, you don't have to buy it.
Number two: the price. It's very inexpensive considering what you're
paying for. If you want to create unlimited ebooks, Vellum requires a
one-time payment of a hundred and ninety nine dollars and ninety nine cents ($199.99). If
you want to create unlimited ebooks AND physical books, Vellum requires a
one-time payment of two hundred and forty nine dollars and ninety nine cents
($249.99). “But Jenna, you said they were inexpensive!” If you
think this is expensive, you have not yet experienced the realities of
self-publishing. Hiring a professional formatter to format one book typically
costs the same rate as buying Vellum or more. Past professional formatters I've
hired have had price ranges going from two hundred and fifty to four hundred
dollars ($250-$400), and that was for one book. With Vellum, you pay for the program one time,
and then you can use it over and over again for as many books as you want.
Number three: time management. Once I learned how to use Vellum, it took me
maybe a half hour to format all three versions of my book. This is compared to
hiring a professional formatter, where the process can take weeks - or if, you've
got repeat edits to make, even months. Which brings us to number four: the
ability to make changes. If you notice a typo, all you have to do is hop on to
Vellum, fix it, and then upload it back to your publishing platform. BOOM! Ya
done! This also means you can update or reformat books over the years. Now that
The Savior’s Sister is coming out, I want to add a teaser of TSS at the end of The
Savior's Champion. When you self-format, reformatting is super easy. But when you
hire a professional, you do not have this luxury. All that said, what I love the
most about the platform is number five: the finished product is SUPER
professional. It does NOT look self-made in the slightest, and ultimately, that is
the most important thing in my opinion. All of these other benefits become
irrelevant if the final product is shitty. Now that we know the pros, what
are the cons to Vellum? Number one: it is currently only available to Mac users. If you
got a PC, you're shit out of luck. This may change over time, but right now
you're screwed. Number two, there's a bit of a learning
curve. When I first started using it, I was a little lost regarding some of the
features, but honestly if you tinker with it, you'll probably figure it out. The
last con is more of a user warning. Sometimes when you generate your final
document, there may be tiny errors or glitches in the format. For example, the
first paperback format I produced changed the page numbers to Roman
numerals about halfway through the book. If this happens, it's not a big deal. You
just need to regenerate the file and it'll work itself out. I recommend going
through every page before uploading it to the publishing platform of your
choosing, that way you can check to make sure there aren't any remaining glitches.
Now that we've broken down the pros and cons, I'm going to walk you through my
process of using Vellum. I'm going to be reformatting the first novel in The
Savior’s Series, The Savior's Champion. That way, you can get an idea of how to use
Vellum and whether or not it'll work for you. Switching over to screen view in
three, two, one, go! So I'm on my desktop right now, and I've opened up Vellum. As
you can see, I already have The Savior’s Sister available in here, but right now I
am going to format The Savior's Champion. So I'm going to click on ‘import Word
file,’ and I'm going to import The Savior's Champion. So, as you can see, it
has automatically uploaded TSC to Vellum. Before I start making changes, I want to
go through exactly what you should expect to put in a formatted book. If you
hear any weird, uh, click-clacky noises while I'm doing this, that's just
Buttercup. She is sitting next to me chewing a bone. Let's let her enjoy her
chew time. So, when you import your document to Vellum, it'll already start
trying to collate things. For example, we've got a title page, we've got a
copyright page, contents, and of course - we have the chapters. However, most books
have more information than this. For a physical copy of a book, you typically
have two title pages. You may have noticed this whenever you open up a
paperback or hardback book, you will see a title page and then you might see
another fancier title page. For an ebook, though, you typically only need to have
one title page. The next page is typically the copyright page. After that,
you can include a dedication page if you would like, you certainly do not have to.
Next up would typically be the Table of Contents. For fiction novels you would
typically only see a Table of Contents in the ebook format. However, if you are
writing nonfiction, you will almost definitely want to have a table of
contents in both the ebook and in the physical copy. After that, if your book
has a prologue, that'll typically come next.
Vellum accidentally included my prologue in the copyrights page, that's not a big
deal. We can easily fix that later on. After that, you have the chapters, which
you guys can see right here. Once a story is over, you might have an acknowledgment
page where you acknowledge people who were influential during your writing
process. You might have an author bio. I want to make sure I emphasize you would
only include an author bio in the book if it's not somewhere ON the book. So, for
example, your author bio is not going to be on your ebook cover, so it's normal to
include an author bio inside an ebook. Typically hardback books have an author
bio on the inside flap, so you wouldn't need to include the author bio there.
Some paperback books include the author bio on the back of the book.
Mine doesn't. Many don't. So if your paperback does not include the author
bio on the back of the book, you can include it within the book itself, usually
toward the end. And if this book is the first in the series, you of course can
also include some kind of teaser content at the end. That's what I will be doing
here for The Savior's Champion. I will be adding some kind of teaser for The
Savior’s Sister, letting people know, “Hey, there's more coming out soon,
so keep reading!” Please keep in mind that the order in which I listed these things
is just a general guideline. For example, some people put their author bio before
the acknowledgments. Some people put the teaser before the author bio. It's just a
general placement. Now, let's get to formatting! The first thing I'm going to
do is label this project ‘The Savior's Champion.’
And now we move on to the title page. As you can see, Vellum will create a title page
for you. However, it's very common for writers to want to create their own
title page, make it something special, and exciting! If that's the case, what you can
do is click on this little gear icon, click ‘add element,’ and then you could say
what kind of element you want to add. If you want to create an entire page from
scratch, you are going to click ‘full page image.’ I'm going to rename it ‘title page’
so I know what its purpose is, and I'm going to add the image. I've already
created the title page I want to use. And now it's uploaded, ready to go! Now that I
have this title page, I'm going to delete the one that Vellum provided, so I just
click here, click on the gear icon again, ‘remove title page.’ Next up, I have the
copyright page. Vellum is showing you what the book looks like on a Kindle
device, but you can choose how you want to view it. So, I'd like to see what it
would look like in print, and as you can see it looks nice except for the fact
that my prologue is here hanging out at the end. So what I'm going to do is I'm
going to highlight the prologue, delete it from the copyright page, and add
another new element. ‘Add element.’ ‘Prologue.’ And I can paste my prologue right here. I
still have editing to do for it, but we're gonna deal with that later. Let's
go back to the copyright page. This looks exactly how I wanted my copyright page
to look like, so I'm going to move on. As I already covered, it's very common for
books to have two title pages, at least in physical form, so I'm going to add my
second title page. So again, I click on the gear icon, ‘add element,’ ‘full page
image.’ I'm going to label it ‘title page,’ again, and I'm going to upload the image
I'd like. Lookin’ good! Now, I already mentioned this, but in case you forgot,
you don't really need two title pages in the ebook format. And what's nice is
that Vellum will allow you to make some items visible in just the ebook or just
the physical book. So in order to make this visible in just the physical book,
I'm going to click the gear icon here, ‘include in print only.’ So now, right here
in this corner you see this little open book. That means it's only available in
the print book. You are not going to get it in the ebook, which is a perfect
segue into contents. It automatically created a Table of Contents right here
based on what I have uploaded, which is perfect. And as you can see, there's a
little phone icon next to it. That means this is only going to be visible in the
ebook. If you want to change it and make it visible in all editions, you can do
that, however this is a fiction novel and Table of Contents are not commonplace in
fiction novels so I'm going to leave it just in the ebook. Now we move on to
actually formatting the pages. This is my favorite part. The first thing I'm going
to do - I personally hate it when prologues are labeled ‘prologue,’ I think
it's better if they just have their title available. I'm going to copy the
title of the prologue and paste it here. I like that so much better! Again, you can
also check to see how it's going to look in print form. Now we're going to move on
to the chapter headers just to make sure everything is formatted exactly how I
want. As you can see, everything looks pretty uniform. You can see how each
chapter begins with this uppercase letter. I really like that, but you can
change the layout of everything. You can change the effects. You can change how
you want it to look, and the way you do that is you click on ‘styles.’ This is
where you can change how your heading looks, you can change how the first
paragraph begins of each chapter. When you go to ‘book style,’ there are different
categories of styles. There are some that seem more romantic, some that are more
professional and maybe have a nonfiction vibe, and some that seem more historical
or fantasy. They are all very different. I like the Oxford style because I feel
like it feels the most fantasy. From there, you can choose all the details of your
formatting, starting with the heading. This is my favorite part! Now that I'm in
the Oxford style category, I've got three headings to choose from. We've got this
one, we got these little flowery things, and then we've got this option. This is
my favorite for The Savior’s Champion. I feel like it's the most masculine
of the three, so it's what I'm going to go with. You get to also choose how your
first paragraph will begin. Maybe with a large letter T, maybe a different font of
T, just all capitalization. I like the version that I have already because it
feels the most fantasy. You get to choose how your paragraph will start after a
scene break, you get to choose the little doodad ornament for a scene break, you
get to update how your page number will appear, how your author name and title
will appear at the top of the page. And, of course, you get to choose the style of
your formatting. You get to pick the font you're using, the indentation and spacing,
if you're going to allow hyphenation, if you're going to justify the text. I'm not
a fan of hyphenation when I'm reading so I never click on this and I hate books
that are formatted without justifying, so I will definitely be clicking that. Now,
something to keep in mind is whether or not you are going to be creating both a
hardback and paperback version of your novel. The reason I mention this is
because it's common for the hardback to be a bit fancier. What I like to do for
my hardback version is create a fancier chapter heading. So this is what I would
use for my paperback version, but for my hardback, I want to step it up a notch. So
what I'm going to do is open up a new file on Vellum, and if I want to use the
content I've already created, I would just click on ‘duplicate.’ So now I've got
a second file that looks exactly like this one, but I'm gonna play with the
chapter headers. Since I'm going to be adding a fancy image, I don't really want
these little doodads at the top. So again, I'm going to go to ‘styles,’ and I'm going
to change it to this one with the knowledge that this guy is gonna go
bye-bye. I'm going to click this little gear here and click ‘add heading image,’
and I think I want to try this laurel wreath as my header image. Ooh, I love the
way this looks. So this is how the hardback is going to be different from
the paperback. I would then do it to every chapter,
click on the gear, ‘add heading image,’ add the laurel wreath. BAM! Once you have
updated all of your header images, and you've made sure that all of
your chapters are formatted the way you want, you can move on to formatting the
final pages of your book. Okay, so I flipped back to the paperback and ebook
version. I am at the end of the book, which means I'm going to be adding the
final pages. For this book, that means I'm going to be adding a teaser of The
Savior’s Sister. Now, again, we click on this little gear, ‘add an element,’ and there are
lots of different options you can choose from and they all have a different
format. Now, this is a page that you would use to list praise quotes for your book,
but I'm actually going to use it to introduce the teaser of The Savior’s
Sister. So I'm going to title it, ‘Want more?’ ‘The Savior’s Sister is a companion
novel to The Savior's Champion.’ I can always fix this later, but you guys get
the idea. I can pull up the cover of TSS right here and slap it right in the
book itself. BAM! Look at that! So you click on it, you assign it a title. What
kind of picture is it? It's a book cover. I can adjust the size, I can make it itty
bitty, I can make it much bigger, I can make it so huge it doesn't fit on the
page. You can also include the links for The Savior’s Sister here, highlight your
text, and add a web link. BAM! Now we've got a link right here in the book. This
is how it'll look on the Kindle. For now, I'm going to leave this the way it is
and move on to the final step, which is for me, adding the author page. Again some
people might want to add acknowledgments. That's not something I do, so I'm moving
to the author. So I like to have my author photo in my author page, so I'm
going to pull that up. Again, I would click on the photo that I want, and I
would drag it in here. Now I can label the photo ‘Jenna Moreci,’ and I can show
exactly how I want it to show up. I like this option of having it off to the side.
Next I am going to include my author bio, and lastly I'm going to include my
social media link. You can also organize how you want them to show up, and you can
also choose how it’ll show up in the print edition. That's what we're looking
at right now, and these little logos right here aren't really gonna do
anything for anyone, so I'm going to ‘show icons and links’ so
people know exactly where to find me. And yeah, that's it! We can check how it looks
in the ebook form. (Speaking In a Fancy Accent) Perfect, darling! I love it!
(Normal Voice) Now you guys already know I want to go back to this teaser page and fiddle with
it, but let's just pretend we're all done for now, everything looks great!
What we can do is export it. We can get the format ready to go. So I'm going to
click on this button, ‘generate.’ We're gonna ‘save’ first, obviously. And now I'm
going to generate the files that I want. I can ask for print only, I can select
certain ebook files I want. This is my paperback and ebook format, so I would
click all of these and press ‘Continue.’ So now my files are here in this folder
and I can take a look at them. Here is the print version - looks fantastic! Super
professional. You're going to see blank pages in here because it's going to make
sure that the book starts on the right-hand page. And here it is! Here is
the book, all formatted. It looks gorgeous! Once you get to this part, you're going
to want to go through every single page. Make sure everything looks PERFECT,
because it's possible for the platform to glitch and maybe mess something up.
Just generate the format again and it'll fix itself. There are also other features
to fiddle with. You can fiddle with print settings. For example, if you want to
widen the margins, if you want to make sure every chapter starts on the
right-hand side. There are a million other settings to play with, I am just
giving you a brief overview. I am gonna go ahead and fiddle with the teaser
section a bit more after this video, but for now, I hope you really enjoyed me
walking you through this process. It's super easy and I think the format turned
out great! So that's all I got for you today! If
you're interested in checking out this product for free, I have it linked below!
This video is not sponsored. I am NOT getting paid to promote Vellum, but I do
have an affiliate link because I am a super mega huge fan. This is the program
that I used for The Savior’s Sister, as well as the reformat of The Savior's
Champion, as you just saw. I like it! This is a writing channel, you guys are
writers, so I figured you might like it too. Thank you to Timothy for requesting
today's topic! If you'd like the chance to have a video dedicated to you, or if
you want access to tons of other awards, check me out on Patreon! You get early
access to videos, we've got an exclusive writing group, there's monthly live
streams, there’s signed merch. It's awesome! I've got it linked below, check
it out! And now it's time for some prizes! One
lucky winner of my TSS presale giveaway is walking away with Divinity Falling,
the debut fantasy novel by my good friend Nour Zikra. If you like angels,
demons, new adult fantasy, violence, sexy times, and all that good stuff, this book
is for you! And the winner is...this person! Thank you so much for pre-ordering The
Savior’s Sister! And a HUGE thank you to Nour for supporting my presale! Again,
guys, if you want the chance to win some awesome prizes, I've got the pre-order
links to TSS listed below. Definitely check it out! You'll get a great book out
of the process, and you might win some other great books! Don't forget to
subscribe to my channel! I post new videos on Wednesdays, and if you want to
be alerted as SOON as I upload, ring that bell! And be sure to follow me on social
media! I'm on Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook - and of course, you can Tweet me @JennaMoreci! Bye! (Rumbling Male Voice) This is Brontes. Why, THE FUCK, haven't you
subscribed to Jenna's channel? Do you really want to face me?
If you don't do it, you know what will happen. I'll rip out your tongue, torture
you, then leave your rotten corpse out for the birds to feast on it.
Now press the goddamn button. And the bell, too...
