You’ve spent hours beautifying your manuscript, preparing it for submission to your publisher or agent—or getting it ready to wow potential publishers and agents. Then you get a note from your editor that everything you’ve done to make it interesting and attractive is killing the editorial and production process. Oops. You cry yourself to sleep on your inspired manuscript pages.
Manuscript preparation is a strange little detail in the publishing world. It’s the bane of authors, editors, and production artists alike. Today the majority of writers are working on computers, not typewriters. They’re working in sophisticated word processing programs, not simple-format software with few options. And as wonderful as these advances are, they’ve caused a bit of confusion and consternation, particularly for the editors and production artists who work with the manuscript down the line. So if you want your manuscript to be publisher-friendly or if you want your submission to be taken seriously, here are a few tips.
If you are already working with a particular publisher, go to that publisher’s website and check out the specific guidelines for final manuscript submission. This will help keep the process smooth right from the beginning and will make sure that all of the editors and designers you’ll be working with don’t resent you.
If you don’t have a publisher yet, use the following guidelines:
- When choosing a font, use 12-point Times or Times New Roman for all of the text, including excerpts, block quotes, etcetera. You may use another font, or a larger or stylized font for headings, but keep the rest of the text simple. It may be boring, but it’s a standard that most publishers use. It helps them convert the manuscript page length into an estimate for the length of the final book.
- Set your line spacing to double-space for the entire manuscript.
- Don’t use extra space of blank lines between paragraphs.
- To mark the beginning of a new paragraph, just indent the first line. You can either use a tab or use the paragraph settings to maintain a first-line indentation. Do not use spaces instead of a tab.
- Use 1 inch margins on all sides of the page.
- Don’t use double spaces between sentences. A single space is the industry standard.
- If you have titled chapters (not just Chapter 1, Chapter 2), include a table of contents at the beginning of the manuscript.
- Keep all other styling simple. Do not set the elements of the manuscript (headings, chapter openings, etc.) the way you think they should appear in the final book pages. Your book will be designed by a professional designer, and the design work you spent hours creating in the manuscript will be tossed by the wayside.
- When creating tables, use the table creation tool in the word processing program you’re using.
- Insert comments in brackets ([ ]) between paragraphs regarding placement of images, graphs, tables, charts, and any other artwork.
For more detailed manuscript guidelines, you can always refer to the ever-enlightening Chicago Manual of Style.
Tags: book editing, book editor, chicago manual of style, edit a manuscript, format a manuscript, literary agent, manuscript formatting
Interesting. I’ve been seeing many posts lately by writers and editors discussing manuscript preparation, especially font. A professional freelance copy editor mentioned she prefers editing manuscripts set in Courier because of the nature of the spacing and ease of reading punctuation.
Why is Times New Roman preferred here? Is it preference for both nonfiction and fiction manuscripts?
As a writer, I think manuscript preparation is something of a secondary obsession, but an obsession nonetheless, especially if you’re trying to establish yourself in publishing and trying to be professional. All in all the above guidelines would produce a nice, clean, uncomplicated manuscript.
Amen!
Many of our (potential) authors spend an inordinate amount of time “helping” us by formatting their manuscripts such as they think we do/should want them to look. Instead, especially when dealing with tables and graphics placed in all kinds of crazy places in MS Word, we spend more time stripping all that formatting than we ever get back by this. Good intentions on their part? Yes. Actually helpful? Not really.
Can I get another amen?!?!?
Having become used to checking a publisher’s guidelines before submitting anything, the guides posted above seem to me a “best of” – if you follow those, you really can’t go wrong (though there’s no replacement for checking each publisher’s individual guidelines, as Todd mentioned). Good post!
My question is, what would be a better way for the author to spend their time? They have the desire to design a unique look for their manuscript but, as you inform us, this work is counter-productive. How should the author direct their energies in a way that will accomplish a similar end?
You can accomplish half of the formatting suggestions by creating a template file (in Word or OpenOffice), which is just a blank document which (for example) knows that you want 12pt Times Roman, indented paragraphs, etc..
I write most of my rough drafts by hand and when I transcribe them onto my computer, I just open the blank template file and then save it as the file I want. This way, with a template file, you always have a blank formatted file to begin with so that you don’t have to setup everything from scratch for every different file.
I’ll give a big AMEN to that!
And, to answer Kitti’s question: “What would be a better way for the author to spend their time?”… MARKETING. As a publisher, I would much prefer the author spend their time researching similar titles, determining sales options(who’s buying and selling similar titles, what are the best markets for the book, etc), areas of promotion (which magazines would be interested in the finished product, newspapers in the author’s area, a list of personal contacts that will be interested in the book when it is complete, local and national television stations that may have interest), etc. etc. etc..
Thanks for all of your comments.
To answer Todd’s question: TNR is just sort of an industry standard. Courier, even at the same point size, is a much larger font so will result in a longer manuscript. Publishers like to use formulas to determine book length estimates, etc. So they like to have a manuscript in a standard format that they can work from. There’s nothing stopping you from working in one font and then switching to different font before submission.
To answer Kitti’s question: Almost anything, but as an editor, I would recommend another complete read of the manuscript before submission to make sure that all the pieces are present, clear, and complete.
Gosh, as a book designer and layout artist, I think the very best way for an author (especially a self-publishing author) to spend his or her time is writing the best damned book possible. And, please, don’t format your textfile any more than absolutely necessary.
The ideal is plain, unformatted, except for where the body text itself needs to be italicized. Any other time an author puts into formatting text is likely time wasted–maybe even causing the copy editor, designer, or layout artist to waste time undoing this formatting before styling and formatting the text can take place properly.
You wanna help, don’t help.
A hearty amen to Mark Long. All practical concerns aside about the file clutter caused by over-formatting, if the strength of your writing can’t be conveyed in a classic font like Times Roman, don’t be deluded into thinking that a fancy format will make your writing any stronger.
An author should spend time writing well.
[...] 6. Is it neatly typed and formatted with minimal errors? I know I told you to forget the technicalities, but if you’ve made it this far, you’re ready to send it in. Congratulations! [...]