Word Templates Help Indie Authors Avoid Book Composition Errors

WRITERS. A new website, BookDesignTemplates.com, offers a selection of Microsoft Word templates for creating beautifully designed, industry-standard book designs. The templates can help you avoid rookie mistakes in formatting books for self-publishing.

The templates were created by book designer Joel Friedlander and independent author Tracy R. Atkins to help authors avoid common mistakes such as misplaced page numbers and running heads, no hyphenation, and inconsistent formatting.

“D-I-Y authors might think that their readers don’t care about such things, but think about all of the book professionals who might have something to say about your book,” says Friedlander. “I’m thinking of book buyers, reviewers, distributors, journalists, media bookers, and all the other people you may need for your promotion plans. They’ll see these kinds of errors right away.”

BookDesignTemplates

Some of the templates on the new website are well suited for fiction and memoirs. Other templates are meant for more complex non-fiction books that might include footnotes, tables, bullet points, and diagrams.. The site offers templates for books that will be printed in hard-copy form by print-on-demand services as well as specialized templates for e-book publishing.

With the template, you simply strip out the sample text that comes with the file, and replace it with your own manuscript.

Each template design is a fully formatted Word file with “master” pages for your text, chapter openers, title page, copyright page, and other front matter pages. In addition, you get a “Book Construction Blueprint” that tells you how the parts of a book go together, and the “Template Formatting Guide” to show you how to use the template. Also included are the fonts needed for the template, ready to install on your system, and access to a tutorial library that shows how to put your book together.

Three types of licensing are available, depending on whether you want to use the template for a single book, for multiple books, or to help multiple authors get their books ready to print.

For more information on book design and self-publishing, check out Joel’s blog, The Book Designer or online course The Self-Publishing Roadmap..

LINKS

BookDesignTemplates.com

The Book Designer

The Self-Publishing Roadmap