Book Formatting Mistakes Indie Authors Make ❌ Avoid These Cringeworthy Errors!

INDIE AUTHORS: do you want your book to look as beautiful and professional as traditionally-published books? Or…. do you want your potential reader to pick up your book, take one look at the formatting and run away screaming because it hurts their eyes to look at? How tragic would that be? You’re an incredible writer and you’ve written something that deserves to be read and enjoyed by millions of people! But if you make even ONE mistake with the formatting of your book, you could doom it to failure for the simple fact that it looks unprofessional and/or unreadable.

I’ve seen too many self-published authors make cringeworthy mistakes with their book formatting – and that's why, in today’s video, I’m going to share with you the top three biggest mistakes I see indie authors make with their formatting and how to fix these problems so that your book will stand proudly and professionally among the most beautiful traditional books in the marketplace. Also, I have something super exciting to offer you that I've been working on for a few months! So stay to the end of the video for the big news. 🥳

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🎥 T I M E S T A M P S : 🎥
00:00 How to format a paperback book?
02:39 Mistake #1: Font Choice
04:10 Mistake #2: Line Spacing
05:33 Mistake #3: Janky Justification
08:13 What about all the other stuff?
09:16 Get my complete formatting masterclass!
11:16 What’s in the masterclass
13:41 Step-by-step guide to formatting your own book
16:17 Subscribe for writing and publishing videos every Wednesday! :)
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✨ V A L U A B L E R E S O U R C E S✨

✨F O L L O W ✨

✨ A B O U T ✨
My name is Abbie Emmons I teach writers how to make their stories matter by harnessing the power and psychology of storytelling, transforming their ideas into a masterpiece, and creating a lifestyle that makes their author dreams come true.

Story isn’t about “what happens” — it’s about how what happens affects and transforms the characters. I believe that there is an exact science (a recipe, if you will) behind a perfect story. And if you know what ingredients you need, you can create your own perfect story with ease and confidence. That’s what we talk about every week on this channel – and if it’s something you’re into, be sure to subscribe and join this community!

[sunny.litty]

Finally a subject no one talks about for some reason.

[RikkiPReads]

As a long time deaf viewer, I do miss when your videos were manually captioned as they were more accessible. I do hope you'll bring those back again soon.

[deryago]

2:40 - 8:12: Garamond, size 11, 1.25 spacing, justification and manual hyphenation
8:13 - 16:56: Masterclass pitch

[dandanthedandan]

That hyphenation tip to make justified text look better is so useful. Why have no one told me this before

[samantharose]

I’m so so excited to come back to this Masterclass when I’m ready to format my manuscript. Thank you for creating such empowering content, Abbie

[johnlowe]

This is the kind of thing I love to talk about when discussing the technical aspects of self-publishing. I've seen so many self-published books that, like you stated, really look amateurish and, well, look like "self-published books."

I self-published an anthology through KDP (Amazon) in 2019, in which I put together the interior layout, chose the fonts, edited the stories — everything but the final cover. My goal was to have a finished book that, if you were to pick it up off the shelf at a bookstore, you wouldn't think twice about why it was in the store — you wouldn't wonder how in the world did THIS thing get in here?

I've seen a lot of self-published books, some of which look just fine. But I've seen many more that have, like you said, terrible design mistakes. I did a ton of research about layout and basic novel page design when I was putting together my anthology. One of the first things I thought about was line spacing, or leading (pronounced as "ledding"), as it used to be called in traditional typesetting. I didn't realize how much there was to consider with just a page full of text: font, leading, type size, line length (you don't want the text to go too far to the outside edges of the page or too close into the gutter), where do you put page numbers, what should the headers look like, etc.

Then, once I got the stories in layout, I had to do a lot of finessing to fix widows, short lines at the beginnings of pages, spacing concerns, etc.. I've since found ways to do this that streamlined the process. 

My background is as an editor (started out as a proofreader way back when), so that was also important for putting the book together. The anthology began as a project for our writers group, and when I started soliciting stories, I told everyone that the stories would be vetted and edited, that it wasn't just a group project that would be published using any and everything that was submitted. As I mentioned, I wanted the book to look and be the best it could be.

I'm not a designer, but the research I did resulted in a nice final product. If I was doing a book that required lots of interior graphics and photos, I'd probably want to utilize a professional designer.

I saw one self-published nonfiction book where the type size was so large that it looked like a children's book. This same book included black and white photos, but because the paper was not the better, slicker paper, many of the photos looked muddy. That, plus, none of the photos looked like they had been adjusted to look good — they looked like they were simply imported to the page without any adjustment for lighting, contrast, etc.

I saw another self-published book that on the foreword page, it was spelled "Forward." I saw one book that had a photo on the cover that was only maybe two inches tall and the photo was the full width of the cover — the image had been "stretched" to the width of the cover only horizontally, but not proportionately, using both width and height.

Also, far too many of the self-published books I've seen have a buttload of typos in them. I don't mean maybe four or five in an entire book — I've counted fifteen errors just in the foreword of one book. They weren't all spelling errors, some were bad punctuation, extra word spaces, things that the general reader wouldn't catch. But that's the thing — if you're reading a book and you notice multiple errors on just one page, that can put you off from reading the rest of the book.

Bad amateur book covers are a whole other topic.

[jonathanbaumler]

Wait… what?! I just had my manuscript formatted, but I’d love to learn how to do this myself, and even possible improve what I just had done. ☺️ this is very exciting!

[ViEdits]

Like, literally. Right when your struggling with your book, guess who swoops down and saves the day with one of her amazing vids!! Thanks for the video Abbie!! Your the best

[tgeddes]

I love header/pov/chapter imagery. Just adds something different. Im also enjoying text convos in bubbles 😅

[rinnero]

This was literally so helpful. I had most of my book in Times, save for flash-back scenes that were in a different font- I kept enjoying those scenes more during re-reading and now I know why. Thanks a ton Abbie!

[BrianBlais]

If you do by-hand hyphenation, then what do you do the instant you have to do an edit anywhere in your manuscript? every hyphenation you did after that edit you have to find, delete, and rehyphenate. It seems as if there should be a good, automated solution out there.

[ybra]

Graphic designer here. I have to disagree with you on point #3. I much prefer left aligned text over justified. While justified looks neater at first glace, having an uneven right edge actually helps the eye keep track on where you and it also doesn't sacrifice the even spacing between words.
Of course, this is up to preference, but I think justified is sticking around as much based on tradition as anything else. In newspapers and magazine, left aligned is becoming more and more common, and I think books might follow too.

[nancydebeer]

I never did any formatting when I self published my first book. The publishers did it for me and now seeing the examples that you have given I must say, huge difference, when I queried it with them they said that's how their formatting works. Now I know better and will defiantly apply this to my future books.

[iland]

Thank you for making this master class because I'm like jumping out of my chair right now with excitement! 🎉 I've been trying so hard to figure out formatting, and you are the best guide I'd want through it! You are so easy to understand, and your videos have helped me through so many other pitfalls as a writer!

[Bernadette-tmcc]

Perfect timing, Abbie! So excited for this! ❤

[jamescarvey]

Thanks, Abbie- Your instructional video posts have had such a positive effect on my writer's journey, Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have never thought beyond the nitty-gritty of editing my manuscript, but this video has opened my eyes to a wider gamut when bringing down the curtain. You are amazing, and you have inspired me to Rock 🙏🙏🙏🙏

[iriswildflower]

I just love you. I was literally talking about how I don’t know how to format. I’m working on my first novel and you’re helping so much!

[realsilen]

This is a perfect timing to understand this. I still have time to serialise every chapter from the last draft to the final product. Can't wait! And yeah it will be a better video I know. ❤

[colbyreader]

For some reason I really don’t like it when people put little images or shapes in lines of text. I think if you’re going to put something there it should take up half or a whole page. If it matters enough to put in your book it deserves to shine. Besides everyone loves a bit of artwork to look at, that’s why we had maps and other pictures at the beginning of books.
I miss seeing that. I only see it with authors who mainly published in the 70’s and 80’s

[CeyasStuff]

I'd always wondered about hyphenations in the books I read and why they're there - really enjoyed learning why.