How to Format Your Manuscript to Appear Professional to Agents and Publishers

Your story is written, and you are ready to send it to agents and publishers. Or are you? Manuscript formatting is essential for writers who wish to appear professional to agents and publishers so that their work may be taken seriously. But what does manuscript formatting entail? Award-winning author Andrew McDowell will share some common features that are preferred when formatting a manuscript, such as preferred page size, margins, headings, font, paragraph, headers, and footers. He will also share some tips and insights for using Microsoft Word to make manuscript formatting a smoother and faster process for querying and even for self-publishing. Attendees will understand the importance of manuscript formatting when querying, editing, and writing, and publishing, and they will learn how to use Microsoft Word as a writing, editing, and design tool more effectively.

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[andrewmcdowellauthor]

Some updated tips:
1) Don't be afraid to change how you format styles. I now have learned that adding indents in the style can have benefits (but bear in mind that you need to make sure others aren't affected when you don't want them to include indents).
2) Changing page size, like margins, in book format can be applied to whole document rather than individual sections.
3) The majority of books do appear to include alternating headers, so using the Next Page section break between chapters would be my recommendation now.

[robbiecheadle]

Hi Andrew, this is a useful video. Thanks for sharing it.