If you plan on self-publishing, once you are happy with the actual text of your manuscript, it’s time to format. Even if you have a professional cover and stellar prose, the wrong font or haphazardly labeled chapters look awful and are bound to hurt your sales.

I promise that formatting is not as difficult as you may think! Microsoft Word can be daunting, but anyone can learn basic desktop publishing so you can beautifully format your manuscript.

1) Select an appropriate paper size.

If you’re doing a book for your business, then 6 x 9 or 5 x 8 are standards. Modify this by selecting “Page Layout,” “Size,” and “More Options.”

2) Label your body text. Change the font, size, and paragraph spacing.

Select all the text in your document, and label it as “Normal.” Then, modify the normal text to a serif font (like Georgia, Cambria, or Garamond) for the body text in either a 10-point or 12-point size. Adjust the line spacing so it looks appealing, based on your font selection.

3) Label your headings. Change the font, size, and paragraph spacing.

For the chapter headings, select each one, and label it with ‘Heading 1.” Not only does this give you the ability to quickly adjust the font (probably different from your body), size (larger than your body text), and spacing (just like with your body text), but it also gives you the ability to generate a Table of Contents at the beginning of your novel that lets you click on a page number and go directly to the first page of the chapter. You can use “Heading 2” to label subheadings if you like.

Consider where on the page you want the heading—centered, left, or right—and vertical placement, as well as spacing around it.

4) Insert section breaks.

Insert a section break at the end of each chapter and between different front matter in the book, like between the table of contents and the body of the book. A page break just ensures that the next chapter will start on the following page, but a section break gives you the flexibility to change your page numbering scheme, like from Roman numerals for the front matter to Arabic numerals for the body text. It even lets you mark the first page of a chapter to have different headings, in case you want the page number at the bottom on the first page and the top the rest of the way through, for example.

5) Adjust the margins. Add mirror margins and gutters as needed.

Click on the “Page layout” tab and then “Margins.” Make sure that you are making changes to the “whole document,” and then mark “mirror margins.” Then you can adjust the gutter (at the top of this drop-down box) to allow a greater space in the middle of the book, and change the margins for each side.

6) Number your pages (remember that front matter should be Roman numerals while the rest of the book should be standard numbers).

First, check your headers and footers to be sure that the ones you want linked to the previous section are (and vice versa). You can also set the first page of the section to show up differently if you like, as well as setting different left and right pages.

Then, to number your pages, click on the “Insert” tab at the top of the page and then “Page Number” near the middle of the bar. A drop-down will appear. You can mouse over the options for top or bottom of the page to see different layouts for the page numbers. Click one of those, and you have numbered the section of the document that you are in.

7) Insert table of contents

When you’re book is formatted, go to the front of the book where you want your table of contents to appear. Click on the “References” tab and the “Table of Contents” drop-down on the far left. Click on one of the automatic tables, or to make adjustments to the font, number of levels that show up, etc., click on “Insert Table of Contents” at the bottom.

Fin!

When you’re done, check the ENTIRE BOOK to make sure that you have clean formatting. You don’t want to get your draft copy from the publisher and discover that you numbered the pages incorrectly or started chapter 2 on the same page that ended chapter 1. Be particularly cautious wherever you inserted section breaks.