074: Pen Names for Book Formatting

Hi friends and future authors, and welcome to my podcast, Self Publishing for Thought Leaders. I'm so glad you're here to learn more about self-publishing and to understand the publishing process and what it entails. Before we jump into today's episode, we're going to be talking about the many different names for book formatting, because I have heard it called so many different things. Depending on what area of publishing you're in, it might be called something a little bit different, but it all really means

the same thing. So before we jump into today's episode, though, I want to tell you about my author support group, the Self Publishing for Leaders. So Self Publishing for Leaders school community, you can go to school.com, S-K-O-O-L, or you can click the link under this video or in the audio show notes. It is an awesome community full of posit positive, supportive authors and myself who give you advice and collaboration and feedback.

on anything you'd like to post. If you have a question, a comment, or a win to celebrate, we do "Celebrate Your Wins Wednesday." I'm super excited about my community because it helps authors get from their idea to a published book. So, if you're looking for an author support community, make sure you join Self-Publishing for Thought Leaders on SKOOL. All right, my friends, today we're going to talk about the many different ways you can

talk about book formatting. One person says formatting, another says typesetting, someone else says interior design, and before you know it, you have no idea which service you're looking for anymore. Well, I'm here to tell you they're all the same thing. We're going to clear up the name confusion around book formatting, the different terms people use, what they mean, and why it matters for you as an author. By the end of the episode, you're going to know what you need and what to call it. When you go on an author platform, such as

EFA, which is the Editorial Freelancers Association, you can find professionals for any writing or editing service you need. I'm a member of the EFA, and it's a place where new and returning authors look for everything from dissertation help to nonfiction business book editing. Whether you are writing a short story or a poem, the EFA

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is the place to go to find professionals. All right, let's clear up the naming confusion around book formatting. Let's talk about the most common term: book formatting. This is the one you're going to see most often in self-publishing circles and on platforms like Amazon KDP. They're going to ask you to upload your formatted book. What does that mean? That means you have prepared your manuscript's file structure so it meets the technical requirements of

the publishing platform, like Amazon KDP. Amazon KDP is a publishing platform, but you can't just take your Word document and upload it. I would not recommend using any book formatter that uses Word to format your book. It causes all sorts of problems; it makes your pictures look funky, squished on one side and stretched out on the other.

It is not a professional book formatting program. If you are looking for a book formatter, I can definitely help you out with that at rightforyou.me. If you go with someone else, that's fine, but ask them: "What book formatting program do you use?" If they use Atticus or Adobe InDesign, that's fine. There are several other professional ones out there, but if they say they use Word to format your book for KDP, that's a red flag. Walk the other way.

Professional book formatting refers to preparing your manuscript so the margins are correct, it has proper page breaks, a working table of contents, and consistent heading styles. You want to make sure you have a book style guide, which I talked about in a previous episode. Scroll through my episodes and check out

the one on the 30-minute document that's going to make your book look really professional. That's where I talk about style guides. Formatting focuses on function: making sure your files work correctly on Kindle, upload without errors, and display properly on different devices, whether mobile or desktop.

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You want your book to look professional because if it doesn't, people are not going to take you seriously as a professional. It will damage your reputation and do the opposite of what you need it to do. You want it to enhance your personal and professional brand. If it is not professionally formatted, it will hurt your reputation, and that is very hard to fix.

Think of formatting as the foundation. It answers the question: will the file work where I need it to go? When you get formatting done, you need a different file for your ebook and a different file for your paperback. If you're doing a hardcover book, you'll need a separate file if your paperback is not a six-by-nine, because Amazon hardcovers are typically six-by-nine.

I recently did this for a client's memoir. I did three different formats: one for his ebook, one for his paperback, and a separate one for his hardcover book. If you're a self-published author, book formatting is probably the term you've heard the most because it's the most practical, commonly used

term in the publishing world. But here's the catch: formatting is often used as a catch-all term to describe everything from basic file setup to high-end visual design. This is where people get confused. People say "formatting" when they need something more specific, which brings us to the next term: typesetting. Typesetting has the most history behind it because originally,

typesetting was literally when people took metal or wooden type letters and put them in a printing press. If you've ever watched the Apple TV series Ben Franklin, it's an amazing series that I would highly recommend. Especially being a writer and publisher myself, I love how that series brings home a lot of really good lessons about why the written word is so important. I'm not going to spoil it for you.

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All right, originally typesetting involved taking the metal or wooden type into frames for a printing press. My dad was a typesetter. I remember we had a metal typeset in our garage, and he had his big box of letters that he would put in to make business cards and flyers. I would help him physically ink the press, and we would stamp out paper after paper.

We would stamp out business cards and then cut them down. I have experience with physical typesetting, which is a really fun process. It takes more time because you have to take each letter and make each space. There are even block letters for spaces that have nothing on them. You have to lock everything into place; otherwise, it comes out smudgy. It's really cool because you get that authentic

stamp that gives it a lot of personality. Today, typesetting has evolved into digital. You can make anything on Canva.com, which is an amazing digital craft platform, but the spirit is the same. It's about visual design and the readability of your book's interior. Typesetting focuses on font selection, line spacing, margins, text flow,

hyphenation, and the overall aesthetic experience of reading your book. I personally focus on how your reader is going to visually view your book. Is your book visually appealing? If it's hard to read, you're going to get bad reviews. Your reader might put down the book and not give you a review, or they might message you and say they don't know what you're doing with your book.

When I do formatting or typesetting for a client's book, I check if they have a brand style guide. If they do, we follow the lettering and typesetting structure they have in their guide. If not, we create one for them, or we just agree on

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what they want for their headings, subheadings, and fonts to determine what look and feel they want for their reader. I work within that framework to build a correctly typeset book. The key distinction is that formatting ensures your book works on a device, while typesetting ensures your book looks polished and feels enjoyable to read. You absolutely need both to have your book look professional.

Typesetting adds that final layer of professionalism. It's the polish that separates a professional-looking book from one that looks "self-published" in a negative way. If you hire someone and they call themselves a typesetter,

you're likely getting somebody who cares about the visual craft of your book's interior, not just whether the files are uploaded correctly. I do both typesetting and book formatting because I want my client's book to be the best it can be. I want my clients to be proud of and excited about their book.

All right, my friends, we're going to take a quick break here. I want to remind you that if you have any questions about typesetting or formatting your book, definitely jump into my SKOOL community. Go to school.com and look for Self-Publishing for Thought Leaders. It's a free group. The link is in the show notes or underneath this video. You will get awesome feedback, advice, exciting polls, and guest workshops every month.

These workshops increase your knowledge of book marketing, publishing, writing, and getting your idea correct. If you want to join one of my paid tiers, the classes are included in that. It's a really great value for any author who has an idea and wants to turn it into a book. Even if you're already in the middle of that process, jump in the community and get the professional assistance you need today.

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All right, my friends, let's talk about the next term: book interior design. This elevates the conversation because this term borrows from the world of design. When a professional says "book interior design," they're talking about more than just arranging text on a page. They're talking about the overall visual experience the reader is going to have inside your book, similar to typesetting.

But interior design encompasses the artistic and strategic choices that make your book feel like a cohesive product. This includes the selection of typefaces that match your book's tone, the design of the chapter openings, whether you use a drop cap, and how ornate or simple you want the book to be. It also includes the treatment of headers and footers,

and the use of decorative elements. For example, one of the things I am currently adding into a client's book revolves around seven different principles. Each principle has its own graphic done by a branding expert called Brie Sweezy. I recommend Brie to all my clients who are looking for a branding expert; she's absolutely phenomenal. Brie designed all of these great graphics for her.

Since her book correlates with those seven principles across seven chapters, we incorporated those beautiful graphics into her chapters. Each chapter has the title and the design Brie created. It looks absolutely amazing, and she's very happy with her book. That's the type of

piece interior design encompasses: the artistic choices that define what your book feels like. It covers the integration of images and graphics and the flow of white space. White space, my friends, is so important. A lot of people don't understand how important it is until they see a book that doesn't use it well.

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When the letters are too crunched together, they don't give enough "breathing room" between lines. Interior design presents your book to the reader in the same way an architect thinks about a building: every element serves the experience. This term is very common among professionals who work with traditional publishers, and it carries

prestige. If someone calls themselves a book interior designer, they're signaling they approach the inside of your book as a design project, not just a production task. For professional authors who want their book to reflect their brand, this is often the best term. If you're doing something more artistic, like an art book or coffee table book, you want a book interior designer.

I do some types of interior design, but for really high-level specialty work, I refer my clients to other professionals in the industry who do a fabulous job. The next term you may want to familiarize yourself with is page layout. Page layout is a specific technical term.

It refers to the process of assembling all the text and graphic elements on a book's individual pages: where your paragraphs go, your images, headers, and page numbers. You'll often see it paired with interior formatting. If interior design is the vision, page layout

is the execution. The designer creates the concept, and the layout makes this happen on every single page of the book. This term is especially useful when talking about the hands-on work of placing elements. It's less about the big-picture aesthetic and more about the reality of making the page look right.

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You're going to hear this term a lot from production-focused professionals and in printing industry conversations. Then there is book interior layout. This sits in the sweet spot between design and production. This term combines the design awareness of interior design with the practical focus of page layout. It has become a popular term in the self-publishing world because it describes the full scope of what most authors need.

A book interior layout professional handles the visual design and the mechanical page-by-page execution. This is actually what I do for my clients, even though I often just call it book formatting. I assist them with choosing fonts, designing chapter openings, and deciding on indents or block spacing. We lay out the pages so that the visual aspects complement the content.

That is extremely important for the reader experience. This is a term you're going to see most often on service provider websites because it's practical and descriptive without the historical baggage of "typesetting" or the lofty implications of "interior design." For self-published authors, "book interior layout" is a good choice

because it means you're looking to hire someone who understands both the art and the mechanics of what goes inside your book. All right, my friends, remember to check out my SKOOL community. We're going to wrap up this episode. Self-Publishing for Thought Leaders is a supportive, positive community, and I'm in there every day posting new resources and advice.

Join the free level and decide if you want to take it to the next level with a premium or VIP membership. All right, my friends, remember you've got five different names for what happens inside your book: Book formatting, the practical foundation; Typesetting, the visual craft;

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Book interior design, the holistic design approach; Page layout, the precise execution of placing elements; and Book interior layout, the sweet spot that combines design vision with mechanical execution.

Each term has a different emphasis and signals a different level of service. When you know what each one means, you can be smarter in your decision to hire and ensure you're getting the level of service your book deserves. Join my Self-Publishing for Thought Leaders community if you have any questions about this episode and to get more advice for authors.

This is Lynn Elikqitie reminding you to keep writing, keep dreaming, and keep creating. Your book is waiting to be born.