Comments for DIY Book Formats

Comment on How to format and publish a children’s book by Oni Lasana

Oni Lasana — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 20:10:32 +0000

Hi Derek,
I’m working on an illustrated children’s book to use in my storytelling career. You were recommended by Bethany Atazadeh on You Tube. I am solidly focusing on this fiction book…so I didn’t want to download templates that I can’t upload the artwork and place text. Or can I?
Thanks for a timely response.
All the best,
Oni

Comment on How to write and publish a book yourself (self-publishing cheatsheet) by Josh

Josh — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 18:11:28 +0000

Derek your resources have saved me so much time. This is my first book so my learning curve is rather steep. You have somehow managed to level that out for me. I do need help with one thing, how do I print a 8.5 x 5.5 in word correctly if I’m using 8.5 x 11 paper?

Comment on Best book formatting services (print and ebook design) by JoAnna

JoAnna — Sun, 29 Jul 2018 23:17:42 +0000

Hello Derek, I wished I had found your website many many months ago.

My brother wrote a book a decade ago, he is a very good writer, unlike me, he sees it happening in his head. He gave it to me to make into an ebook. He gave it to me on a floppy disk, that is how old it is. 🙂

We are retired and I want to help him see his book published as he has Parkinsons Disease and cannot write nor bearly type anymore. It has been a labour of love, especially with my shoulder problem and my lack of experience with technology but I am determined he will see his ebook published this year.

I am overwhelmed. It took me over a year to get the book formatted. But the cover has taken me months to match a picture to it. I was going to send it off to Fiverr or Upworks. We are on a budget, being retired and all. When it is my turn to write my book, I will do the cover first. lol

You mentioned fonts were not as important for ebooks but to gage it with the cover, should I request the artist to do a specific font that I can use for the body of the book? I did not see any in your suggestions for detective stories, crime-related, mafia in your article. Can you make a suggestion as to the font styles we should choose? I don’t mind paying $20.00 or so, but free would be nice.

I am not looking for big rewards here as to sales, but it would be nice to see my brother’s dream come true and with family alone, I think we can get enough sales to make him happy.

I have formatted… incorrectly so, his book in Microsoft Word, 10 chapters. I was directed to your free templates and to download them into Calibre and make my book from there if we want to put it on Amazon. I will read your instructions as to cover and ebook starting tomorrow as I just downloaded them.

I cannot believe you give this information for free… you are a true angel. Thank you so much for all the information.

If you don’t respond, no problem, I am sure you get hundreds if not thousands of thank yous and questions and the freebies you have given are more than enough.

I will definitely be mentioning you to my two writers groups on FB, who knows, maybe in the acknowledgements of out boo? 🙂

Blessings friend,

JoAnna

Comment on Free book formatting templates for every genre! by Jaxon

Jaxon — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 16:24:53 +0000

I’m not quite sure how to say this; you made it exteemrly easy for me!

Comment on How to format, publish and market a book of poetry by Diana Fowler

Diana Fowler — Sun, 11 Dec 2016 02:50:38 +0000

Hello Derek,
I am currently putting together my poetry for e book format. I have watched your videos above and found them very resourceful. I was already going to use images in my book, I take a lot of pictures of clouds and I was going to use them. My question is, can I use the image as a washed out watermark in word for the entire background of the page?

Thank you for your time,
Diana Fowler

Comment on Should you pay for Book Formatting (and how much it costs) by caroline wilson

caroline wilson — Sat, 12 Nov 2016 12:53:54 +0000

Dear Sir
I’ve tried to put my book onto create space but its beyond me. I’ve published and sold it before successfully but wanted to do it via amazon and not have to distribute it myself. Would you be able to charge me a fixed fee to set it up on there – I’m nearly there but the DPI of the pictures and layout of cover has me stumped. The book is in word format.
Best wishes
Caroline

Comment on How to become a book designer by Ronald

Ronald — Sun, 06 Nov 2016 10:21:51 +0000

Thanks a bunch for the guidance.
Am so much interested in the busines of book design/layout and print. I think i will need much of yo guidance in all the important and key issues in trying to raise my skills of book designs and layout. Thanks looking forward to yo expertise. Ronald

Comment on Free book formatting templates for every genre! by Amy Chai

Amy Chai — Tue, 25 Oct 2016 00:28:59 +0000

I love you, Derek.
Ha ha but seriously. Working on YA romance, you just gotta say it.
Thanks for the templates. You rock.

I am not really a high school student. She is my protagonist.

Comment on How to make an ebook (Kindle and epub conversion) by 5 Tips for Formatting Ebooks | eBook Cover Blog

5 Tips for Formatting Ebooks | eBook Cover Blog — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 03:01:41 +0000

[…] It is much easier to make an ebook by setting up your Word file the right way. Use line-indents, not tabs. Use the “heading1” style for all chapter titles, and check that a TOC is being made automatically. Set a new paragraph style for non-indents on the first chapter. There’s an in-depth guide to this here: www.diybookformats.com/ebooks. […]

Comment on How to layout a book in Microsoft Word by Selah J Tay-Song » 101 TIWIK #74: From Manuscript to Book: Creating Your Template

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 20:57:33 +0000

[…] not going to give step by step instructions here because there are a lot of them out there. The ones on this site are pretty good, although they leave out a few important […]