IWSG: Interior Formatting

Happy Insecure Writer's Support Group Wednesday! Thank you again to Alex J. Cavanaugh, the creator of the group. The first Wednesday of every month is dedicated to this group of supportive writers. If it's something you're not familiar with, then please click on Alex's link above for more information and to sign up!

I know many of you are already three days deep into the A-Z April Challenge. I survived it last year and wanted to do it again, but I feel like I've fallen so behind in my writing that I shouldn't be taking on more challenges at this time. Hopefully, I can find a better balance next year.

When I submitted Provex City to Createspace last year, I paid them to do everything. This time around, for my second book, SUSY Asylum, I am doing all the formatting myself, submitting to Createspace as a finished product. For a self publisher on a budget, this is a way I can save some money.

For last month's IWSG post, I talked about Indie ReCon and how much great information was in the posts for that online conference. One thing I found through the conference was The Book Designer, which has a wealth of information, resources, and advice for self published authors. One of the products offered on the site is a Microsoft Word template for formatting the interiors of POD books.

I was skeptical of buying a template for $100, but if it worked and I could do it myself, then it would save me $100 each time I published a new book through Createspace. So I looked at it as an investment. After playing with the template for a few days I got the interior of SUSY Asylum to a point that I thought looked professional, submitted it to Createspace, and received an email the next day that it had been approved.

On The Book Designer, there are currently six interior templates for POD books and ebooks, and since they're in Word, they are easy to customize (I haven't tried the ebook template yet). It's a great product and perfect for those of us publishing through Createspace, Lightning Source, Lulu, or other POD companies.

I will be ordering my proof copy of SUSY Asylum tomorrow and will hopefully receive it sometime next week. I can't wait to finally hold it in my hands! 

I hope your April projects are off to a great start, and as always, thank you for reading!