You'll use this for reference during the formatting process. Then, once you get your artwork back from the illustrator, you can create a new mockup with the new images to make sure everything looks good. You can do this on folded sheets of plain white paper, sketching out each illustration and putting the words down so you can see how the layout will look. It's actually a good idea to do this before hiring an illustrator (or drawing your own pictures, if you're going that route) because it helps you determine what illustrations you actually need for the finished product. Sometimes called a book dummy or a storyboard, this is an approximation of how your book will look when formatting is finished. A Book Dummy (Or a Mockup)īefore formatting, it's incredibly helpful to have a mockup of your book on hand. If you're still waiting on images from your illustrator, you'll want to wait until you have them all at your disposal before starting. Making changes during or after the formatting process can be a bit of a headache, so make sure you have this done already! Illustrationsįormatting is all about putting your text and illustrations together, so it's also important to have all your illustrations ready to go. This means that you've already had an editor look at it (which we highly recommend), or you've edited it yourself.Įither way, it's important to have the words exactly the way you want them. Edited TextĪt this point in the children's book writing process, it's important to have a fully edited text. So, before we dive into the tips for formatting your children's book, it's important to know what you should already have done before focusing on formatting. The real formatting happens on the computer, but having a vivid idea of what your book will look like before you start formatting on the computer will save you a lot of time and a lot of headaches. In fact, in a perfect world, formatting happens during the “writing” process as you put your images (or placeholders) together with your text. Manuscript formatting for children's books is very different from formatting for self-publishing. To be clear, this article isn't about formatting your picture book manuscript to send to a literary agent or a publishing house. What You Should Have Done Before Formattingįormatting means different things to different people. The complexities of images, text, layout, spacing, trim size, and bleed all come together to make picture book formatting more difficult than text-heavy book formatting. If you're a picture book author, this article is for you.
Check out our article on book formatting to learn how to format your middle-grade or young adult book. Many of the steps below won't pertain to you unless you have a lot of images in your book. If you're a chapter book author, you can go about formatting your text-heavy book in much the same way you would any other fiction book. So before we dig into the meat of this article, let's get clear on the types of children's books we're talking about. Don't Forget the Kindle Kids' Book Creatorįormatting Requirements for the Types of Children’s BooksĪs you already know, there's more than one type of kid's book.Options for Formatting a Children's Book.Portrait Sizes from KDP and IngramSpark:.What You Should Have Done Before Formatting.Formatting Requirements for the Types of Children’s Books.