Technicalities, Schmecnicalities

By Greenleaf Team - Oct 28 , 2007

By Lari Bishop

You’ve spent hours beautifying your manuscript, preparing it for submission to your publisher or agent—or getting it ready to wow potential publishers and agents. Then you get a note from your editor that everything you’ve done to make it interesting and attractive is killing the editorial and production process. Oops. You cry yourself to sleep on your inspired manuscript pages.

Manuscript preparation is a strange little detail in the publishing world. It’s the bane of authors, editors, and production artists alike. Today the majority of writers are working on computers, not typewriters. They’re working in sophisticated word processing programs, not simple-format software with few options. And as wonderful as these advances are, they’ve caused a bit of confusion and consternation, particularly for the editors and production artists who work with the manuscript down the line. So if you want your manuscript to be publisher-friendly or if you want your submission to be taken seriously, here are a few tips.

If you are already working with a particular publisher, go to that publisher’s website and check out the specific guidelines for final manuscript submission. This will help keep the process smooth right from the beginning and will make sure that all of the editors and designers you’ll be working with don’t resent you.

If you don’t have a publisher yet, use the following guidelines:

• When choosing a font, use 12-point Times or Times New Roman for all of the text, including excerpts, block quotes, etcetera. You may use another font, or a larger or stylized font for headings, but keep the rest of the text simple. It may be boring, but it’s a standard that most publishers use. It helps them convert the manuscript page length into an estimate for the length of the final book.
• Set your line spacing to double-space for the entire manuscript.
• Don’t use extra space of blank lines between paragraphs.
• To mark the beginning of a new paragraph, just indent the first line. You can either use a tab or use the paragraph settings to maintain a first-line indentation. Do not use spaces instead of a tab.
• Use 1 inch margins on all sides of the page.
• Don’t use double spaces between sentences. A single space is the industry standard.
• If you have titled chapters (not just Chapter 1, Chapter 2), include a table of contents at the beginning of the manuscript.
• Keep all other styling simple. Do not set the elements of the manuscript (headings, chapter openings, etc.) the way you think they should appear in the final book pages. Your book will be designed by a professional designer, and the design work you spent hours creating in the manuscript will be tossed by the wayside.
• When creating tables, use the table creation tool in the word processing program you’re using.
• Insert comments in brackets ([ ]) between paragraphs regarding placement of images, graphs, tables, charts, and any other artwork.

For more detailed manuscript guidelines, you can always refer to the ever-enlightening Chicago Manual of Style.