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Archive for the design tag

Preparing files for CreateSpace

CreateSpace’s print guidelines are pretty simple. Make sure there’s nothing within the .75-inch spine margin (if you use hanging punctuation you’ll need a larger margin because they WILL reject the book if there’s even a portion of an em dash there; the .75-inch margin is for books of 151-400 pages) and within .25 inch on . . .

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The ellipsis in books (print and ebook)

Before the ellipsis character arrived with the creation of computer fonts, typesetters used spaced periods (also known as spaced points or ellipsis points). In traditional book design, spaced periods are still preferred. The ellipsis character is generally too narrow and abrupt for its intended purpose: to show where text has been omitted or to replicate . . .

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Organizing your book’s back matter

As I mentioned earlier, there’s a standard order for book parts, and people are used to finding things in that order. Most books, especially fiction, aren’t going to have multiple back matter sections. Typically for fiction there will be only an acknowledgments section followed by an “about the author” section. Back matter Acknowledgments (if not . . .

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