I've been shopping different presses lately, in early preparation for my second novel, which I plan to find the right indie publisher for, and I've come across some interesting formatting guidelines, some a lot more specific than magazine submission guidelines, and was wondering: is it best to format your manuscript in a specific--either universally acceptable or easily tweakable--format, or should you just write the thing and edit as necessary when shopping different presses? Is there even such thing as a universally acceptable manuscript format? I'm not crazy, I mean, you'll find no Comic Sans or anything in my writing, but as far as "do I double space every sentence, only between paragraphs, not at all?" ... "can I *Tab* indent paragraphs, use the Indent tool, or not indent at all?" ... "what about page breaks, should I worry about inserting those?" These are more the questions that haunt me, and make diving into this next book an anxious experience. Help?
I'd worry about writing the book first, and worry about presses later. If you double space, use size 12 times new roman font you should be fine. With the page breaks, just make sure you don't have some auto-format set on you processor that will leave big black lines across the page.
Don't stress yourself out.
Thanks, Devon. That helps a lot. It's the current reformatting of my first novel which I'm self-publishing that has me beating my brains out and wanting this next experience to be easier, at least in the technical aspect of it. Setting the font, double spacing, and here I go... deep breath... time to write this bitch.
At least if you know you're self-publishing, you can format it however you want. I always draft in 12-pt TNR with 1.2 linespacing (because writing doublespaced hurts my eyes), then copy the file and change it to specific formatting guidelines per publisher. I'd end up with several different files. Some even still insisted on Courier font, believe it or not. But just about everyone wants doublespaced, new chapters beginning about halfway down the page, hashmark between sections, novel title and last name in the header of every page (and numbered) in cast the cover page gets separated.
Also, the first line of a new section following a break/hashmark (as well as the first line of a new chapter) should not be indented. Some typsesetters replace the hashes with little graphic glyphs, while others just use a doublespace, and that unindented line makes it easier for the reader to identify new sections within a chapter if there's no glyph, especially when a new section coincidentally begins at a page break.
I use Courier New because it is easier for me to revise with, and just go for the most average looking one, and if I need to submit or such tweak as needed.
I will probably be jumping back on with another cry for help come time to submit, but for now, I think I'm comfortable enough to jump back into it and worry about that shit later. Thanks, everyone!
