4 Easy Options to Format Your Books
By: Alexander Toledo
Tags: Online Business, Marketing, Self Publishing, Side Hustle, Passive Income

If you’re thinking about self-publishing, you might be concerned about what that means — starting anything from the ground, with no prior knowledge, is always a daunting task. Maybe you don’t feel like you have enough technical or software knowledge, and all the little details feel to difficult to line up, or you just don’t know where to start.

When publishing through traditional means, you have a team who handles conversion and files, which makes the process easy because you feel like — they’re trained professionals, they’ve got this.

There’s good news here — formatting can be one of the easiest parts of the whole process!

Think about it this way — either you’ve written the book already, or you’ve got a finished copy back from your ghostwriter.

Now it’s all about putting it together, and putting it out!

If I told you you don’t need extensive experience or knowledge to get started, that would likely put your mind at ease — absolutely anyone can learn to handle their book like a pro, or at least be equipped with the tools to make it happen.

Related Article: Kindle Direct Publishing Explained in 5 Steps — Build Passive Income with Digital Assets

Outsourcing

If you don’t want to handle the formatting yourself, you are always able to outsource the work to freelancers — the freedom in automating the process is well within your grasp, and it’s easy to see why people may choose this route.

Sites like Fiverr or Upwork have people ready to work with you, on a job-by-job basis, or as a long-term gig; Often these freelancers will work with you on price for long-term work, as it’s consistent rather than one-off — if you find a quick professional who puts out consistent work, it might be worth establishing a relationship with them early on and turning it into something mutually beneficial.

Pros

You can focus on the other aspects of your business, or your full-time job, while someone works to format your book.

You can usually find these relatively cheaply (per job), in the 5–15$ range, or perhaps a bit higher with other benefits (some jobs include book cover/design work, etc.)

Cons

You will be at the will of your freelancers timeline — if they take a day or two, that’s how long it’ll be for your final product.

The end result will be up to them and their ability, and what programs they personally use to complete your product.

This option can also be costly — depending on how many books you put out, paying per-book on a professionally-formatted product can add up over time.

Overall: Not a bad choice to start off with! Easy to find someone who formats, and a low up-front cost. If you only have a few books to publish, or aren’t sure if this is the route you want to pursue, it’s a great way to get to know the field without a huge investment.

Calibre

Calibre is simple; a free, open-source software with multiple purposes relating to ebooks.You can read ebooks, as well as format.

It is a relatively quick download, a small file, and should not take up much space from your computer. You can simply drop your word document into the software, and go from there — there’s a drop down, and a quick conversion process, with options like look and feel, table of contents configuration and more.

Download: Mac OSX — Windows — Linux

Pros

You can use it immediately on start-up, no hassle — very easy!

Tools are simplified, making learning it very easy. There are also plenty of resources online, if you want to dive deeper.

It is a completely free tool, open source for anyone to use.

useful for other things, like reading e-Books on your computer.

Cons

Its simplicity can be a feature and a flaw — it will put out a final product, and that might be about it.

Fine-tuning abilities are limited, the end result is very basic in terms of how it looks.

Not as user friendly as other options; Actual formatting is easy, but you may need to research it a bit to get comfortable with its tools.

Overall: If you’re tight on cash, and don’t mind doing a bit of the learning legwork, then Calibre might be a good option for you. It isn’t the most user-friendly option, but it is simple enough that anyone can get to know it and use it for their purposes. It’s another great option to start with, if you aren’t easily frustrated!

Related: The Pros and Cons of Self-Publishing on Amazon

Draft2Digital

Draft2digital is an online platform you can use to publish your books, as well as it’s formatting tool. It’s a website platform, so you simply create an account and can forma your books and export the final result that way — into a publish-ready option. Whether you choose to publish with D2D or take the same files over to KDP, IngramSpark, and so forth.

Pros

No software to download — you can publish from any computer with internet access.

Customer support built in, 24/7 — you can work out any kinks, and get help directly from the website as you go.

If you choose to, you can publish directly from D2D — as long as you aren’t exclusive with Amazon, you can publish your ebook anywhere. Draft 2 Digital will also be offering Print publishing in the future, so it may be an option even if you are exclusive for the ebook!

Cons

You have limited control over the final product — it looks good, but if you were hoping for it to look a ‘specific’ way, and that doesn’t match with their product, you may be out of luck.

The website, while decent, is not the MOST user friendly. As you’re working off of their network, like any website, there might be some issues depending on your signal.

Limited when you’re on the go — if you’re looking to publish while traveling, you might have issues; you’re limited, unless you have a stable internet connection!

Vellum

Vellum is, as far as software goes for formatting, top of the line.

Vellum is user friendly and optimized to make your experience easy as can be — all of the tools are clearly labeled, and easy to navigate.

The entire process takes less than ten minutes, even for a beginner to the process — below, we’ve posted a video of the formatting process, as done by vellum, and you can see for yourself just how easy it can be.

You simply open your word document within the program, and it auto-populates everything it can pull from it. Often name, title, and table of contents can be included in this, as well as the main body of text. You have the ability to edit individual chapters, the order of chapters, the fine-tune the appearance, and insert hyperlinks as desired.

This results in a very adjustable, professional final product you can be proud to present to your audience.

Pros

Ease of use — No fussing with out of date software; UI is simple and easy to navigate, intuitive to how we use computers.

— No fussing with out of date software; UI is simple and easy to navigate, intuitive to how we use computers. Specifically designed for book formatting — No extra features to slog down production, rather, specialized features to help you format it precisely the way you want.

— No extra features to slog down production, rather, specialized features to help you format it precisely the way you want. Complete control of the end result — from headers to page styles, fonts and line-heights, you have control over what the final result will look like.

— from headers to page styles, fonts and line-heights, you have control over what the final result will look like. Good for both print and ebook publishing — your end files can be made in a variety of publishing formats, between epub, mobi, and pdf , so you can rest easy being armed with everything you need to get your book going.

Cons

Price — ranging between $199.99-$249.99, it is a bit of an up-front investment. You have lifetime use of the program with a one-time payment, but this may not be in the budget for a beginner.

— ranging between $199.99-$249.99, it is a bit of an up-front investment. You have lifetime use of the program with a one-time payment, but this may not be in the budget for a beginner. Compatibility — it can only be used on Mac computers, with no ports to use it on Windows or Linux platforms. Depending on your workspace, this may be a hard-stop for you, unless you look into a platform to access a mac computer, which is something we have to do as well.

Overall: Vellum is tailored to this exact function, and software working directly for it’s sole purpose is worth looking into — if you’re looking for a polished, professional end product that you can do yourself, it might be worth the investment if just for the user-friendly accessibility of it all.

Ultimately, what software or service you use will come down to many factors, much of which will be budget and time investment.

But not everyone has an Apple computer, and that alone can bar you from using Vellum for that reason — you can rent access to a Mac from your windows PC, through specific services designed for that, like Macincloud. However, if you don’t want to handle with that, there are plenty of other options depending on your comfort, budget, and skill-level.

Related: Why Should You Consider Hiring a Ghostwriting Company?

However you decide to proceed — from software, to freelancers, or websites with a customer service built-in to help you along the way — being equipped with the knowledge that you can pick the service that suits you best is the first step you’ll need to take in making this decision for your books or business.

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