Top 5 Submission Mistakes

Transcript:

Hi. I’m Amy and I’m going to talk about the top five submission mistakes most likely to delay a book’s production. More importantly, I’ll tell you how to check for these problems, and if necessary how to avoid them.

#1: Image Size & Resolution

The number one mistake by a wide margin is problems with image size and resolution. Any images we receive need to have a resolution of no less than 300 DPI, or dots per inch. Images also need to be the right size to fit in your book or on your cover. For interior images, roughly 4 by 6 inches or larger is recommended. For cover images, if you want a picture to fill the cover, it will need to be a little bigger than the cover itself. Watch our video tutorial on How to Check Image Size and Resolution before submitting any images for your book. Taking the time to check your images now could prevent possible production delays later.

#2: Inappropriate Hard Returns

A ‘hard return’ happens whenever you press the ‘Enter’ key while typing. Not all hard returns are a problem, but if used incorrectly they can make a manuscript difficult to format for publishing. Ideally, you should only hit the Enter key when you intend to start a new paragraph. You should not hit the Enter key when you reach the right-hand margin of the page to continue typing on the next line. Many of us learned how to type on a typewriter, where you had to manually shift the page down and back to the left margin to continue typing. Modern word processing software does not require this kind of effort. Just keep typing all the way to the right-hand margin and when you reach the end of the page the text will automatically continue on the next line down.

If you hit the Enter key when you get to the right-hand margin, just so you can continue typing on the next line, you are actually telling your manuscript to start a new paragraph, probably in the middle of your sentence. It may not look like the start of a whole new paragraph while you’re typing, but once your manuscript gets placed into the smaller text margins for your chosen book size, the problem will become more apparent.

Here’s how to double-check for them. If you’re using Microsoft Word, click on the ‘Show/Hide’ formatting icon at the top of your screen. It’s designated with the paragraph symbol, which looks like a backwards letter ‘P’. When you show the formatting like this, all of the hard returns in your manuscript will appear as paragraph symbols, or backward P’s. You’ll want to make sure that they only appear at the end of actual paragraphs, not in the middle of sentences at the right-hand margin. If you see any inappropriate hard returns, you’ll want to click in front of each one of them and then hit the ‘Delete’ button. This may bring your words together, and if so, you will need to reinsert a space to separate them again. If you have inserted hard returns throughout your entire manuscript, this will be a time-consuming but very necessary process.

Here is what it looks like when we begin formatting a manuscript with inappropriate hard returns for our most popular book size, 6 by 9. The lines break in odd places all over the page, but let’s look at three particular lines and then we’ll look at the same three lines in the original manuscript to understand why this happened. The lines break after the words ‘could’, ‘her’, and ‘she’. If we look in the original manuscript in ‘Show Formatting’ mode, you’ll see inappropriate hard returns after the same three words: ‘could’, ‘her’, and ‘she’. These inappropriate hard returns are forcing the start of new paragraphs where the author did not actually intend new paragraphs to begin.

If you hit the Enter key when you get to the right-hand margin, just so you can continue typing on the next line, you are actually telling your manuscript to start a new paragraph, probably in the middle of your sentence. It may not look like the start of a whole new paragraph while you’re typing, but once your manuscript gets placed into the smaller text margins for your chosen book size, the problem will become more apparent.

If you hit the Enter key when you get to the right-hand margin, just so you can continue typing on the next line, you are actually telling your manuscript to start a new paragraph, probably in the middle of your sentence. It may not look like the start of a whole new paragraph while you’re typing, but once your manuscript gets placed into the smaller text margins for your chosen book size, the problem will become more apparent.

Also Check for Soft Returns, Improper Tabs and Spaces

In addition to hard returns, you should also look for soft returns. Soft returns are represented by arrows pointing to the left. A soft return is where you have pressed the ‘Shift’ and ‘Enter’ keys at the same time. These pose the same problem as hard returns and will also need to be removed from your manuscript before it can go into production. Occasionally, we also see the use of the ‘Tab’ key or the space bar to get to the next line. The Tab key is represented by an arrow pointed to the right. Spaces are represented by dots. Be sure that you have not pressed the Tab key or the Space bar to get to the next line of text. It is okay to enter the Tab key to indent the first line of your paragraphs, and it is normal to see one space between your words and at the end of each line. But if you have entered tabs in other places or if you have entered more than one space at the end of your lines, this could be a problem that may need to be repaired before your manuscript can go into production. If your manuscript has inappropriate hard returns, soft returns, tabs, or spaces, you are welcome to repair the problem yourself or you can have us do it. Contact a representative for a Manuscript Clean-up estimate.

#3: Special Formatting Done Incorrectly

There are a few different formatting concerns that when done incorrectly in your original manuscript can pose special challenges to your book during production. If your manuscript contains tables, columns of text, or footnotes, you’ll want to be sure you’re creating these by going to the pull down menus at the top of your screen. If you’re using Microsoft Word, tables are created by going to the ‘Table’ pull down menu. Columns of text are created by pulling down the ‘Formatting’ menu. And, footnotes are created by going to the ‘Insert’ menu. Please be sure to watch our tutorials on each of these specific subjects to make sure you have created them the correct way.

In addition to these formatting concerns, I also wanted to mention page numbering and headers. Headers are any information that appears at the top of every page in your manuscript such as the author’s name or the title of the book. Your manuscript does not need page numbers or headers. Even if you do them correctly, we will have to strip them out before beginning production on your book. But if they have been done incorrectly, they can be a problem. You should never manually type your page numbers or your page headers on every page of your manuscript. If you have, they will need to be manually deleted and the text on either side of them brought back together before your manuscript can enter production. If you’ve created headers in this way, you can remove them yourself or contact a representative for a Manuscript Clean-up estimate.

#4: Missing Materials

The fourth most common reason for production delays is missing materials. It is best to submit all of your materials at one time, so let me run through a list of everything that should be included in your submission.

• the Submission Guideline form
• your final manuscript in a single merged file
• your back cover text, usually a short synopsis of your story
• any images that are supposed to be inserted in your book, submitted separate from the text as individual image files
• image placement instructions that help us identify your images and place them correctly
• if you have image captions, they should be typed directly into the manuscript or submitted as a separate file
• you may submit one or two cover images if you’d like; be sure to include ‘cover’ in their file names
• if you have ideas about your cover design, submit them in a document entitled ‘cover idea’
• if you’d like to include a short ‘About the Author’ page at the end of your book, we recommend keeping it between one and three paragraphs
• if you’re sending an ‘About the Author’ page, you can also send your picture to go with it

To learn more about these items and how to submit them, please watch our videos: Is Your Manuscript Ready: Tips for Fast and Easy Publication and A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words: Using Images to Bring Your Book to Life.

#5: Tips for a Successful Cover Design

Xlibris will create a cover for your book but nobody knows your book better than you so your ideas and input are invaluable. It can sometimes take a few revisions and some correspondence between our designers and yourself to get the cover just right. If you have ideas about your cover, what you’d like to see on it or what mood it should convey, please include this information in a separate document while you’re submitting your materials. Here are some tips for appealing cover design that have the greatest chances of achieving your design and marketing goals.

Keep it simple.

You want your cover idea to be simple. A complex cover design full of visuals can end up looking cluttered. Most people are first going to see your cover out of the corner of their eye or as a small thumbnail image in a bookstore website. If the design is cluttered, the potential reader probably won't understand what it means and they may not be interested in learning more about it.

Don’t Show Too Much of Your Characters

Another suggestion is not to show your characters on the cover unless the book is a biography or an autobiography. Most readers don’t want to be shown exactly what a fictional character looks like. After all, one of the joys of reading is that you get to envision things in your mind’s eye. It can also be extremely difficult to communicate or create the exact physical characteristics that you imagine your character having. For these reasons, if you feel the main character needs to be represented, we suggest keeping them in shadow or silhouette, or only showing a small part of them, just enough to peek the reader’s interest and spark their imagination.

Don’t Depict a Specific Scene; Be Symbolic

If your book is fiction, you don’t need to depict a specific scene on the cover. Instead, we suggest you think of a symbolic or iconic way of representing what your book is about. For example, if you’ve written a traditional crime novel, it might be better to draw upon imagery like broken glass, rain, a detective in a trench coat, a gun, or handcuff than to depict the characters or situations the reader may not understand until after they’ve read the book.

Now you know about the five most common submission problems. If you have any concerns about what we’ve covered, please give us a call at 0800-644-6988 and we’ll be happy to talk about them with you.