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In this episode, we’re talking about what NOT to do when it comes to the interior layouts for your books. What tools do we recommend? What mistakes have we made? How to make sure to avoid looking like a rookie, and more!

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Books we mentioned in this episode

• The Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Visit our websites

• Crystal Hunt (Non-fiction)
• CJ Hunt (Romance)
• Michele Amitrani (Fiction)
• The Creative Academy for Writers (Community/Resources)

Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 029: What NOT to do: Interior Layouts

Crystal Hunt: Hey strategic authorpreneurs, I’m Crystal Hunt.

Michele Amitrani: And I’m Michele Amitrani. We are here to help you save time, money and energy as you level up your writing career.

Crystal Hunt: Welcome to episode 29 of the strategic authorpreneur podcast. On today’s show, we’re talking about what not to do when it comes to interior layout for your books. Also, you know how important reviews are in the book world and the podcast world is no different.

We’ll be forever grateful if you can leave a review on whatever platform you’re listening to this. Now, what have we been up to this week?

What has happened since the last episode?

Michele Amitrani: I just realized Crystal we have been speaking about resources in the past weeks, but I’ve never actually recommended it. And the resource of the week is masterclass, which is an online platform where some of the best, bright minds, decided to lend some of their time to explain the craft of different kinds of things. Screenwriting, we were talking about that Crystal just before, offline and writing, cooking. There is basically everything, but I’m just going to suggest this resource for you if you’re interested in the writing side, because there are so many, established authors, in different genre, so fiction and nonfiction, and I was lucky enough to listen to at least four or five different classes and they are really useful, but also inspiring.

And I think listening to this Masterclass has helped me level up my writing in some sense, but sometimes when you feel down, you just need to listen to other writers who have been there and who were not as famous as now, as we see them. So I think like the motivational part is also really important.

So I just wanted to spend a few minutes to suggest that. I know Crystal is using the same resource and I know she likes that. And week wise. So what I’ve been doing has been, actually trying to understand a bit better how my email marketing provider SendFox works compared to a MailChimp because I’m planning on doing in the next few weeks, a major shift from one platform to the other. And Crystal is helping me on the back end of things, because there are so many things I don’t know about SendFox and I want to make sure that my subscribers have a good experience when they go on that part of the things. And so I’m dedicating a lot of time on that part.

I’m also continuing writing and, I think in the next couple of months, two to three months, things are going to get exciting because I might be able to use some of the things I’ve been working on in the past now eight months and crafting them in real products that I will be able to put in the market.

Actually Crystal and I have been working on that for quite some time, so I’m very excited to see how that is going to play out. And, but I’m even more excited to know what you’ve been up to this past week Crystal.

Crystal Hunt: Well, I have stories with the editor, which means that I have a little bit of a gap.

So I’ve been working on some backend stuff. So getting my websites all updated and making sure the right security plugins are in there and all of that stuff is taken care of, kind of general administrative cleanup and making sure that everything is fully ready for this next round of exciting releases.

And so I have what I call closing circles has been my mission. So just all of the fiddly little details that need to be taken care of in the backend of my website in my newsletter list, in my own bookkeeping, just kind of making sure all the business stuff is really taken care of before I go back into the creative mode again.

So that has been good. And am I reading? I am reading, I’m rereading The Year of Yes which is by Shonda Rhimes, she is one of my favorite writers. And she mostly writes for TV and film actually, she did some things like Grey’s Anatomy is one of the most famous, I think things that she did so there’s 16 seasons I think of Grey’s Anatomy and, it was prime time TV for most of my adult life. And then all the spinoff shows that came out of it and a whole bunch of other things that she wrote as well. And she actually has a, they call Shondaland is like her production company. And now I think Netflix is actually working with them on the next few rounds of content to come out.

But for years she has had weekly, multiple TV shows produced that all kind of spun out of her brain and so this book is about kind of creativity and storytelling on your own terms and as much about the life of a storyteller and creative as a woman, like coming into her own in Hollywood and in all of that kind of a space. So there’s this stuff about body positivity and just like choosing your life that you want to have and overcoming your fear about a lot of things and saying yes to stuff that makes you uncomfortable and like stepping outside of your existing comfort zone. So, I listened to the audio book actually, originally, and it’s her voice.

And so she is reading her own audio book, which I really enjoyed, you feel that sense of connection with the person, but she also has a masterclass on screenwriting. So that is next up for me this week, in terms of which courses I’m going to work through. And, I thought it would be interesting to blend rereading The Year of Yes, watching the masterclass and also I’m watching episodes of Private Practice, which is one of the spinoff series from that, to see how her personality and her stuff makes it into the shows. And there’s a few lines that I recognize from the book where she talks about things happening in her own life and you can see those echoed in the TV shows, which is really interesting. It’s subtle, but it’s in there. So I really love that personalization of story and seeing the way that real life stuff came out or got worked out in the public domain. So, The Year of Yes, highly recommend the audio book, as a starting place if you are an audio book listener, it is an excellent one to take a stab at. All right. And today we are talking about book interior layout and design and how that works.

And we’re going to talk specifically about what not to do so that you can avoid some of the mistakes we have made over the years, and you can take away some pro tips to help you make sure that you the interiors of your book are looking as fantastic as they possibly can. So Michele, I’m curious, when you do your layouts for your books, which different types of software and things have you used, and what did you learn from those?

Interior layout software

Michele Amitrani: There is something that I call the dark age, which is basically everything before Vellum and I want to speak to just a bit about this dark age kind of thing. There was a time in which I would spent hours, crafting the layout of a book and there are software that I used before and, it’s not like I, I don’t recommend them, but they’re a bit more difficult to use.

For example, one of these that comes to mind is Scrivener, I’ve been using that for a few years, and Word, even before that. So if you can imagine that. It is possible to do layout with books with these software, but then when it comes a moment in your career in which you have to decide if you’re going to do this consistently, it might be worth to invest some money.

So we’re going to talk about that a bit more, but I just wanted to tell you layout wise, Crystal, my timeline divided into the dark age, like a middle age and then there is the Vellum age, which is like the bright, the age of enlightenment as you would call it. But one of the things that I wanted to start off this conversation with: the layout is one of the possibly most critical thing to give the experience of the reader, the best possible experience to the reader when they are inside your world.

So once you grab them, there is a cover, there is a great description they purchased the product, your book, that’s basically when they are in your world. And I think that’s a moment in which you have to, I don’t like the sentence close the deal, but it’s a moment in which you have them, you have their attention and I think you own to them to give them the best possible experience and layout, book layout is where everything comes to play. Now, I’m here to tell you, you don’t necessarily have to do it right the first time. And I’m telling you that because I didn’t do it right the first time or the second or the third.

it just it’s, it was a process. Previously we had an episode about all the mistakes we made for covers, and one of the biggest take away from that episode, both from me and from Crystal, was that you don’t have to do it right the first time, you can relaunch a book, you can make it better. Don’t sweat the small stuff, is that how you say Crystal? Don’t sweat the small stuff, but you do have that mentality to keep improving. So this is all the beginning of the speech. One of my biggest mistake, one of the thing I will ask you if it’s possible not to do is if you feel like you’re not prepared to do the layout, I would suggest you to contact, somebody that can, and nowadays, it’s 2020, there are several services or people that can do that for you, and sometimes you don’t even have to pay for that. You can trade your skills if you are a good designers, you can do that. You can find a way to have a good lay made for you in exchange of something else. So I won’t to give you the liberty of knowing that you don’t have to do everything if you can’t.

The second thing that I believe it’s important to start off the conversation is that it’s okay not knowing right now, if you’re going to have a two or three or four books per year done. And so in that case, it might not make sense buy something as expensive Vellum. But what I will say it’s important for you is to have the right mindset and for mindset I mean the authorpreneur mindset, which is basically somebody that thinks on the medium to long period. If you don’t know how to do the layout, one of my biggest recommendation would be outsource somebody that can help you doing that. And, one of the things that we will talk about of how not to do, is exactly if you are not a designer and you’re thinking you can do your cover, probably you can’t because it’s that important. There is a science behind that. There’s a reason why we go, if I’m a fantasy author, I go and look for a fantasy cover designer and Crystal, if she needs one goes and find somebody that has a portfolio with romances, same thing I believe can be used for the layout side of things.

Go to people that know what they’re doing, because again, when they will be inside your book, you want to be able to give them the best experience they can possibly have. And I’m just curious now, since we kickstarted this conversation about what not to do, are there any something, anything that you have done that you would to share with the audience?

Crystal Hunt: I think it’s an interesting point. I think hiring people is good, but I think what not to do is to, don’t hire somebody before you know exactly what material you want, where in your book? You need to know what is the front matter? What are you going to put into various places as you’re working with somebody? They are going to do exactly what you tell them to do.

So you need to make sure that, in your own mind and that your files have all of those pieces included. If you want a dedication and if you want an acknowledgements page, and if you want a call to action to join your mailing list in the front, the back, wherever it’s going to be, you still have to have made the decisions of what is going to go into that book and where is it going to be found? And then when you’ve got your file prepared, then you send it on to the person who’s going to actually do the layouts, but you still need to make the decisions, which means you need to do your homework. So I would actually say for this phase, if you’re talking about a straight up novel, I would say don’t hire someone too soon because you can actually do interior layout using a couple of tools that are available. There is vellum, which is a purchased product, and it will be somewhere between 200 and $300 US generally. So that is a bit of an investment. but you can also use Draft to Digital’s layout tool, which is free. And so you upload a word document, it does a lot of auto formatting, and then you tweak some things to make it how you want, but you can pick from a whole bunch of different premade templates. And then you can download the finished files and you can use those in whatever publishing channels you’re going to publish your book in. And so I think it’s really important before you decide that you can’t do it you should try to do it with one of the free tools and, or try if you are really going to commit to doing a whole bunch of books. It is a good idea to make that investment in getting the layout software, because I think of all of the things to learn, to do yourself, the interiors is the most valuable because you often are going to want to make small changes to your books.

You’re going to want to update your also by page, which is like here’s some more books by CJ Hunt or more books by Michele Amitrani. You’re going to want to update that each time you release a book and you’re going to want to change your call to action at the back. Maybe you’re totally focused on your newsletter list for the first year that you are releasing books, but then after that, maybe you switch your focus to your Facebook group.

Or the call to action is to get people, to enter some contest by following you on BookBub. Whatever it is, if you do this yourself, if you control this part yourself, you can really make changes, anytime something changes. And some of that might be changes that you make to your own approach to author marketing, but it can also be changes that Amazon makes.

For example, we used to use just, you put that call to action, to leave a review or join your mailing list at the very end, after the last chapter. And then Amazon made a change and the Kindle had a screen that popped up that said, come review this, the book it’s the end. And it would pop up at the end of the last chapter, which means that nobody ever saw any of your back matter.

And so being able to go into the book and make that change myself meant that I could update all of my books without it costing me any more money. And so I think it is really important if you can to just spend a little bit of time trying to do it, because you’ll probably find that it’s a lot easier than you expect to do that layout art. Now, funny story from the olden days, I love that you described it as the dark ages of book layout. We could go back even further in time for me. The first time I did that, we were basically creating an HTML document and hand coding in like bold or this or whatever. It was not pretty.

And we used Juto, we use caliber or Caliber, depending on how you pronounce it. I’ve heard both. We used Scrivener to export to ebook. I’ve used InDesign to export to eBooks. And then now all the usual suspects that we actually recommend, which is Draft 2 Digital tool for layout or using the, Vellum program are definitely some of the nicer, more user friendly options and the learning curve are very small. Now, if you are going to work with somebody to do this, though, I think there’s a few really important don’ts to keep in mind. So don’t assume that just because they can do book layouts, they know the book industry. So you still need to tell them all of those things we talked about earlier.

If there’s going to be a call to action at the back of your book or the front of your book or where to place, that’s on you to make the decision. Some people may also act as coaches a little, but if they’re really experienced in the industry, but don’t assume that’s the case because not everybody has the same skillset or knowledge about the industry itself.

Don’t assume that all platforms have the same requirements for layouts. So if you are going to, publish your book in multiple formats maybe you’re doing a kid’s book and you want a print book and you want an iPad version and you want a Kindle version that is like really visual for the E-readers, don’t assume that you can just export all of those from a layout program like InDesign, because you can’t, there are special builders that work for these different platforms. So I think you really need to decide before you decide what program you’re using to lay it out you need to know which channels you’re planning to publish and distribute through.

And then you need to check the guidelines and the recommendations for those platforms and work your way back from that. So you don’t want to hire somebody to help you or commit to a way of doing it yourself until you’ve really pinned down your distribution platforms, because that will make a huge difference.

You need to know if you are dealing with a book that has pictures in it or illustrations, you need to know what kind of color should you have, what format do your illustrations need to be in for those files? You can’t know all those things until you decide what platform you’re going to use and then what tool you’re going to use.

And I think one of the key pieces to making your product look professional, when you’re going to do it yourself is: don’t change too much from the templates. It’s very tempting to customize everything and, tweak all these little pieces to make it look really unique to you. But actually every change you make gets further away from the design ideal.

And so these templates were created by professional graphic designers for a reason and, you know, you need to take of their knowledge and make use of their knowledge and the less you change from those initial templates, the more polished and professional your work is going to look. So that’s good news for you.

You don’t need to put a ton of time into the tweaking of a novel layout anymore. The line spacing is set for a reason. The font sizes will be adjustable. Make sure you are looking at books that have been professionally produced and comparing them to the own, your choices that you have made for your own book and seeing like, are you following the best practices?

Do you have the right number of words on a line and lines on a page and all of those things to make it look like it has been professionally produced? And that I think is what you’re really buying when you buy something like Vellum or when you use the Draft 2 Digital layout tool, you’re really buying that graphic design time.

We used to pay thousands of dollars for each book to be laid out using InDesign because so much of that stuff had to be set up manually. And you had to have somebody who knew what they were doing and graphic designers costs, a hundred dollars an hour is the standard starting rate here in Canada, so that’s just something to be aware of that really buying a program that can do for you on an unlimited number of books for $300, that would be three hours of someone’s time which I can tell you from experience is nowhere near enough to lay out a full book. So it is definitely investment. Now there is an exception to that, which is when you are dealing with a very graphically heavy book, maybe it’s a memoir that has a ton of different headings and images and it’s graphically done, not just a text as a feature with the occasional image that’s worked into it.

Another exception is of course children’s books or like graphic novels, things like that are going to be a lot heavier on the design side. So if you’re looking at projects like that, you should be budgeting probably a couple thousand dollars for assistance in layout, potentially depending where you are in the world.

There’s always options. You can go through Reedsy or Fiverr or any number of places that have an international marketplace for layout and you can probably find it cheaper price, but just to be aware that if you are doing something very graphically heavy, that you will need to make that part of your business plan and part of your budget. So don’t assume that you can get your layout done for less than a couple hundred dollars if you are planning to hire somebody, there is a lot of time involved, and that I think is really important.

Michele Amitrani: So I think the most important thing that you said Crystal was when, you were saying that this might be one of the most important investment that you do for your author career.

I subscribed to that. There are several different things that, for example, in a design of the book, it’s more difficult to grasp. And I’m saying this because I’ve been trying to do my design for my book cover for a while. And I do know I’m not appropriate. I can’t do as good as a designer because they are going to need years to understand what to do and how to do it.

There are rules about colors and perspective and that kind of stuff, you really need to study for that kind of things. Now you do need to study and do your homework for layouts, but I do believe it’s something that you can do, especially if you have something like, Vellum, even Scrivener is fine.

Once you know how to do this, it’s an expense that goes away. You don’t have to think about anything else you don’t have to rely on other people and the least people you can rely still keeping yourself professional the better it is for you. So I think that’s a takeaway that it’s important for all of you that are listening to us, if you master one banker about the designing of the books, mastered the layout because it’s something anyone can achieve any it’s easy for anybody to accomplish.

So I thought like that might be useful to know.

Crystal Hunt: Yes. And I think one last thing to throw in there as well is don’t assume that whatever you told the program is what actually came out the other side. So you really need to review your files before you finalize things. You can do that a couple of ways.

So there’s a couple of really great tools to help with this. So you can upload a file to the backend of your KDP account, and then you can use the previewer. They have an online previewer, which you can click and it will open and then you can click through the pages and you should absolutely check that out and see what it looks like in a whole bunch of different formats.

So you can actually select, do you want to look at it on a tablet, or a phone or the computer? And it will show you how it’s going to look on those different devices, which is really key.

Michele Amitrani: I just wanted to show Crystal exactly say this is a way for you to do it. You just take it in your Kindle and see if it works there.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah, you can also put it onto your own device but as like before it’s published and if you’re not sure how to do that, just look at the online previewer and then you can also, once it is published, you should also be the first person to download your own book and you should look through it again to make sure that nothing has gone awry in between when you hit that publish button and when it started appearing to customers, it’s also just really good to review some of your older books every now and then for those of you have a back catalog. One thing I noticed is that the technology changes every time they release an update, it incorporates the information that the newer devices really need.

And so I was reading one of my older books the other day and I realized, oh, okay. I had put this out in 2016, 2017. And I was, it was right when Vellum first came out and I was using vellum, but the Vellum of three years ago is very different than the Velum of today. And so what I needed to do was go in, open that up, re-export it.

And re upload it so that it incorporates all of the new technological upgrades that have happened in the last little while. So I think don’t forget to relook at your older stuff every now and again, maybe it’s once a year, you go in and do a quick spot check and review what things are doing, what to make sure that your margins and your indents are appropriate and nice to read on your phone that’s a place where people oftentimes make mistakes and just making sure that everything still works the way it did when you first released things. And, we are going to look at the curious jar and examine a question from there. So lid is off, hand is in the jar, I will shuffle around and you’ll tell me when to stop.

What does your family think about you being a writer?

Michele Amitrani: Now is the time.

Crystal Hunt: Orange one. Okay. A good one. What does your family think about you being a writer?

Michele Amitrani: Okay, I’m going first. I take the lead on this one. So I have to say my family has always been very supportive, about my writing journey. It has been something that has always been on, but I call it on and off for seven years now when I started self publishing my first short story in Italy, and, I have to say every single time they were very supportive.

They read my books, they gave feedback. Something that resonated with me even now is that, there are so many other people that might go after you, and offline we were talking about, sometimes there are people just mean, or there are people that are against you. You can call them troll whatever you want, like a reviews, one star reviews, that kind of stuff you do need a team of people that cheers for you basically.

And I think that’s true for ideas for every author. And I think of my family as that, they allow me to, with their sustain, they allow me to do what I want to do. And not even once they have a questioned that then they know that I put everything in this thing and that I didn’t quit because it’s something that I really value.

And that’s something that I want to do as a living. So they are very supportive they are very understanding and, they are always there when I need them. So I’m lucky that and I want to take time to thank them. Maybe I can do that in Italian, they’re probably never gonna see this, but I’m going to say ‘Grazie tanto, apprezzo molto il vostro aiuto.’

Now, it’s your time!

Crystal Hunt: Well, I have a gigantic family. My mom has a lot of brothers and sisters and I have, I would say a bazillion cousins, but I think it actually works out to 60 something on my mom’s side. So there’s a lot of us and they have all been very supportive in very different ways. I think there’s definitely some of my family who are not really sure what I actually do for a job.

And I have switched genres over the years as well so that’s been interesting, but overall I have had a ton of family support in terms of people buying my books. I have a couple aunties who are like rabid fans and will buy and share books to everybody they know. And, my mom like leaves my business cards strewn from one end of the country to the other when they travel and is forever.

Yeah. Leaving things with people, selling books out of the trunk of the car, he goes. So thank you mom for that. And, she’s also my pickiest proofreader, which is really helpful. I actually have my, of my review crew and my arc teams I have three family members, auntie Diane and my cousin, Sarah and my mom who find like every error that the editor missed. My family consists of a lot of teachers and a lot of writers actually.

And so we have a good history of being very particular readers and, also being a little on the perfectionist side. So they helped me keep it real and make sure that everything is as polished and pro as it can be so giant thank you to all of my family. And of course my daughter and my husband are very supportive and have always been excellent sounding boards and are both writers themselves so we have had many, an entertaining bus ride around Vancouver, where we were talking, about all kinds of crazy things and getting interesting looks from the people around us as we discussed, the best place to hide a body are the best potion to make a wizard, do something or other. And so that has always been a fun part of our family time is actually storytelling built into pretty much everything we do together so thank you also to them to be for being so indulging and, for playing along so enthusiastically and they both have created some very cool stuff as well. So that’s a neat kind of family legacy to be part of too. All right we would love to hear what your family thinks of you being a writer, and you can put your answers to that below this episode, in the comments, if you’re on YouTube or you can visit us at strategicauthorpreneur.com on the episode 29, you can find the space to leave your comments there as well, which will be great.

Michele Amitrani: And as always for show notes, links to resources that we mentioned in this episode, and for coupons and discount on the tools we love, please visit us@strategicauthoreneur.com.

Crystal Hunt: And before you go, make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss out on our next episode where we’ll be talking about what not to do when it comes to keywords, blurbs, and reviews until then happy writing.

Michele Amitrani: Ciao, ciao.