We live in a world of instant gratification. Post a picture and see how many “Likes” you can get. Hop on Google and learn the answers to all of life’s questions. Hell, you can even become a YouTube certified mechanic in a matter of minutes. Everything is so fast paced that people have forgotten how to slow down. The fact of the matter is, many people aren’t reading. A large part of it has to do with TV and time constraints. Books are getting smaller because people don’t want to spend several hours on one thing. They want to get a small piece and be on their way before they can get comfortable. Unless they’re in front of a screen that is. Our society has become less educated, less patient, and less willing to take a chance on something unknown.
This is why so many elements of the publishing world seem to be shrinking. The market is saturated with a constantly growing pool of authors and books, while the number of readers remain about the same. In such a fast-paced world, time constraints have become second nature. Rather than investing in a thousand-page book, and spending the next month absorbing the story within, people want to read for a few hours at most and be done. Most book markets have fallen to 40-60 thousand words per book. Just a few short years ago it was 60-80k. Which brings conflicts in pricing. With the smaller books, people aren’t willing to justify paying full price for months of hard work and dedication. They’re refusing to spend any more than pocket change on a new book, while simultaneously balking at the length of the larger novel. We authors find ourselves on the short end of this stick. But there is a solution.
If you’re selling a three-inch-thick book, it’s unlikely you’re making any money. The production cost alone is going to be pretty high, not to mention Amazon will require you to have a fairly high listing price for such a thick book. In my experience, a book that size would be posted around twenty-five to thirty dollars. There are two immediate problems with this. First off, when was the last time you saw a book sell for that price from an unknown author? And secondly, you’re going to scare away new readers. They don’t have time to read a book that large, which means they’re less likely to take a chance on it. It could be the best story ever written, but if they’re intimidated by the size, not to mention the cost, they’re not going to give it a try. In this regard, you’d have better luck by splitting it into three or four smaller books. Each will need to be well balanced on its own if you’re to gain repeat readers. And by breaking it into smaller books, you’ll have three to four, half to one-inch thick books that will be more inviting to potential readers. This also allows you to produce each book, with proper formatting, for between three and five dollars. If you sell each one at ten dollars, not only will you make thirty to forty dollars for the same story, it will give you more titles under your name which will expand your reach, creditability, and back list. In the end, you’ll benefit in every way by having several shorter books than you would by having a single larger book.
So, how do you format a paper book to maintain quality, while providing the best production to profit ratio? Well, like so much of my career, it took learning the hard way for me to fully grasp the concept. I’d just finished writing my first self-published novel and had stepped into the dreaded world of marketing. There were certain price points I needed to hit. I’d seen problems early on, when I was in the traditional publishing world where books were priced much higher than I believed they should be. In my opinion, that had a drastic negative impact on sales. I wanted to combat the issue by offering a quality product at a lower price. Having studied the market, I knew I needed to be somewhere between ten and thirteen dollars. There was a problem though. The finished product, being a 6×9 book, and housing just over 450 pages (92k words at the time), ended up being just over an inch and a quarter thick. Amazon wouldn’t allow me to set the price lower than $16.00 for a single print copy. Additionally, I couldn’t produce the book for less than seven dollars apiece. There was no way I was going to be able turn any kind of profit this way. So, I did what most inexperienced authors would do. I reached out to some others.
Now, I understand not everyone has a list of industry contacts they can openly communicate with. It took years to make the connections I have, and having started in the traditional game, those contacts came a little easier than most. But you still have options, even if you’re just starting. There are a multitude of writer groups on social media, as well as blogs, YouTube videos, and forums where most of the same information can be obtained. Though I would offer a word of caution. Not all advise given is good. Many of the people you’ll encounter are no different than you. Most are simply learning the same way you are. And this means they may lack the experience to adequately provide quality information or advise. I would recommend verifying any information you receive before employing it. There’s not much worse than having to redo something because you didn’t understand the science behind it.
Anyway, back to topic. After listening to and researching the advice I was given, I formulated a plan using a variety of suggestions. My core problem was my book was simply too thick. I needed to lower the page count without sacrificing the story.
I already had my book set at 6”x9”, which was my intended size. However, you need to understand that the overall book size will affect thickness. A 50k word book isn’t overly thick in a 6×9 format, around a quarter inch. You can take the same 50k words and drop it into an 8×5 format and your page count will rise, making the book between three-eighths and half an inch thick. Keep in mind if you’re planning to sell books in person, presentation matters. A larger dimension will lower page count, while a smaller one will raise it.
The first thing I did was change the font size. I had been running with the old rule of always using 12pt. However, there’s no reason why your book has to be that size. In reality, any easily read font size is acceptable. Though I would offer note that this only applies to print formats. When dealing with digital formats, you’d be better off sticking to the 12pt font. After several tests, I decided a 10.5pt font was more than sufficient for my needs. The font type was easily readable and looked good. I used a 10pt font for my copywrite page, and 8pt for my header and footer text. The size was large enough to read easily, while shaving over 100 pages off the total manuscript.
The next item was the margins. There really isn’t any trick here other than finding something that looks good and fits your book. Since I was going for a thinner product, I made the margins as narrow as possible to conserve page count. But this is entirely speculative. Another thing to be aware of here, especially when using Createspace, is Bleed. They offer the option of “Before” of “After” the edge of page. This didn’t mean much to before I started including pictures in my manuscript. The easiest explanation for it is, “Before the edge” means there is a border around the entire page, much like the margin you’re already using. “After the edge” means the border is not included on the page. If you have a large image that scrolls across multiple pages, you’ll certainly be able to identify the difference when it cuts out the center portion.
I then went through and deleted every blank page I could. This is probably irrelevant as most people don’t have blank pages throughout their manuscript. Mine however do. I always begin my chapter starts on an odd page. I believe this looks more professional and gives the book a uniform appearance. By doing this, I’m sometimes left with an occasional blank page at the end of a chapter or section. And since I’d previously formatted this book, there was a lot of rework this time around.
Now that the book is starting to take form, I go through and locate every indention or tab in the entire manuscript, and I make sure they’re all consistent. I prefer having an indention (tab) of 0.2” or 0.3” as it looks better than the standard 0.5”. It also makes the total length of the book a little shorter as half an inch of dead space is used for each new paragraph, and can add up quickly. If you had to foresight to do this before you started writing, great. It’ll save you quite a bit of time during the formatting process. If not, I’d recommend clicking the show hidden button, as lines start to blur after a while and it becomes easy to miss things. This is also a good time to ensure your line spacing is consistent. I pretty much always use single line spacing for the core manuscript. Paragraph spacing can be a bit trickier. Your book will be shorter if you don’t use it, but it helps to break up text blocks if you have a lot going on.
You page size is set. You’ve settled on your stylistic font and size. Margins are set. Spacing and tab indentions are where you want them. By this point, my manuscript had shaved over 130 pages, bringing the total to a little over 280. And as I’d hoped, Amazon was now allowing me to price the book where I needed it. In addition, production cost had dropped to just under four dollars a book. I was now ready to launch a product that looked good and offered a comfortable production to profit ratio.