Green Hill Publishing - Merry Christmas!
1300 810 131
Contact us
Green Hill Publishing - Merry Christmas!
Why Manuscript Styling Matters (and How It Helps the Process)

Why Manuscript Styling Matters (and How It Helps the Process)

‘Do I really need to style my manuscript?’

Many authors ask this question and the answer is simply, but emphatically, YES! Manuscript styling expediates the process of publishing your book. Publishing consists of many dynamic parts, and streamlining even one can positively affect your timeline. Of course, ensuring that the content of your book is laid out in a logical and readable manner is the largest and most time-consuming of those components, and can be unique to each project, so it makes sense that manuscript styling falls to the author.

Contents

1. How Manuscript Styling Makes Publishing Smoother
2. Style Hierarchy Helps Communicate Structure
3. Don’t Panic: Styling Doesn’t Mean “Perfect”
4. Where to Start with Manuscript Styling
5. Final Thoughts: Great Books Start with Great Preparation

clock - estimated reading time  Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

1. How Manuscript Styling Makes Publishing Smoother

After your manuscript is submitted, our designers need to arrange the manuscript in a specific style, including how the text appears on the page, spacing, fonts, and the placement of images. The goal of this is to make the book easy to read and visually appealing to the reader.

The technical aspects are critical to the visual layout of the content and will vary according to the length of the book, genre, and even print format. These aspects also influence how the typesetters (designers) will determine the trim size (book size), the margins (how much white space is visible around the text), and the font’s typeface and size. However, many other technical matters must be taken into consideration, to—very importantly—invoke the intended mood of the book using the setting, period, and theme.

While typesetters seem to perform magic, They Are Not Mind Readers. Without those styling indicators, it can be difficult for them to tell what should be a heading, a subheading, quotations, or regular text. Without clear and consistent styling, the typesetter’s manual workload is increased, therefore increasing the time typesetting takes and prolonging your project.

Green Hill Publishing provides a Word template for you to copy and paste your manuscript into and style to your preferences. With even basic Word styling to start with, then application of the Green Hill template, the document mapping and typesetting processes will be more refined, saving time and getting your book ready for printing and distribution quicker.

Back to contents

2. Style Hierarchy Helps Communicate Structure

Why does Hierarchy matter? In short, organising your content into levels of importance, or hierarchy, gives readers a clear sense of the flow of the book. Headings and subheadings are especially helpful cues for both your designer and your readers. Defined structure helps designers produce a more polished and accurate layout.

Readers will benefit from understanding what you have written and what has been quoted from another source, what is regular text and what you wish to emphasise, and so on. Without styling, all content will blend together. There are some Hidden Benefits to styling your manuscript, such as improving accessibility, making revisions quicker and easier, and significantly speeding up the typesetting processes.

Back to contents

3. Don’t Panic: Styling Doesn’t Mean “Perfect”

Perfection is not the aim here. Smoothing out the process is.

Obviously, aiming for perfection and even styling as you go could stifle your creative rhythm. For that reason, focus on getting those words out on the page, expressing yourself, and enjoying it as you do it. There will be time for styling and re-drafting once you have transformed your thoughts and ideas into content.

Also, you really don’t need to be a wizard with Microsoft Word. Have a play around with the Styles pane at the top of the Home tab in Word, and search YouTube for beginner tutorials. It can be fun!

After your manuscript has been formatted, it may look quite different but don’t panic, the designers will go back to your original to determine your intended layout, and there will be opportunities to discuss.

Back to contents

4. Where to Start with Manuscript Styling

The steps for styling your manuscript:

  • Experiment with the Styles pane in Word.
  • Watch some tutorials on YouTube.
  • Apply basic Word styles to your manuscript such as Heading 1, Heading 2, Normal, etc.
  • Download and use the Green Hill Template.
  • Reach out to support@greenhillpublishing.com.au if you have questions about styling.

Back to contents

5. Final Thoughts: Great Books Start with Great Preparation

No one wants to limit your creativity or change your message. That is not the purpose of styling.

Green Hill Publishing are here to help bring your vision to life, and making sure that the process runs as smoothly as possible, and consequently ensuring it happens quicker.

Back to contents

SUBMIT YOUR BOOK DETAILS
CALL US 1300 810 131

Featured Blog Posts:

Featured Blog Posts

Interested in publishing your book but unsure where to start or what is even involved? Tell us about your project and we will post you a copy of our:

 

The Little Book of
Big Publishing Tips.

 

In just a quick 8,000 words, this little book will equip you with the knowledge you need to successfully publish your book.

The Little Book of Big Publishing tips goes into the essentials of self-publishing a book, outlining the business and financial side of publishing, legal issues, design, editing, sales and marketing. There's even a section on how to identify a vanity-publishing scam.

submit your project details

How to submit your manuscript to Green Hill Publishing

How to submit your manuscript to Green Hill Publishing

clock - estimated reading time  Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Nearly every publisher, no matter how big or small, has guidelines for manuscript submissions. Green Hill Publishing is no different. Read this blog and learn about our submission guidelines and how to use our templates. 

Contents

  1. Why do you have submission guidelines?
  2. What happens if I submit my manuscript with incorrect formatting?
  3. How to use Green Hill’s Word Template and Styles Guide
  4. Where do I find the submission documents?

1. Why do you have submission guidelines?

Green Hill have developed submission guidelines to simplify the process of bringing your manuscript into our design software for typesetting. It ensures that we have the same understanding of your content as you do. Our designers can then focus more on the readability and design of the book. Having a submission guideline makes sure nothing gets lost in translation and can help cut down the need for design revisions, making the process smoother and often faster. 

Back to Contents

2. What happens if I submit my manuscript with incorrect formatting?

If you submit your manuscript without using our template and style guide, or if you have incorrectly used the template and style guide, we will flag this with you and give you a couple of options moving forward. 

The first option is to allow you to reformat the manuscript and submit a new version to Green Hill. This gives you the chance to correct it yourself and ensure that everything is formatted in the way you are happy with. 

The second option is for one of Green Hill’s Microsoft Word specialists to go through your manuscript and format it. This is done at an hourly rate and will be extra on top of your publishing package. It’s also good to note that, in the case of complex manuscripts (i.e. business books, textbooks, etc.), the specialist styling your manuscript may misinterpret headings etc in your book. 

Of course, if you are having any trouble understanding the template, or you can’t work out what the most suitable option is for your book, contact us so we can guide you. 

Back to Contents

3. How to use Green Hill’s Word Template and Styles Guide

3.1 Using the Word Template

When you open the word template from your Green Hill Submission Guideline Documents folder, it will look mostly blank. 

Firstly, what you’re going to do is to click “Enable Editing” in the banner up the top of document. This will allow you to make changes in the document. Then, you must get into the settings to set the document up properly to allow for the formatting. Go to “File” and click on “Options”. 

How to change advanced option settings in word

This will bring up a pop-up. From there, go to “Advanced,” scroll down to “Cut, copy, paste,” and change “Pasting between documents” to “Merge Formatting” and click “OK.” 

How to change advanced option settings in word

Now that the settings have been successfully altered, you need to open your manuscript document up in a separate window and copy and paste all of the text. If you’re comfortable with keyboard short-cuts, use Ctrl+A to highlight all of the text. 

Alternatively, if you’re not comfortable with short-cuts, you can use the “Select All” button. First, go to the Home tab and find the “Select” dropdown. Then click on “Select All”. 

How to select all in word

If you’ve written your manuscript in multiple files, open them one at a time, select and copy all the text, and paste it into our word template in the correct order. It’s important to note the last part of those instructions as the team at Green Hill will assume you’ve ordered your manuscript correctly. 

Next, you’ll need to open your styles pane. To do this, go to “Home,” and click the downwards arrow in the styles section. The Styles Plane will open to the right of the screen.

How to open the styles pane in word

You’ll then need to ensure that you are only seeing the styles that we have recommended as Word has its own inbuilt styles that we don’t need. To do this, go to the style pane and click “Options,” then choose “Recommended” from the first dropdown menu and click “OK.” 

Now it’s time to use the styles to format your manuscript! 

3.2 Using the Styles Guide

For fiction authors, applying styles to your manuscript should be straightforward as you shouldn’t have too much differentiation of text in your manuscript. However, for authors with complex manuscripts like business books, some non-fiction books, textbooks, etc. the process of deciding which style to use can get a little tricky.  

At the end of the day, it is okay if you choose the wrong style so long as you are CONSISTENT. 

Keep a notepad next to you and write down what styles you’re using for particular elements of your text. This way, if you’ve chosen the wrong style, the team at Green Hill will be able to switch it out for a more appropriate one much easier. 

If you’re not familiar with styles in Microsoft Word, don’t be daunted! We will go through how to use them step-by-step and if you still don’t quite understand, there is an instructional video you can watch. 

Firstly, open up the Styles Guide document from your Green Hill Submission Guideline Documents folder. It’s a PDF which has a lot of information about how to set up your document for styling, how to use styles, and a styles A-Z. Right now, we’re interested in the Styles A-Z chapter, so skip down to there. 

your styles guide

The Styles A-Z chapter runs through every style in your template and what it is typically used for. As your final design of your book won’t look like your formatted manuscript, don’t worry too much about the look of the styles. When deciding on a style, it’s always best to choose based on their described use.  

When getting ready to use styles, it’s a good idea to either print out the Styles A-Z chapter or to have your screen split between these two documents. This is so that you can view both at the same time, allowing you to quickly reference the styles A-Z document while you format your manuscript.  

viewing two documents on one screen

Have a scroll through the different styles and make a note of which ones look appropriate for your manuscript. Once you’ve done that, it’s time to finally get formatting! 

To apply a style, highlight the paragraph you want to change and then scroll through the styles pane until you find the appropriate style, then simply click on it. Go through the whole manuscript and do this for every paragraph. 

select the text to change the style
Before and after formatting your document

Back to Contents

 

4. Where do I find the submission documents?

On our company website, we have a webpage dedicated to submitting your manuscript. It briefly details the steps that need to be undertaken and also features a helpful video tutorial that will walk you through the process.

You can find this webpage here: https://greenhillpublishing.com.au/submit-your-manuscript/

Back to Contents

SUBMIT YOUR BOOK DETAILS
CALL US 1300 810 131

Featured Blog Posts:

Featured Blog Posts

Interested in publishing your book but unsure where to start or what is even involved? Tell us about your project and we will post you a copy of our:

 

The Little Book of
Big Publishing Tips.

 

In just a quick 8,000 words, this little book will equip you with the knowledge you need to successfully publish your book.

The Little Book of Big Publishing tips goes into the essentials of self-publishing a book, outlining the business and financial side of publishing, legal issues, design, editing, sales and marketing. There's even a section on how to identify a vanity-publishing scam.

submit your project details

Have you got the book hierarchy blues?

Have you got the book hierarchy blues?

clock - estimated reading time  Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Sitting in our office today I hear our gun publications strategist and our leading book designer in what is a routine Green Hill discussion.

STRATEGIST – “Do we need to talk about the book hierarchy?”

DESIGNER – “Yes, there’s a problem.”

STRATEGIST – “We need to advise the author about the issues. It won’t work in print will it?”

DESIGNER – “No. His editor seems a little inexperienced.”

Are the strategist and designer trying to make life difficult for the author and his editor? No, they are trying to produce a winning book. 

Most first time authors are unaware of the complexities of making a winning book. The issue of hierarchy is all about how information is structured so that the reader has the best chance of absorbing and understanding the information.

Organisational chartThe chart at right shows how a business might be organised – how staff relate to each other and how the human resources are organised. Written information can be organised in the same manner. This is often expressed in a book Contents.

Edward Stratton-Smith's Complext hierarchy for his excellent book Traffic Offences

The Contents page – Edward Stratton-Smith’s complex hierarchy for his excellent book Traffic Offences.

But hierarchy usually runs deeper than just the chapters shown on a Contents page.

There can headings, subheadings, lists/bullet points, and breakouts/text in boxes and margins. A big issue is how ‘deep’ the information is organised and how ‘wide’. Often an author structures the information too deep, so deep the reader forgets what the context of the information being presented is, what the focus of the chapter is, and/or what the author’s lesson or argument is. Confusion is the result. An experienced editor will know what to do.

When book hierarchy is appropriate, good book design will follow.

 

SUBMIT YOUR BOOK DETAILS
CALL US 1300 810 131

Featured Blog Posts:

Featured Blog Posts

Interested in publishing your book but unsure where to start or what is even involved? Tell us about your project and we will post you a copy of our:

 

The Little Book of
Big Publishing Tips.

 

In just a quick 8,000 words, this little book will equip you with the knowledge you need to successfully publish your book.

The Little Book of Big Publishing tips goes into the essentials of self-publishing a book, outlining the business and financial side of publishing, legal issues, design, editing, sales and marketing. There's even a section on how to identify a vanity-publishing scam.

submit your project details