Once your book is finished, there are a couple of options to upload your file.

Both CreateSpace and Lulu allow you to upload regular Word documents (doc, docx, rtf) and also PDFs. The latter is generally more useful if your book contains a lot of images, tables, or special fonts, because they can be embedded and their location in the document is fixed and less likely to be messed up in a conversion. I have to admit, I've never done this so have no idea of the process. If your book is solely text, a Word document should work fine.

When you upload a Word document the site converts it into a PDF "print ready file". You can download and review it - which I really recommend, as it will allow you to pick up any errors that have crept through either making the document or the conversion. If you're not happy, tweak the original document and upload again. Once you're happy you can proceed to publication.

Both sites will walk you through the process: filling in the title and author details; pricing; uploading the cover or using the on-site designer; uploading your file. It's easy enough if you follow the steps.

One of the steps is choosing your distribution channels, which I'll look at next time.

If you're planning to sell your book, you'll need to choose a price to sell it at. This applies whether or not you intend to sell online or in person. The printer you choose will have a base cost at which they sell copies to you - this takes into account their printing costs and profits. It's also the amount of the total cost of the book they'll keep for each copy sold online.

For argument's sake, let's say your printer of choice sells you copies at $5.00. You can order as many books as you like for that cost (and you may get discounts for buying in bulk). You can take these books to a convention, or whatever, and hand sell them for whatever you like, and keep all the profit.

Let's say you decide to sell your book online for $10.00. Your printer will keep $5.00 of that and pay you the rest when you meet their payment threshold. This will vary by site, so it's worth checking out as if they have a high threshold it may be a while before you seen the money - if at all. However, if you take advantage of their distribution channels you may see even less of that $10 - because each of the distributors will want their own cut. For each copy of Conversations with Dragons I sell through Lulu I make $4.99. If I choose to use them to sell it through other retailers this drops to $0.40. This includes Amazon, so if you want to sell through Amazon I'd honestly recommend going through Createspace.

I use both Lulu and Createspace. The reason for this is it costs me a lot less in time and money to get copies from Lulu if I want to buy a proof, or copies to hand sell. However I've never sold a copy to a third party online through Lulu, and I have through Createspace/Amazon, so it's worth it for me to take the effort to do both. If you only plan to hand sell, or sell online, you might find it works better for you to just pick one.

Next time, uploading your file.

The first question to answer regarding an ISBN is whether or not your book needs one. If you're publishing for friends and family, and don't intend to sell your book, then you almost certainly don't. If you're planning on buying and hand-selling copies, rather than making it available online, then you can also do without one - although this will make the book look less professional so it's worth considering.

If you intend to sell online via your printer, or use their retails channels, you will almost certainly need one. I can't remember if it's true of Createspace, but Lulu requires any book available for sale to have an ISBN. This leaves you with the choice of paying for your own, or using the free one the printer provides.

ISBNs can be expensive, depending on where you're based. At time of posting, a single ISBN costs around $125 in the US, although apparently Canadians can get them for free. The only advantage I can see you getting your own ISBN is it allows you to be listed as the publisher in the ISBN database (otherwise it's listed as Createspace, Lulu, etc). If you're not publishing your books as a small press this may not matter to you.

Each new edition of your book will need its own ISBN. This is the case whether you're updating the content, or publishing it on more than one POD site. If you plan on tweaking your content to keep up with a topic, it could get expensive if you're buying your own.

Once you have your ISBN it needs to go on the copyright page in your front matter.

Next: choosing your price.

It would have made more sense for me to post this before the posts on the Table of Contents or Covers, as it will affect the page count of the book, but to be honest they're mostly of use if you're writing non-fiction in order to correctly cite references. Most people will never need them.

The first thing to decide is if you want to use endnotes (all your references at the end of the book) or footnotes (all your references at the bottom of the relevant page). Having tried footnotes when publishing Golems, Vampires and Wanderers: Essays in Gothic Fiction, I can honestly say that endnotes are easier.

With endnotes, the references are collected all together and can be treated as a separate chapter. The headers and page numbers are dealt with exactly the same. The only additional work is to check the numbering has carried across correctly, and the formatting is correct.

With footnotes, a change is made to the content of potentially every page. The extra text they add will bump the text at the bottom of the page onto the next one. This could have an impact on which page the next chapter starts on, so each chapter will need to be checked to make sure it still starts on the correct page. As with endnotes, check the numbering is correct. One thing I found was that sometimes the footnote would be on the incorrect page to the number in the text, usually the one after. If this happens the only remedy I found was to reformat the text to bump the number in it to the next page. Obviously this will leave you with some very noticeably odd formatting if you later change the font or trim size so it's best to make a note of these places so you can check them later.

Something else that sometimes happens with footnotes is an extra line can appear between them. I have no idea what causes this, and the only way I found to fix this was to manually tweak them until they look right. Footnotes will need to be carefully checked before committing the final file to print, so if your chosen printer offers a pdf print file for checking, take a close look at this as it's how your finished book will look.

Next, ISBNs.

Once you've got all your text in place, it's time to go back to the beginning. The table of contents is something you do only when the rest of the manuscript is finalised, because otherwise the page numbers could be inaccurate.

Firstly, put your cursor wherever you want the table to go. Then go to the Insert menu of Word and select Index and Tables. On the box that pops up there should be a tab for the Table of Contents. Select this.

It will give you several options. Insert page numbers? Well obviously. It will also give you the option to right-align them, which will make the table easier to read. The Tab Leader option will let you decide if you want a line of dots, or a line, or nothing at all, between the end of the title and the number. I opted for nothing as this is what you often see in traditionally published books. The format option lets you change the look of it.  Show Levels is only useful if you have different levels of headings - say a title and then different sections within your chapter, as this will let you pull out the different subheadings as well. For a standard book of short stories you only need one heading.

In Word 2000 there's an options button, which may be lurking somewhere else in more modern versions, but this is where you tell it which information to pull out. Check the box for building the table of contents from styles. Then go down the list. Remember the style of the table of contents we set up earlier? Select that as 1 (and any subheading styles as 2, 3, etc). Click OK, and you have a table of contents.

Next, you'll need a cover.

Just like a traditionally published book, yours will need page numbers - especially if you're planning for a table of contents. These can be at the top or bottom of the page, in the middle or on the outside edge. This is purely a matter of personal preference, so I'd recommend taking a look at the books on your shelves that are similar to yours to see what looks best to you.

Page numbers are added in the Insert menu in Word. Remember to uncheck the box for inserting the page number on the first page, as the title page doesn't need one. It is still page 1 though - numbering should be continuous throughout and include all the pages, even the blank ones. There is an option in page number setting called Continue from Previous Section (or similar) which should be checked.

A word of warning - if you're putting them on the outside of the page, remember that your pages are the wrong way round. You need to select Outside on the options, and if your version of Word has a little icon to show you where the number will appear you'll see them on the outside of the pages. However, when you go back into the manuscript they'll be on the inside because your pages are back to front. This is nothing to worry about.

Next you need to insert headers or footers if you have them. Most books, certainly fiction books, have headers rather than footers so I'm going to assume this is true of your book. The advice is the same either way.

Remember those section breaks we set up earlier? This is where they become important, because they allow you to have different headers throughout the book. Your title, dedication, and contents pages don't need headers or page numbers, but we'll leave them to the end.

If you want the headers on odd and even pages to be different (for example to have your name on one and the book title on the other) you'll need to set this in the Page Setup section (where you changed the margins etc). In the layout is the option to select Different Odd and Even, so check this if you want them different. Don't forget to apply this to the whole manuscript.

Once you've done this (or not) , go back to the manuscript and move to the first section of text that's actually a part of the writing. Double click in the top or bottom margin, or use the view menu to open the headers and footers. It will also give you a little pop-up bar with options. The first thing to do is hover over the options and turn off the one called "Same as Previous". Make sure your page numbers are where they should be, and enter the text for your header. I usually make this one font size smaller than my main text.

Headers are usually on the outside of the page, so remember to position them on the inside of the view in Word - on the same side as your page numbers if you don't have those centred.

When you're finished, move on to the next section. As before, turn off Same as Previous and edit it to how you want. Go through the manuscript and do this, removing auto-filled headers and page numbers from the sections where you don't want them. Because you've turned off Same as Previous you should be able to change the headers and page numbers in any section without it affecting any of the others. Once you're finished go back to the beginning and remove the page numbers from the front matter of your book. The reason to do this last is because if you do it before you turn off Same as Previous it would delete them from the whole manuscript.

The next step, tedious but necessary, is to skim through your headers, footers, and page numbers to make sure nothing's gone wrong. If the content of a header doesn't look right, or there is or isn't a page number in the right place, it might be that there's a page or section break in the wrong place. The view where you amend headers and footers will tell you which section you're in.

If the page numbers are woefully wrong, as mine were after I added and removed some breaks (95, 97, 94, 96, anyone?) take them out and start again with them. Don't be tempted to edit manually as this may cause further problems later.

Once everything's fixed, check it again.

The easiest way to see how your manuscript is set up is to set the zoom to about 75% so that you end up with two pages alongside each other. However, these will be back to front to how they appear in your manuscript - right on the left, left on the right - because Word will line them up with odd pages on the left and even pages on the right. In a published book the first page is on the right hand size because the first even page is, essentially, inside the front cover.

Working with the manuscript as is isn't as difficult as it sounds. The purpose of putting the pages alongside each other is purely so you can see where to insert page and section breaks. If you want you can insert a blank page at the beginning of the document as its own section, which will at least make everything look as if it's in the right place. But you'll need to take it out before you do your table of content, and reverse left and right in my posts, so I really wouldn't recommend it.

If you look at a traditionally published book you'll see that new stories and chapters begin on the right hand page, even if this means having a blank page on the left. This is a convention you'll need to follow if you want your self-published book to appear professional. If you're printing only for friends and family you may not be bothered by this, in which case feel free to start new chapters on the next page.

If you're starting new chapters/stories on the right hand page, this means that they need to start on the left in the Word document. All you need to do here is insert a page or section break, or two, to get the new text in the right place.

Whether you choose a page or section break depends on if you want your headers or footers the same throughout the main body of text. If you want them the same, choose a page break. If they're different (for example to put the title of individual stories their own title as header) you need a section break. More on that in my next post.

Font is another thing that will impact the size of your book but, like margins, don't be tempted to make it as small as possible. Nothing will make it look self-published and amateur like squashed-up text in an obvious attempt to save page count.

As with margins, some POD imprints will have specific fonts they like or don't like. Lulu specifies that if you plan to upload a Word document for them to convert, you must you one of the following: Arial; Book Antiqua; Bookman Old Style; Century, Courier; Garamond; Palatino; Tahoma; Times New Roman; Verdana; Symbols. (If you're uploading your own PDF you can use any font you like as long as you've embedded it. This isn't something I'm going to go into here as it's not a process I've used myself.)

Once you know what your options are, pick the font you like best. Some of them take up more space than others, even at the same size, so it really is a matter of personal preference. Something that looks similar to a traditionally published book is probably the best choice. You may want to use a different font for titles or specific items within your text.

This article from desktoppub is a good guide as to how to choose a font sized based on your target audience. Generally 10-12 point is a good choice, going larger for an older or younger audience.

Now you have your font choices, it's time to set up styles. This is done via the Format menu in Word. You can set up a style to be a particular font and size, with or without underlining, bold, or italic, and even choose how you want it to be justified. For a short story collection you will probably need a minimum of three styles: for titles, headings, and subheadings you don't want to appear in the table of contents (e.g. the heading for the table of contents), for those you do (use a separate style for subheadings than the chapter headings), and for your main body of text. Your needs may vary depending on the book you're publishing, so set up as many styles as you need.

Once your styles are set up, use the styles option to format your text. This is done in a similar way to changing the font or text size, in that you select the text to be changed and then click on the style. However, this makes all the changes at once, which makes formatting much quicker than having to change, for example, the font size and formatting options separately. It will also come in handy later when setting up a table of contents.

Next time, setting up new chapters and stories.

Better late than never - here's the next of my POD posts.

Assuming that you've got your front matter set up and your manuscript ready, you then need to start formatting your document. The first thing to do, if you haven't already, is set your document to the size your chosen for your trim size. In Word this is in the Page Setup options under Paper Size. Select the size, and make sure you select the option to apply it to the whole document. For some reason, at least in the version of Word I'm using, this is not the default.

The next thing to set is your margins. These will have an impact on the thickness, and therefore cost, of your book, but don't be tempted to set them as narrow as possible. Your readers need somewhere to put their fingers and thumbs when they hold the book open. Traditionally published books tend to have margins in the region of 3/4 to 1 inch. If you're not sure what to use, find some books of a similar trim size to yours and measure their margins. This will give you an idea of how your book will look.

The POD printer you've chosen may also have their own specified minimum, so poke around on the site and find this out before you decide. For example, Lulu has a handy guide to formatting if you want to have your book available for retail, which specifies that margins must be at least half an inch and the top and bottom, and left and right, must match.

Once you know what your margins are set them in the Page Setup options, and remember to select this for the whole document as well.

Next time, choosing a font and setting up styles.