Preparing Your Manuscript

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT it is important to begin the publishing process only after you are satisfied that the text of the book is completed except for changes suggested by the editor. Adding text to the book after the publishing process has begun leads to unnecessary delays and complications with various versions. Such a situation is best avoided. We cannot emphasize this enough.

Checklist for Manuscript Submission:
For a broad idea of how a book should be laid out, click here.

1. Manuscript Files:
If you haven't really laid out your book yet, go to your bookshelf, library or book store and recognize what you like about the appearance of other books. You must consider font types, sizes and spacing, header treatments, chapter beginnings and the placement of page numbers. Remember that all these elements should reflect the character of your book. Make notes of layouts that you like and refer to them yourself or share them when your book is being designed.

a. A completed, proofread, and edited manuscript in PDF (or Microsoft Word) format must be submitted as a single file.

However if you wish to avail of pre-publishing services provided by us, the unedited manuscript may be sent to us.

b. Every page must be designed exactly as you would like it to appear in your book. We will print only what is submitted. This means that you have to also insert the copyright / title / index pages as needed.

c. If you are planning to upload your own PDF, all fonts that you use must be embedded in the PDF. However, if you will submit a MS Word file, only the following fonts may be used:
= Arial
= Book Antiqua
= Bookman Old Style
= Garamond
= Tahoma
= Symbols

Serif fonts are best for printed documents. Use serif fonts like Garamond, Book Antiqua and Bookman Old Style for blocks of body text.

Sans serif fonts are best for online documents and for display text. Use sans serif fonts like Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial and Verdana if you intend your book to be viewed online.

Although Times New Roman is suggested as a font for books by many, we suggest you don't use it as readers suffer a "font fatigue" having seen it repeatedly.

Here is a nice article on choosing the right fonts for your book

d. When using graphics, you should always embed them into the document. Embedding means that when you save the document, the graphic is saved as part of the document file. Do not link graphics.

a. Develop your manuscript after reading these guidelines and other instructions. View the manual of style for guidelines on both the technical as well as editorial aspects of the manuscript. Keep in mind the basic tenets of writing so that your manuscript is grammatically correct and is free of spelling errors.

b. Engage our services if needed to improve the quality of your manuscript.

c. Email us your manuscript. We also provide, on request, ftp upload facilities for large files.

d. Pay fees for any services you might have engaged.

e. Once your manuscript is prepared to your satisfaction, we will have your book listed online.

f. Your manuscript is now available for sale so do your part to market it. Whenever a book is ordered, we will print it and deliver the book to the customer.

Consider your cover design carefully. It must be readable and appealing and should communicate some of the tenor of the book. To convey this appropriately, gather artwork or photos that you like and you feel reflect the meaning of your work. Please ensure that you have permission to use such artwork and photographs.

If you have the tools and the ability to use them to create a complete cover design, by all means use them. On the other hand, if all you have is Powerpoint or Paintshop or any of the many graphics packages that create lovely greeting cards or edited photos, resist the temptation.

You can calculate the thickness of the spine for your book by using this freely available resource. Guidelines for cover design can be accessed from here.

Please Note:

a. The cover photo and illustration files for the cover of your book including the exact credit lines must be submitted. If you do not wish to avail of cover design services, the cover file you send us will be used "as is", i.e. without modifications, on the cover. Please be certain to include the name of the designer and any credit information wherever appropriate.

Caution: We will not accept images without permission from the original artist.

b. A photo of the author photo must be submitted for use on the back cover. Note that photo placement may vary for each book. You may choose to omit this photo from the back cover if you are terribly shy of putting it there.

c. All images must have a resolution of 300dpi or higher in order to achieve optimum print quality. Dpi and ppi are explained here.

d. Black and white images should be in grayscale mode. Colour images should be submitted in CMYK mode.

e. While designing your back cover, make sure to include the ISBN too. You may obtain an ISBN for yourself or you may choose to use one that is provided by us. Further, if you wish to include a bar code on your back cover you may do so too. Follow this link for further instructions on generating a barcode. While adding the ISBN for your book, you will need to leave a 3.625" x 1.25" area on the bottom right corner of your back cover that is free of any text and/or images that should not be cut off. This area is for your bar code and ISBN.

Please note that if you choose to use an ISBN provided by us, the book will be published by CinnamonTeal. Hence, you will be required to insert our logo on the back cover and on the spine, preferably on the lower left corner.

Note: Although CinnamonTeal has issued the ISBN for the book and must be listed as the publisher, the rights to the book still remain with the author.

f. One should also pay special attention to the design of the book spine as it is, often, the only way you can adequately market your book while it sits on a bookshelf. For more on spine design, follow this link.

g. Do not go use clipart or pictures downloaded from the Internet without ascertaining whether you have the right to use those pictures. Moreover, the use of clipart especially gives the book a bad image.

There are many word-processing programs available that will help you design your book. Among the many that have been tried and tested, we have zeroed in on Lyx. Like one of our users said, "there is a learning curve involved, but it is worth the effort". Take your time mastering the software, there is much you can do with it. And the Help Files and Internet Resources will provide you all the answers you need.

Scribus is another versatile page layout program you can use, especially if you are familiar with Adobe® PageMaker, QuarkXPress or Adobe® InDesign. Scribus is free to use and can be downloaded from here.

Cover designs and illustrations within the book can be developed using Inkscape, a freely available vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Paint.NET is another option.

You can use BiblioExpress to manage references and generate formatted references in three popular styles including ACS, APA and MLA. It also fits in nicely with MS Word.

There are many resources available on the Internet that will help you convert your files into PDF format. Some of those resources are:

i. pdfonline.com - word-to-pdf converter
ii. fastpdf.com - another one
iii. PDF Creator is installed as a printer driver. To create a PDF, open your document, then print to the PDF Creator "printer." The result is a PDF file.