5 Reasons I Don't Format My Books With Microsoft Word When Self-Publishing

5 Reasons I Don't Format my Books with Microsoft Word When Self-Publishing // Why don't I like using Microsoft Word to format books? Today I'm going over the five things that drive me crazy about book formatting in Word. I also talk about an alternative software, Adobe InDesign, and why I feel it's the best software out there when it comes to formatting your self-publishing book.
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Videos Mentioned:
How to format your book in Microsoft Word: • How To Format a Novel ...
Why is Adobe InDesign the best book formatting software? • The Best Book Formatti...
4:18 - Headers & Footers
7:41 - It exports differently
9:02 - Drop Caps
10:06 - Previewing issues
12:09 - Hard to change the entire document
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Mandi Lynn published her first novel when she was seventeen. The author of multiple books, Mandi spends her days continuing to write and creating KZbin videos to help other writers achieve their dreams of seeing their books published. Mandi is the owner of Stone Ridge Books, a company that works to help authors bring their books to life through cover design and digital book marketing. She is also the creator of The Book Launch Planner, a planner designed to help authors publish and market their books. When she’s not creating, you can find Mandi exploring her backyard or getting lost in the woods.
#bookformatting #selfpublishing #selfpublished
• 5 Reasons I Don't Form...
DISCLAIMER: This video and description contain affiliate links. By purchasing a linked product or service, Mandi Lynn will receive a small commission at no additional fee to you.

[@MandiLynnWrites]

Hey all! Thanks for letting me know Word does have a paragraph style feature! I tried using the paragraph style feature in the past and found it clunky at best. From the sounds of the comments, it’s improved, which is great! Though I still think it’s not the best for formatting books, especially more complex books. But it’s definitely possible to format books in Word, it’s just not the best software for it in my opinion.

[@TekCroach]

I have written 18 books in both English and Sinhala languages with MS Word. It was extremely easy, fast, and excellent. Have used libreoffice too. Writing is not like drawing or photo editing. It’s such a simple work. What’s important is the content in a book.

[@thepurpleufo]

As someone who has used Word and InDesign to format books, I agree with everything Mandi said (other than the "styles" issue which has already been noted). It's important to know that Mandi chose to mention just five reasons (probably because she didn't want the video to last for hours), so I'll just mention that there many more reasons why InDesign is miles and miles ahead of what Word can do. Most of those additional reasons relate to niceties that are important in professional book production, such as far better hyphenation control, far better spacing control (intercharacter spacing and leading), far better control for widows and orphans, and...well...I could go on and on all night here. For the commenters who mentioned the high price of InDesign, that's a valid point...but if you are doing professional design not only for books but also for other kinds of projects, the price for InDesign is very reasonable. And for those who say that all that matters is the content of the book, then why not just set up your books at 8.5 x 11 pages with 12 point Times and be done with it? Just ask yourself why does almost every high-end publishing company use InDesign or some other high-end software? The answer is because they want production efficiency, *and* they know that good design sells a lot more books than the kind of half-baked design you will get with Microsoft Word.

[@secretlyadragon4723]

Half baked design? That's a little harsh. Especially considering that 1. Most self-published authors would gladly invest in a good formatting software if they could afford it. They're not out here using Word to format their life's work for kicks. If they're using Word they probably have no other option. 2. The fact that they're formatting their own work instead of hiring a professional shows how much they can't afford it. You're shitting on Word but I don't see anybody offering their formatting services for free, not saying they should, but let authors get by how they can get by. And furthermore, I've done book formatting designs in Word at the same quality as so-called high quality design books that publishers put out. People never believe I did it in Word. They're like, 'how did you do that?' And yes, Indesign is better, but maybe not making authors feel bad over the software they're using and making their books feel less than because they used it is better.

[@lennoxwilliamsart7387]

Mandy, gotta correct you: there are paragraph-styles in word and that makes it easy and quick to change font and sizes in seconds. Windows users have an advantage, because it just works better and easier. on mac you sometimes need to do it a second time to work. But you absolutely CAN and SHOULD do paragraph-styles :D For everyone still using word and the headers: Click the "First Page different" option so you dont have it on the page with the chapter number. Normally the break automatically adapts to new pages added in. Technically you can put a chapter art in the header to automatically get it for a new chapter if you put the section break in Paragraph styles are also in word and that makes it pretty easy for rough pre-visulising For all the word fans: I understand using word over indesign tho. I did it one because for the sake of it indesign didn't allow the footnotes how they were supposed to be and the linking of layer styles didn't work either. When you know what you're doing, word is great to format BUT there it's prone to do stuff and make mistakes that make no sense (empty pages and stuff) so if you hate indesign, but have access to it, make the previsualisation in word and rebuild it in indesign. NEVER do it the other way round. Trust me you don't want that. And if you have many images in your book, don't do it in word. Never. I had to do things like that at one point or another, but trust me, it's not save and hella lot of work and the pics get pixelated and what not. So pre-vis in word, export formatting in indesign. I feel you if you hate ID. I did to, but you get used to it!

[@MandiLynnWrites]

Thanks for sharing! When I tried the feature last it didn’t work well, but it sounds like they maybe made some updates since then to improve the paragraph styles feature!

[@thebookcorner1072]

I used MS Word for my first book. They have a template for book Mansripts. It was a lot easier than what you use.

[@chilijordan8524]

What’s the template name on word because I’ve tried adobe indesign and it just pissed me off lol

[@mlbullbooks]

Although Microsoft Word is more of a word processor, I rather use Word with professional book templates, if I’m going to do it myself. At least since doing a one-time purchase, I can use Word without doing monthly payments for the program, and with the professional book templates I get, I can use them as many times as I want after paying a one-time purchase for them. They have all kinds of designs on the website I use and make formatting in Word a lot easier rather than starting from scratch, or you could just type write in them and add the other formatting later (headers, page numbers, drop caps, etc.) There are also tutorials for how to do it on the site too for both Word and InDesign. Nonetheless, if I want to really ensure I have a professional-looking interior design for my books, I’d rather hire a pro designer for a one-time purchase job than pay monthly for a program I’ll only use once in a while, but that’s just me…lol.

[@phildiamond8549]

Mandy, you are right about MS Word being a nightmare to use (e.g. page numbering!), but Adobe software is soooooooo expensive to rent.

[@rocksreviewsreactions337]

That's one of the things holding us back from using Adobe, but it's hard also to put full page pictures in Word without the words spilling over into the picture page.

[@shiplesp]

Paragraph styles in the first few versions of Word behaved exactly as you describe. As long as you took the time to learn how to use them, and then actually applied them in formatting text, such changes were a breeze. Unfortunately subsequent upgrades seemed to erode that functionality as they tried to make paragraph styles more automatic. There are lots of things that I miss from the earlier versions of Word.

[@abc-ni5mi]

Hi Mandi, I found your channel a few months ago and I have been loving your content. Thank you for all the effort you have put into it. You have inspired me to make 2024 the year I write my first novel. I would have loved to buy your work books to get me started, but sadly you don't ship to Australia. Thanks again for you amazing content. Merry Christmas 💕🎄

[@Dafnstory]

If you know your way around MS Word, it is a perfectly good program for publishing. Personal preferences do not necessarily reflect the superiority of one program over another. Both have their pros and cons.

[@destresswithyoga]

Thank you for sharing ❤

[@viralprimenetwork]

Your video is so clear, informative, and inspiring. Thank you for the great video!🥰🥰

[@anggierw]

Thank you so much. I understand and agree that Adobe Indesign is better and more powerful. Just want to say though, for #5, Microsoft Word has Styles that can be created to control portions of your content automatically... not manually...similar to Indesign. You can also assign short-cut keys to styles to make it easier to apply formatting as you're working throughout the file. And if you need to change a style from one to another, you can use a global replace of the particular style. You don't have to manually do it section by section. I'm just starting in this process, so... I'll construct content in Word, import to InDesign...which keeps the styles I created, then format for the more professional structure for output as you recommend. I'm sharing because I hope those tips can help. Adobe software can be an investment.

[@nojeremy077]

Quick question : what page dimensions do you use so it fits kindle screen

[@michaellightenpublisher]

I learned a lot from your video. I wrote all of my books on Microsoft word, maybe there is time for a change.

[@philosophicsblog]

Not to be 'that guy', and I know you don't want to learn another programme, but all of the negatives you mentioned on Word are user errors that can be remediated with training. I've used Microsoft Word since the early-90s and for publishing it since the late-90s. The only thing I wouldn't use it for are books with high graphic content or full-bleed on internal content. As I don't have this particular need, I don't need anything more. I would use Adobe Indesign for those books should the need arise. To be fair, I format my interiors as a template in advance. If you want to learn about templates, Word knows how to treat things like first pages or sections, odd and even pages, and so on. For me, I format chapter headers to start on odd pages with a page break before.

[@Xrhstos--1999]

Dear Mandi Lynn, My name is Emily Lynn (yes Lynn is a very beautiful last name) and as a 60-year-old woman, I must admit that I loved your work with Meet Me at the Summit. It was a refreshing breath of fresh air for my otherwise dull existence. I, myself have taken an interest in writing as a form of confessing your deepest thoughts to a silent blank friend. That being said...I am not sure about whether this passion of mine is present in others as well. Would you mind telling me how many copies of your book have been sold (thus far😉) so that I can get a better grasp of the writing world? I see your videos on my computer and I must admit they fill me with courage. See ya! And thanks in advance.

[@ChristieOdendaal-mz5ng]

Some of those things you have mentioned is the overworked method to do it. There are easier ways to do those things in Microsoft Word, bit it falls under more complex and more advanced knowledge on how to use the software

[@Anonymuser0]

I've tried to learn InDesign but still don't get it...😔

[@JamesSedgwick-jp6hh]

Hi Mandi. I came up with a name for my publishing company and was wondering which sounds better after the name. Publishing, Press or Books?

[@kalidsherefuddin]

Thanks for

[@joeboddy3040]

Thank you.. very done... I too love Adobe.. but as a children's book illustrator I'v become proficient with Adobe Photoshop.. Since the book I want to publish is more of an "art" book with one or two lines of copy per spread.. I would like to design each spread with Photoshop.. Will that work for Kindle Direct?

[@MandiLynnWrites]

You can design the individual pages in Photoshop, but you'll need to combine everything into one PDF document when you upload.

[@QuinnBuckland]

Is there a cost effective way that isn't Word? InDesign is amazing, but I can't justify an Adobe subscription as the only reason I'd need it is for publishing purposes.

[@DamnItDylan]

Atticus works for simple formatting needs. 1 time payment.

[@davidcarlossalaverry9386]

Affinity Publisher comes bundled w Photo and Design, $100 one time purchase on Christmas sale. Better than Adobe by far. Lots of KZbin tuts.

[@abstruselouche]

Affinity Publisher is a one-time payment of $70, that might be an option. I haven't tried it, so I can't offer an opinion.

[@rocksreviewsreactions337]

The problem we have in Word is getting a page to have a full picture, like some of the classic literature books have. For some reason, we really can't get it to format one picture alone that can fill up a page. Sometimes the words appear above or below the picture so we just push them out of the page with a spacebar, which messes up the pages sometimes. Can you have full page pictures on Word or do you have to use another program? If anyone has any ideas how to do it easier, we would appreciate the help. 🤔

[@MandiLynnWrites]

Word isn't great when working with images. If someone has tips on how to do a full page image in Word, hopefully they'll respond with a comment, but I use InDesign for full page images all the time. Atticus and Vellum I beleive also allow you to do full page images.

[@rocksreviewsreactions337]

​@@MandiLynnWrites Yeah, we tried looking for videos on how to full page images, but all the videos only have how to do background or partial images. It seems Word can't do them well and from experience, it's a pain to try to get them right. Might have to use those other programs. Thanks for the response!

[@LisaMarieFord]

I would never use Word to format the interior of a book. Word loves to edit my work and changes it constantly. I gave up on it, especially when I sorta figured out Pages when I bought a Mac and then an iPad. I didn’t at first, having all of our families poems and stories in Word, but then I switched. For umpteen years of using the software it would “eat” poems and stories. No joke, I’d type up and save the file, even do edits and save, only for it to lose part of the text or all of it or alter the text. For all of that time, even if I go access the file now on an old computer, a few poems of my dad’s it will change the same words. In particular “Wings” is changed to “Kings” and in a Christmas poem where he says “King of Kings” it always changes it to “Wings of Kings”. This is without autocorrect being on and on multiple devices that were not connected. Even if I started a new file on a new PC and manually typed in the poem with autocorrect off it changes it. It somehow did this malarkey during save. The only way we could get an “original” file unaltered was to export to PDF. I tried formatting our poems and short stories books and it was useless. Ended up exporting as PDFs and putting them together, but that wouldn’t work for a full book. Paragraph styles are also finicky and in my experience don’t stick. No matter how many times I would set the paragraph style it could reset at anytime to choose something else. And the hidden formatting codes are also what makes exports or previews look odd. When they were going to switch to requiring everything in Word be connected to Microsoft and saved in their server is when I gave up. I want my works to remain my works and use offline. I don’t know if that is still the case, but I’ve since switched over to typing in Pages on a daily basis. When the time comes for formatting I will most likely get a month subscription for InDesign when I need it. I already use Photoshop for all my picture and coloring books and covers. Second choice would be Vellum, although that is more cost upfront. Throughout the years the books with excessive typos where a similar word is used and just one letter is changed I have wondered if Word was used to format that book. Especially when the interior images are wonky and the formatting goes awry.

[@unclederrick9666]

I agree. I have a finished book..non fiction with ToC and index. The Toc had to be manually edited cause of H1 and H2 problems...these edits did not convert well to a PDF or epub. Plus the book layout sucks. There isn't one. I set page size to 6x9. Your left page is the right side of book and the right page is the back of that one. The old Microsoft works was way way better...but they stop making it. It had templates for books and calendars and so much. Page numbers didn't convert. The roman numerals turned into numbers. Fonts didn't work. But I want to buy a program or use a free one. I do not want to subscribe to anything Adobe. I love my coreldraw pro suite. My turbocad. I can even create fonts with Corel. I'm sure Adobe products are good...the only one I really need is acrobat for PDF. Help me find an Adobe alternate. Some say scribus. Others say Microsoft something another publish.

[@ProgressingImperfectly]

I formatted Writing Your Story With God in Word. Mostly this is because of styles. I wrote the study in Word and was using styles as I went. After three attempts to paste it into Adobe Indesign, I gave up, because the styles kept getting messed up. When I write novels, I will probably give In Design another try. It isn't idea for writing and, since WYSWG is a Bible Study, there were a LOT of styles already in use before trying to make the move to In Design. There is a way to map styles when importing but it kept messing up and I had a tight timeline, since I wanted to publish before NaNoWriMo, so I gave up. Ultimately it depends on a lot of different factors, and I be that with more Adobe expereince it's probably easier. But my book and it's companion journal turned out awesome and I did it in Word. So it is possible if Adobe isn't in your budget. The way images would move between pages did get annoying! But I was able to work with it and the end result was very nice.

[@MandiLynnWrites]

For InDesign, you don't want to paste in Word documents, you want to use the "place" feature. If you give it another shot some time in the future, I hope that helps! But yes, it's definitely possible to do all the formatting in Word, just requires a bit more patience in my opinion.

[@jayegan2640]

What do you charge to change a formatted book in word into what Amazon needs to publish a book?

[@davidcarlossalaverry9386]

Mandi is wrong and Word *does* do paragraph formatting through style templates. However, styles and templates are EXTREMELY non intuitive and there are few good KZbin or web resources. I pulled out fistfuls of hair diving deep into complex Word 365 menu trees to find solutions. And the software is buggy even when you half solve the problems. So I purchased Affinity Publisher, with Photo and Design as a suite for $100 one time cost, no ridiculous $$$ Adobe monthly fees. And Affinity is BETTER than Adobe programs. Also, who wants to train Gates’ AI on hard efforts of writers? Agree w that 100%!

[@StevenSheltonAuthor]

You're wrong about Word. It has styles and makes automatic changes throughout the document.

[@user-bx9xd1xl6n]

What’s the best software to use with writing e-books?

[@MandiLynnWrites]

For writing ebook, you can use Word. For formatting ebooks, there's a ton of options. If it's a simple ebook, you can take your Word doc and upload it to Draft2Digital and they'll actually format the book for you. I talk about it in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fHu4nppoiJtqd6s

[@user-bx9xd1xl6n]

@@MandiLynnWrites thank you!!

[@momo_genX]

I will never use word because they can look at my work and every single edit I make as well. I am not going to train Microsoft's Open AI to write or edit.

[@LisaMarieFord]

This!!!

[@abc-ni5mi]

When I got my current laptop I had to dig to find a version of Microsoft Office that wasn't subscription based so I could do a once off payment and block cookies and trackers etc. That was a few years ago now, so I wouldn't be surprised if they have made it impossible since then!

[@alexwholey3391]

I don’t use Word for Formatting because it loves to delete my MS! I use Vellum.

[@LisaMarieFord]

I loathe Word’s malarkey with deleting entire files or pieces of text, or altering it. It’s so frustrating.

[@rocksreviewsreactions337]

Word does that!? Geesh, better get the recent copy of our book saved to a stick!

[@webgrafik]

But Indesign is much more expensive. It's just the reason for the differences. And not everyone can afford so this video is for people with money...

[@LisaMarieFord]

Both require money. Microsoft Word has either a one time fee or a subscription ($70/year or $7 per month + taxes). Adobe InDesign can be a monthly subscription only too if you don’t want to do a year, so you only buy a subscription for the month you need it, at $23/month or less if you get discounts or sales. The reason for the difference is because many PCs already come with Word because the license is figured into the cost of the device as manufacturers get a MAJOR discount for including it with their systems; thus requiring their systems to be compatible with Microsoft and keeping Microsoft in business. And with the last few iterations you are required to have a Microsoft accounts. If you use the web based “Free” version you run into a lot of issues, including everything being lost or a potential theft. Since a lot of PC buyers are already familiar with Word since it’s on their computer they just use it or hire out the formatting. BUT like Mandi said for the extra cost of the fee for the month you will save time and frustration, if you want to do it yourself, by going with the program specifically designed for book formatting. Word is a word processor.

[@BabeiIlie]

I use only KZbin from google that's it.

[@webgrafik]

And what are you talking about Word having no paragraph styles? It has, and you can make instant changes to all your styles! If you have one style called Fancy Italic, you change the line spacing in the style modifying section and for the entire document it changes magically, tadam! 😂😂😂😂 Easy! No need for manual changing and selecting😂😂😂😂

[@MandiLynnWrites]

I’ve found their paragraph style feature doesn’t work well in my experience so I gave up on it

[@LisaMarieFord]

In my experience as well, paragraph styles do not stay no matter how you format them. I’ve set them up and gone back into a file using them for it to go with something else.

[@CharlesBudde-vx6vi]

The #1 reason to stop using Word entirely is that Microsoft, (or whoever it is they have handed it off to) has destroyed the application. Word is NO LONGER a usable product, let alone a wordprocessor or anything else useful for that matter. Word went away. It was eaten by witless changes and trash 'extras'. Word, no longer exists in a usable form.

[@KatisWritingStill]

I hate word its like living in the dark ages when you have Terminator next to you. Why torment yourself like that.