How To Format A Novel In Microsoft Word For Submitting To Agents And Publishers

[@IasminaEdina]

My debut novel, Hunting Vienna is coming out November 6th, 2024. PRE-ORDER here: books2read.com/huntingvienna or Read the first 2 chapters FOR FREE: iasminaedina.com/newsletter/ Hope you found this tutorial useful. Where are you in your writing journey? And please let me know what other tutorials you'd like to see from me. It can be anything writing/editing/publishing related, I'll do my best to make them 😊 NEW: How To Format A Book For Self-publishing: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a3rEfJRtYpV9Z68

[@malikkash5863]

instaBlaster.

[@Billytut]

Wow this video was exactly what I needed to know. And you’re right this information is difficult to find. You are unbelievably helpful!!!

[@IasminaEdina]

Thank you, I'm so glad it was helpful to you 😊

[@smoothkurdit7989]

Thank you so much Iasmina I am satisfied and I will remain your follower. may God bless you

[@trewaldo]

You're definitely a tech person when it comes to explaining how these things work. There are just 10 kinds of people in the world: one who can code and one who cannot. 😅 Great video, Iasmina! 🤓

[@2wolvesNI]

Thanks lasmina, found this really useful. Have you covered how dialogue is formatted in another video? Thanks again Derrick

[@davidschaeferofficial]

Best video I could find out there . Well done 👍

[@racyrowdyrocket]

yes, the others i've found makes it feel extremely complicated. this is the best one yet.

[@the_spoken_stallion]

I’m placing my newly finished book in manuscript form, and I’m having my heart set for an actual publishing company. This was very helpful. Any advice?

[@3shadows594]

This was seriously so helpful! I'm getting ready for a pitch war that is happening very soon online, and to find someone who explained how to format exactly, was difficult. So you made it very easy, and explained everything. So thank you so much 😊

[@IasminaEdina]

Good luck during pitch wars! Been there, it can be very exciting and then very stressful at the same time 😅

[@3shadows594]

@@IasminaEdina Thank you! It'll be my first pitch wars, and you're right, it's exciting and stressful at the same time 😅 Hoping on the day, it's not as insane as I've pictured it.

[@AK-xj2di]

You are an Angel,😇💕 this video is so clear, & easy to follow, thank you so much, for this. Happy New Year 🎉🎊

[@IasminaEdina]

Glad it helped! 😊Happy New year 🎉

[@AK-xj2di]

@@IasminaEdina I'm working on children series, I'm happy to share the 1st 10 pages with you for your opinion, before I send them off to the literary agents.

[@platoniczombie]

Thank you so much for this! Thank you thank you thank you.

[@SsSs-kq3wj]

Thank you so much for this useful information....do I need to be very expert in MS word first to make my manuscript ready ?

[@danielbibby4371]

I watched this like a year ago and set up my very first manuscript. Yesterday, I finished the first draft of my novel and am very much looking forward to editing! Thank you, Iasmina! X

[@Charles73358]

Thanks for a great video for beginners 🙂

[@ravisinghmewada7403]

Great info.. thanks

[@davidlynch8255]

Great video thank you

[@renwrites13]

If they only want the first three chapters, is there a different way to format? Do I include the acnkowledgements and stuff in the beginning or do I just put tile page and get right into it?

[@mr.anderson7631]

Great content. I subscribed :)

[@becklebooks]

It would be the page numbering that'd get me. :P I now understand how to un-link the pages so, thank you! I used to know like five years ago cos I needed to do it for the document that I wrote my literary thesis in. Haven't had to think about that for years so naturally I forgot. Thank you!

[@trisha1237]

Thank you you made it look pretty easy, I'll have a go!

[@reubenshuppHorrorAuthor]

This was very helpful. Do you have any videos for writing a query letter format? paragraph one, two, ...I would be extremely grateful.

[@ScullyPop]

This is a great video about formatting.

[@aishwaryanandedkar7174]

Loved this video ♥️

[@johndent9737]

Thank God for writers good at tech. Thank you.

[@Charles73358]

Hello how are you just wanted to let you know that I learned from your video on how to format a manuscript and I submitted my manuscript to five publishers and my book was accepted from all five publishers so thanks for being a great teacher. 😀 I have one question though do you have any step by step advice on how to be prepared to answer certain questions in an Authors first time book promotion interview 🤔

[@garygordon363]

Very easy kudos to you.

[@SamanthaSinger]

Thanks. It was surprisingly hard to find the basic layout for a manuscript and you covered it all nice and quickly :). This info is for my partner and where is he on his writing journey? Well, forty years after he decided he wanted to write a novel he thinks he might actually start soon :). His problem is that he can write very well in many styles. However he is not very imaginative with stories and characters. Give him a character and plot and he'll write well but ask him to dream something up himself and he struggles. bit of a problem for a writer :).

[@IasminaEdina]

Really glad it was helpful! 😊 And good luck to your partner, starting is the hardest part, followed closely by actually finishing that first draft 😅

[@sriranjit3684]

Really helpful

[@Sharoina]

Hi How do you do the heading without it affecting the body of the script

[@BigTex347]

Hello Lasmina - I need a little guidance and maybe you can be of some help. I have spent 3 years doing research on a 1920s steamship that had a peacetime and war-time life. I have lots of pictures and maps that I want to include throughout my book. My question is this: How do I just write a manuscript (text only) without the corresponding pictures? I have a publisher that is interested in my work. I reached out to them and I got the following response from them today: "Your book project sounds intriguing. Do you have a sample and/or table of contents available?" So, what should I send them? I have a table of contents, but is there a particular way in which the table of contents should be formatted? Any help you can give me would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[@twinkalyadav1167]

MS word is my all time favourite and I always use it. And I'd love to see if you make a video tutorial on how you align different layers of a story together to make it perfect. And of course, you've a lot of experience on it, you should probably show us your expert-tips.

[@BloodDrippnFlowers]

❤Ty so helpful now I don't need templates

[@dr.sky.brainstream]

if you have a microsoft-word or google-docs layout preformatted I can reuse , kindly help me out please?

[@rwilson9814]

Great video! Thanks

[@mustafanurseha275]

Good. Now, I'm understand, thanks~~

[@candicemaldonado4507]

Thank you

[@Ozkar7avo164]

Hello can you make a video about essays and the best software to editing it, thanks

[@mikeharleman]

Thank you so much. I know so little about the publishing process, and I was using a template by Microsoft. Their focus is on fancy template design not usability. If I had submitted my manuscript to a publisher in the form they designed I was told by my NaNoWriMo compatriots that it would be rejected.

[@timothybrown6262]

Do you format audio books ?

[@theintrovertedaspie9095]

I don't have link to previous button. I tried doing that 1 inch margin thing but my spacing looks way to big.

[@aishwarya5941]

Can anyone tell me when agents ask 10 pages, so is it 10 pages before or after the double space because it changes the page numbers?

[@nestormaiz7393]

For the text on the Title Page, go to the Layout tab>Page Setup>Layout and on the page section: Vertical Alignment select center on the drop-down. This will make sure that the text will start at the exact center of the page. Then you can finish by center align your text on the Home tab>Paragraph. This will avoid issues with your text later due to extra returns. 😊 It is also a good habit to always show the formatting symbols on the page while you work with the document as it helps to minimize formatting issues later.

[@dianahochberg8617]

I am following your tutorial and I am confuse about spacing before and after. Should they both be Zero ? I have the line spacing as double. Please advise?

[@IasminaEdina]

Which spacing do you mean?

[@dianahochberg8617]

@@IasminaEdina when you open up paragraph in word. You first have indent and spacing title. General which for alignment I put left outline level I put body type. indentation left not sure what to do I put (0) right (0) special first time by i out 0.5 Next reads spacing before and after I do not understand what I am to put. Line spacing I put double . AT what do i put? thank you so much I appreciate your time. Your video helped alot but word is slighlty frustrating. Also it continually switches and removes what i set up. Should I set as default?

[@IasminaEdina]

@@dianahochberg8617 ah, I think I understand. You don't need to change the Left and Right inputs on Indentation or Spacing, only where it says Special. For Indentation choose First Line and 0,5 inches and for Spacing choose Double. That's all you need, leave the Left/Right, Before/After blank or 0, it doesn't matter. Hope this helps 😊

[@dianahochberg8617]

@@IasminaEdina Good, I got it, thank you so much for your speedy reply. You are the best. Have a great week.

[@newtrackrecord]

@@IasminaEdina Thanks for this great video. One question. If all first lines are set to indent by one inch this will surely affect all the new/first lines given to indicate a characters speech?

[@ffstopP]

Helpful.

[@platoniczombie]

One question. What happens if you have a poem within the story. And it plays with word size and placement. Do you still double space it and keep it 12pt?

[@IasminaEdina]

Good question. I would say keep it as safe as possible by following the other conventions while making it understood that it is a poem and a different media within the novel. I wouldn't play with the word size, you can always make that change after the agent/publisher has read and liked your submission, but I would imagine it being jarring on a first read through.

[@platoniczombie]

@@IasminaEdina gotcha! Thank you.

[@Sharoina]

Hi do you double space a poetry book?

[@cwfcwfcwf]

Unbelievable timing. I'm uploading my novels to KDP right now. I took a break from formating and this video popped up. Now what I have learned is if you are self-publishing, it will need to look a bit different. You will want it to look like what you want your inside novel to look like. Single spacing, no phone number, etc. I also found out that Word is the 900 pound bully in the room. If it is not done on Word, you're going to suffer. I used Open Office and KDP will not accept that format so everything had to be transformed into Word. It was a total nightmare until I finally found a KDP technician that had more than 3 active brain cells. He took me deep into advanced Word and showed me how to set up a page and then everything clicked together.

[@IasminaEdina]

Yes, it’s totally different if you want to format for print. I personally use and love Vellum to do that, I find that Word is too much of a hassle for that type of formatting.

[@cwfcwfcwf]

@@IasminaEdina Word is a hassle but once you understand it and its relationship with KDP then it becomes usable. :)

[@rickcrispo413]

Wouldn't you want to use a MS Word Style for the chapters so that they numerate automatically?

[@Mar-nu8so]

I thought the first line of a chapter shouldn't be indented only the following ones?

[@joelaba6338]

Nice video but how about the gutter?

[@elsieschmaltz6754]

Good.

[@theintrovertedaspie9095]

actually I have link to previous button, but I can click on it for some reason.

[@theintrovertedaspie9095]

Never mind Lasmina, I figured it out.

[@mikeylorene]

You should go into "here" and select... go into where? How did you make that text on the first page go up and down without clicking on anything? Once you said "you should already know that"... sorry, but beginners DON'T know, Even when I slowed this down and stopped, I still could not tell WHERE you were clicking to get to anything. I'm still lost.

[@DataCenterExperts]

I couldn't understand most of your talk! cuz you those eyes, you are so beautiful, I had to keep rewinding and listening again lol , so question, what is the best free / cheap formatting solution to have a professional look for the book?

[@510tuber]

keep it in your pants. Jesus...

[@theintrovertedaspie9095]

im gonna self publish.

[@Homerlion]

are u brazilian?

[@IasminaEdina]

Nope. I am from Romania but I currently live in Denmark 😄

[@abbassayed4338]

First

[@skabettispaghetti5451]

There is no chapter break that I can find. it looks like you put in a page break, correct? Also, you move very fast. Please slow down a bit.

[@jamesdunning8650]

Spanish Irish?

[@timothybrown6262]

Do you format audio books ?

[@IasminaEdina]

No, you would give a formatted manuscript to an audiobook narrator who would read and produce the audiobook.

[@timothybrown6262]

Do you do audio manuscript?

[@timothybrown6262]

I'm going to narrate my own audio book.