Preparing your manuscript

Pressetter is built for books as people really write them, so there isn’t much to do. This page explains how it reads your Google Doc, what it builds for you, what it leaves out, and the few things worth fixing before you export.

Pressetter never changes your document. It reads it, and saves the finished PDF and EPUB as new files in your Google Drive. There’s nothing to undo afterwards.

Chapters and parts

Pressetter finds your chapters from their headings. Select a chapter title and choose Heading 1 in the paragraph style menu (or Format › Paragraph styles). Each chapter then starts on a new right-hand page, labeled and styled the way your chosen book style sets chapters.

• Heading 2 works too. Pressetter uses the highest heading level that appears at least twice. If your book title is in Heading 1 and your chapters are in Heading 2, it reads them correctly and uses that first heading as the title.
• Typed chapter titles are found. A line in normal text like “Chapter 7”, “Chapter Seven” or “Part Two” starts a new chapter or part. The check points these out, because styling them as headings is more reliable.
• Numbers and titles are separated. Headings like “Chapter 3: The Storm”, “3. The Storm” or just “3” are understood. A “Chapter One” heading followed straight away by a heading one level smaller uses that smaller heading as the chapter’s title.
• Chapter labels are your choice. If your headings are just titles (“The Storm”), Pressetter numbers them for you: pick “Chapter One”, “Chapter 1” or no label under Layout › Chapter labels. If your headings already say “Chapter 3”, your wording is kept.
• Parts get their own page. A “Part One” heading, or a heading one level above your chapters after the book title, becomes a part page.
• Smaller headings stay inside the chapter as subheadings.
• A heading with nothing under it is left out, and the check lists it.

Title page, copyright page and dedication

Most manuscripts start with a typed title page, a copyright notice and maybe a dedication. Pressetter leaves out everything before your first chapter heading, and the check tells you how many paragraphs that is. It then builds these pages properly, from the Book details tab:

• Title page: your title, subtitle and author name.
• Copyright page: a standard notice made from your author name, year, publisher, ISBN and edition line. If you want your own wording (permissions, a disclaimer, credits), paste it into Custom copyright page.
• Dedication: whatever you put in the Dedication box, on its own page.

Copy your dedication and any custom copyright text into Book details before you export, or they won’t appear. Book details fills in your title for you: from a line styled as Title, or a heading above your chapter headings at the top of the document, or else the document’s name. What you type in Book details always wins.

Table of contents

If your Google Doc has a table of contents (Insert › Table of contents), Pressetter skips it. Its page numbers belong to Google Docs’ pages, not your printed book’s. To get a contents page with the right page numbers, turn on Table of contents with page numbers in the Layout tab. Many novels don’t have one, so it’s off unless you choose it.

A contents list you typed yourself (“Chapter 1: The Storm”, “Chapter 2: The Flood”…) is recognized and left out too, so those lines don’t turn into empty chapters.

Front and back matter

Pressetter recognizes these sections by their heading and sets them without a chapter number. Give each one its own heading, in the same style as your chapters.

Before Chapter 1

• Prologue
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• A note to the reader
• Epigraph
• Praise for…
• Cast of characters
• Dramatis personae
• Map
• Timeline
• Family tree
• Pronunciation guide

Any of the back-matter names below also count as front matter when they come before Chapter 1, so acknowledgments or an author’s note at the front of your book stay there. A heading with another name before your first chapter is read as a chapter, so check the free preview if you use one.

A section headed Contents, Table of contents, Dedication or Copyright before Chapter 1 is left out, because Pressetter builds those pages. The check lists any it leaves out.

After the last chapter

• Epilogue
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• Author’s note
• About the author
• Also by
• Glossary
• Notes and endnotes
• Appendix
• Bibliography and references
• Further reading
• Sources and works cited
• Resources
• Index
• Credits and permissions

Once the back matter starts, later headings are treated as back matter too, unless they say “Chapter” and a number.

Text and formatting

Kept from your document

• Italic, bold, underline and superscript.
• Links, which work in the Kindle eBook.
• Footnotes (Insert › Footnote), which stay footnotes in print and in the eBook.
• Bulleted and numbered lists.
• Centered and right-aligned paragraphs, useful for epigraphs, letters and signatures.

Set by your book style instead

Fonts, font sizes, colors, highlighting, line spacing, paragraph spacing, and your document’s page size, margins, headers, footers and page numbers. Pressetter replaces all of these with the style, font and size you pick in Layout, so you don’t need to tidy them.

Cleaned up for you

• Blank lines used for spacing are removed.
• Tab and space indents are removed; paragraph indents are added automatically, the way books set them.
• Manual page breaks are ignored, because every chapter starts on a new page.
• Straight quotes become curly quotes, -- becomes a dash, ... becomes an ellipsis, and double spaces become single. To leave your text exactly as typed, turn off Fix quotes, dashes and ellipses in Layout. The Dashes setting chooses closed (word—word) or spaced (word – word) dashes.
• Scene breaks: a line containing only * * *, #, ~ or similar symbols, or a horizontal line (Insert › Horizontal line), becomes a scene break in the ornament you choose under Layout › Scene break.

Two things to watch

• A short line that’s entirely bold, with no punctuation at the end, is read as a subheading. If you bold a whole line for emphasis, end it with punctuation or make only part of it bold.
• Line breaks inside a paragraph (Shift+Enter) become spaces. For poems, song verses or addresses where each line must stay on its own line, press Enter at the end of each line instead.

Images

• Set every image to “In line”. Click the image and choose In line in the toolbar that appears under it. Images set to “Wrap text” or “Break text” are left out, and the check tells you how many.
• Size is kept. An image half as wide as your Google Doc’s text is printed half as wide as your book’s text.
• Use high-resolution images. Print needs 300 dots per inch at the printed size, and the check warns about any image below that. An image that fills the text width of a 6″ × 9″ book needs about 1,425 pixels across.
• Add alt text (right-click the image, then Alt text) and it’s carried into the Kindle eBook for readers who use screen readers.

Tables

Tables aren’t supported yet, so they’re left out. Turn a table into ordinary paragraphs or a list, or insert it as a high-resolution picture. A heading with only a table under it is left out too.

Tabs, comments and suggested edits

• Keep your whole book in one tab. If your document uses Google Docs tabs, Pressetter reads only the first one.
• Comments never appear in your book.
• Accept or reject suggested edits before you export, so the text in your book is the text you decided on.

Then run the check

Open Pressetter from Extensions › Pressetter › Open Pressetter and click Check. It counts your words and chapters, estimates your page count, and lists what it found in three groups: what needs fixing, what you should look at, and what it cleans up for you. The check is free and runs inside Google Docs; your manuscript isn’t sent anywhere. When it looks right, export the free preview and page through the whole book before you buy.

Questions