Self-Publishing: Basic Fiction Formatting for Smashwords in OpenOffice (Part 2: Steps 5 - 7)

In this post last week, I showed you how to get your OpenOffice text document ready for formatting. It has just now occurred to me one crucial detail I forgot to mention: When you save your file, use file extension .doc because that's the only extension Smashwords will accept.

Sorry about that. After I started formatting for Smashwords regularly, I just saved all of my text documents with the Word extension. I completely forgot that this guide is for those of you who aren't doing this regularly just yet.

Anyway, moving on. Today we're going to learn how to choose our paragraph separation method and then apply that to the text body.

You have two choices for separating your paragraphs: first line indent and block paragraph. Pick one.

In the Smashwords Style Guide, Mark Coker explains that his guide is formatted using the block paragraph method (paragraphs look like blog post paragraphs) which is "common for some non-fiction." If you're formatting a non-fiction work, especially if it has photos, and you're using block paragraph... these aren't the posts you're looking for. I've never tried formatting with block paragraphs and all of my attempts at including photos in my books haven't exactly been successful. As soon as I figure it out, expect to see a post or more on the subject. Until then, I refer you back to the Smashwords Style Guide and suggest you implement the spirit of the instructions.

First line indent is the type of paragraph separation you're probably most familiar with. Pick up any fiction book nearby and you'll see paragraphs arranged on the page without any spaces between them, just a little indent at the beginning of the first line. In school, you were probably taught to create that indent with a tab. No. Tabs are bad. Very, very bad. If you have them in your document, get rid of them now. Go ahead. I'll wait.

All done? Good. Let's get started. As before, click on any image below to enlarge.

Step 5: Default Formatting
Ctrl + A to select your text and then select "default" from the list of formatting options. This is going to normalize your text and make it easier for you to format without any surprises popping up.

This is what your default indents and spacing options should look like:

And this is what your default text options should look like:

Don't get fancy with your font choices. Stick with Times New Roman. Not only because it looks the most professional, but because the default choice will be easier for the different electronic readers to display and to convert when the e-reader has been hacked to the owner's preferences.

Step 6: Applying and Formatting First Line Indent
If you've never formatted paragraphs before, this step might be a bit cumbersome.

Step 6a: Select "More..." from the formatting menu

Step 6b: Select "first line indent" and left click; select "modify"

Step 6c: Verify indent measurements
Everything but first line should be 0. First line should be no more than 0.25" because of the different sizes of ereader screens. I like the 0.20" default setting. It looks nice and translates well to every reader I've used.

Step 6d: Verify spacing measurements
For some reason, my copy of OpenOffice defaults to 0.08" below paragraph. I haven't figured out how to change the default permanently yet, so I go in each time I use this paragraph style to change it. If you know how to make the settings permanent, please share!

It should be 0 like everything else.

Step 7: Click "OK"
Ta-da! Your paragraphs should look like this:

Next post: creating and formatting the copyright and title pages.