If you're an author, you need to have a professional format your book

I was reading a book that someone shared with me recently, and I was shocked at the lack of proper formatting. It was extremely difficult to read. To the point where I was skipping pages and pages of information just because of the formatting.

Your book needs to be professionally formatted if you're doing a self-published book. Period.

But that doesn't appeal to a lot of people. Pay money? Ridiculous.

I have the same thoughts.

What? But this is about having your book professionally formatted! you say. And it is. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to pay money.

Let me explain: there are people who help you format your book (for free) without realizing it. If you're any good at figuring things out, here are some links you can look at to see how you need to format your book to make it look awesome.

First one - this page has some really good tips and hints about what you should think about when formatting your own book. No examples, just questions you should ask. A great resource!

Second one - this page has fantastically wonderful examples for formatting. Look over it. Even I got some great ideas, and I thought I was already done with my formatting!

Third one - this page is a fantastic resource for page formatting. It only shows you Kindle formatting, but you can use it for print as well. This is where I got the first ideas for the way my own book is formatted. Check it out!

Fourth one - this page has several good options.

Hope that helped! I looked for others for a really long time, but either they weren't any good or they were downloads, not images, or something else was wrong. So this is all I could find. If you're any good at figuring things out, play the "copy others who really know what they're doing" game. If not, you should really pay a professional to do it. Seriously.

And if you're looking for cover inspiration, this is an excellent resource. Check it out if you're looking for inspiration for a book cover.

That's it for this time! Thanks.

P.S. if you are doing your book in print, use the CreateSpace template creator (this page). Even if you're not going to use CreateSpace, use it. It's really handy. At the bottom of the page, you will see a list of links that you can download for MS Word. 

There are two options for each: Download blank word template, and Download blank template with sample formatted content. Click on the second option of the size you want. It helps a lot.