Is this MS Word OK??

[rwb1242]

Greetings Folks, I want to start my book today. I find I have somewhat older software (MS Word 2002) and I'm hoping that it will be sufficient for final conversiion to an epub book via lulu.
Do I save my product as a "word doc" or an "rtf" file or whatever???

Many Thanks,

rwb

[Ken Anderson]

You can use any version of Word.
I suggest that you save as a .doc not .docx.
The converter will handle that nicely.
Make sure you download and read the tutorial.
Then read it again.

[rwb1242]

Greetings Ken, OK & tnx again, I've now made some progress. I'm now wondering abt the cover page image.

I've found an appropriate "clip art" image and wonder if the many clip art formates are acceptable?  

Does anyone have knowledge of this?

Thanks Again,

rwb

[kevinlomas]

I use .docx OK, and to be honest I cannot see any difference in that and doc! It works fine.

[deadbeat-charles]

My questions might be found in the tutorial but here goes:

Which software is best to use? I hate MS Word, so is there a better alternative?

What is the best format to use while composing a print book please?

Margins, font size, paragraph indents, etc.

I used Garamond for the font last book: which font size is recommended please - is 11-12 acceptable?

I did a search first, looking for answers. 

Just a suggestion: put a sticky on the forum, if there already isn't one, that covers some of these basics for the most common questions for common book size - say 6x9, etc.

Thanks

[Ken Anderson]

This board is for eBooks. Is your questions for eBooks or printed copy?

[kevinlomas]

Does anyone have any idea why the forum is split in to sections and why it is also possible to create a New thread all of your very own in them? I just wondered ...

[Ken Anderson]

That's a very good question.

[deadbeat-charles]

My question is for a printed book, but really, does it make a difference?

All formatted text gets turned into an PDF which is then the ebook, doesn't it?

Like I said, I tried a search w.out luck.

This looked like the most logical place, as I don't see any particular forum for printed books. 

The General Discussion forum has about a thousand single threads, which could probably be posted under a dozen or so sub-forums instead.

Is there a FAQs? Don't see one. EVERY site like this site should have a FAQs.

Anyway, difficult at Lulu to find answers.

Still don't know the answer.

What is the best software, page margins, paragraph style,  font, size etc for a 6x9  printed book?

Anyone have any idea?

[Peter May]

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deadbeat-charles wrote:

What is the best software, page margins, paragraph style,  font, size etc for a 6x9  printed book?

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Software - anything that produces text. Any common wordprocessor is fine

page margins - go to home page, scroll down and you'll see you can download a template for a 6x9 book. But basically if it has half-inch margins all round it'll be OK.

paragarph style - that's your choice, nothing to do with Lulu - they'll print whatever you send.

For a normal book, fiction/non fiction, no spaces between para's, use indent.at start of each para. 

Look at some commercially published books of the sort you want to produce and that is what your book should look like.