If you hire someone to typeset your work, the easier you make the job, the happier your typesetter will be. If you take a few extra minutes to be sure you’ve given the typesetter all the information he or she will need, you’ll find that many typesetters will welcome more work from you, and may give you a discount (I certainly would), on the work you request.*

This is the basic progression of events: You send the typesetter your manuscript, describe your trim size, and let the typesetter know if your printer accepts spreads or single pages. If your printer will print spreads, that means the interior margin can be wider than the exterior margin, making it easier to read the book when it’s open without sacrificing too much space on the outside margin. If your printer only accepts singles, the margins must be the same size on both the left and the right.

Your typesetter sets up the master(s) in InDesign (or some other layout software. Layout can be done in Word or Open Office, but the fine-grained controls aren’t there and it’s much harder to get a truly professional look.) The master is the design template. Depending on the type of manuscript, there may be two or many more masters. For an anthology where the authors’ names and titles have to appear on each page of each individual story, there are often twice as many masters as there are authors/stories.
[Read more →]