Things not to do in book design
You will be tempted by the dark side of self-design. You must resist.
Self-publishers can make their way to produce their paperbacks with their own labor. Amazon creates pages ready for printing a book by reading your Word styles. You paste in your text from Word file by file, chapter by chapter, and Amazon does the rest. You'll get a vanilla look, but at least it fits the page. Mis-handle the template and sometimes the book comes out with the pages on the wrong side. Amazon will keep trying until you get it right. Every correction delays your paperback.
IngramSpark will keep trying, too. The leader in Print on Demand uses an automatic formatting tool called the Interior Builder. Follow its instructions, including setting your styles in Word before you start, and you'll do alright. A good video leads the way.
A competent book designer could help you through the printing error messages that Ingram or Amazon will send when you attempt a printing of your book. If you're stubborn and devoted to learning book design, you can trial-and-error your way to a printed book. You might look for shortcuts; some involve things you should not use.
A free set of Word templates can lead you astray. Avoid these. Dave Chessen is a font of good resources, but his design-your-own templates only work to a point. Yes, the page numbers and the running heads across the tops of pages (book title, author name) are in the right places. Other things lack quality, though. Gutter margins are not generous, so your text will run into the gutter in the middle of the paperback. Your outside margins, where a reader puts their thumbs, are meager, too. The initial-cap drop letters only look professional in the sample text — not in your book's text that you've carefully placed on the template, one chapter at a time.
Ugh. Before you know it, you've spent hours and hours making your book look as good as the thousands that are for sale alongside yours. Avoid templates from anyone who's not printing your book. They're free, and they look like it, too.
Both Amazon and Ingram say they prefer a PDF file to print books. If you don't have a budget for a book designer, you've signed up to do the design yourself. My first novel was published upon the hours of my own designing, and I brought more than 20 years of publication layout to the task. I also had a printer's rep hold my hand — and eventually the printer's staff resolved the remaining problems.
You'll learn a lot while you skip the money for design. Those could be hours spent writing another book — or writing the Editorial Marketing copy that a self-publisher needs to get discovered. So much of a book's fate lies outside your control. Give your self-published book the launch that it deserves. You could invest significant time to learn these printers' tools, or get a book design from a pro. I recommend Asya Blue, who's made my authors happy.
Good advice! I hired a contractor on Upwork and he did it all. great time and hairline saver!