The Hidden Costs of Cutting Corners: Why Serious Indie Authors Should Avoid Cheap DIY Templates
You’ve spent months, perhaps years, pouring your heart into your manuscript. Now, you’re preparing to make the dream of publishing your book a reality, but first you need to turn your manuscript into a market-ready product.
You’re not sure where to start, so you search online and voilà: you stumble on a flashy ad that promises to format your manuscript in five minutes using a “free, automated template.” It sounds like the perfect way to save a few bucks and get your book across the finish line, right?
Wrong.
Professional design is necessary for any serious author. Templates just don’t cut it. Here’s why.
File Setup Flaws: Why Free Book Templates Often Lead to Printer File Rejections
Each printer has specific file requirements that must be met in order for the files to be accepted and print properly. In general, cheap/free templates alone are not enough to ensure the final output will be acceptable to a printer such as IngramSpark or KDP. Among other things, an expert knows what resolution and color profile are needed and can ensure files are embedded with the correct fonts, guarantee proper bleed, and export files in the correct PDF format required by your printer.
Authors who go the DIY route often find themselves stuck in a never-ending cycle of frustrating file rejections and error messages. Authors who choose to ignore the error messages (if given the choice) can usually expect to find drastic text or image misalignment, muddy photos, and other issues that can only be corrected by uploading new files.
Pro Tip: Issues often occur because of problems with files. Other times, however, the issue is on the printer’s end. If your files were professionally produced according to the printer’s requirements and the book still prints incorrectly, you should contact the printer for assistance.
The “Self-Published” Look: How DIY Templates Can Tank Sales
Even if you’re “fortunate” enough that your template-generated files do scrape by at the printers, you’d only be doing your readers, and yourself, a disservice.
A template doesn’t truly design a book; it just dumps your text into a rigid digital mold. There is no human intuition, no finesse. The template won’t know how to fix widows and orphans (dangling words at the top or bottom of a page), adjust kerning (letter spacing) and leading (line spacing) to optimize the presentation, select fonts that pair well with your cover design and work for your genre, craft custom chapter headers, place your images in a way that complements the text, clean up your figures or tables, or take care of the numerous other concerns an expert, human typesetter would.
Technical issues aside, templates don’t collaborate! There’s no back and forth between the designer and author about how to style the text so that the reader’s first impression is a “special” book, instead of a generic product that looks little better than a Word file.
Professional book interior design is an art form that, in many ways, is largely invisible when done right. When an author uses a generic template, readers notice—even if they don’t know the technical terms for why. An unpolished interior layout disrupts the reading experience and screams “amateur,” often leading to poor reviews that can hinder future sales.
This lack of human touch applies to cover design, too. Don’t even get us started on DIY cover templates. It’s great to self-publish, but it isn’t great to LOOK self-published. Your cover is the first impression your book will make on potential customers. If it doesn’t stack up against the bestsellers, no one will even bother clicking.
Publish Like the Pros™: Why Custom Book Design Is an Investment in Your Success
If you want to Publish Like the Pros™, your files need to be prepared by pros. No cutting corners—not if you wish to try to turn a profit with your book.
True design requires an expert touch. You deserve top-notch design and high-quality files that will pass strict pre-media printing checks on the first try and deliver the seamless reading experience customers expect.
Don’t let a cheap template tank your chance of success. Contact us today for more information about how we can help take your book to the next level.
In case you missed it…
Beyond Amazon: The Indie Author’s Guide to Using IngramSpark to “Go Wide”
Here’s how you can maximize your book’s global reach by taking advantage of IngramSpark’s expanded distribution network.
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Learn how to think like a publisher! Here, we’ll dive into the cover and interior design processes necessary to help ensure your book aligns with quality traditional publishers.
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