Write a bestselling novel using Microsoft Office Word!

They say that everyone has a good book in them, and while that may or may not be true, it’s certainly the case that anyone can put it to the test. Basically, you upload a manuscript to a site like Lulu, and books are only printed off in the quantities ordered – leaving you with just royalties from every sale.

Submitting a manuscript using Office Word 2007 is easy. The set-up tools make sure that you’re working to the right page size, while the Styles ensure consistency throughout the book.

1. Stylish

The Styles panel is your best friend while both typesetting and writing a document. It lets you mark up bits of text as headlines, quotes, paragraphs or anything else, and perform instant style changes across the whole document.

2. Black Type

First we need to colour the headlines black rather than the default blue. We must also centre the text and, on the Format button, reduce the distance between lines so that Heading 2 can be the chapter heading and name.

3. Page Plan

Before we worry about how the text looks on the page, we have to find out what that page is. From www.lulu.com you can download templates of the different books it can print in .doc format, and copy your text across.

4. New look

The result isn’t pretty: chapter heads are all over the place and the Garamond text is uncomfortable. Luckily, with Styles, we can make instant changes, so Word 2007 can improve on the template and what you see is what you get.

5. Finish Line

One of the most obvious problems is that the text doesn’t always reach the same point on a page. Go into the main body text’s Style and into the Paragraph options. Switch off Widows/ Orphan control and see the result.

6. Vice Verso

Take great care reading the template. Here, each chapter begins on a left (verso) page, even if it means the previous right (recto) one was empty. But because of how the template is structured, they look the other way around.

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