A Book Formatting Question

[Catrin Lewis]

This may sound way too "pertickuler," as my big sister used to say, but here goes:

Each novel in the series I'm working on is split into parts or divisions. Each division has its own title page, with the dates of the action under the title, and of course each division title falls on the right hand, or recto page.

In an ideal world, I would have a blank verso page opposite each division title, but in the first book in the series it so happened that the last page of each previous section fell on the left, or verso, side. I couldn't stomach the added cost of two blank pages before each title, so I said, "Oh, well," and let the new divisions start right away.

Now I'm dealing with Book 2, and it's not behaving. Some of the divisions end on the right, some of them end on the left. Will readers notice and say, "Yuck, how unprofessional!" if some of the titles have a blank page before and some of them have none?

Or am I just being picky?

 

[Set2Stun]

I don't think you're being picky - I am also very particular about such things. A couple weeks ago I ordered a print proof copy of the book I will be self-pubbing soon, and I am so glad that I did. There was a random blank page before one of the chapters and it stuck out like a sore thumb - to me, anyway. The average reader probably wouldn't notice, but writers and editors might. I have developed permanent "editor's brain," so now when I read for pleasure, I can't help but notice every little error in the book.

In my case I was able to figure out the cause after some frustration and some google searches. The clue was that there were two pages that had the same page number, so Amazon was sticking an extra blank page between them to continue with the left/right format. In Word I just had to edit the footer from each chapter/section and select to continue from the previous section. It was a bit tedious but that resolved the issue for me.

 

[Homer Potvin]

For whatever it's worth, I wouldn't care or notice.