Certa Publishing Manuscript Submission Guidelines

Preparing your manuscript to submit to Certa Publishing (Microsoft Word® Documents Only)

Please read this in its entirety prior to submitting your manuscript to us. Any deviation from these guidelines may cause a delay or additional charges. You might even have to resubmit your manuscript.

Guidelines for your Microsoft Word® Document Manuscript:

1. Unfortunately, we cannot accept WordPerfect files. WordPerfect files cannot be saved as Microsoft Word® documents. It would convert into symbols when using our graphic software. Type out (do not copy and paste from WordPerfect) your whole manuscript in Microsoft Word®. Another option authors have is to copy and paste from their Word Perfect file into wordpad or notepad, then copy and paste into Microsoft Word®, NOTE this will remove all formatting from your document.

2. The manuscript you submit needs to be complete and FINAL in Microsoft Word format only (note: WordPad is not the same as Microsoft Word®).

3. Certa Publishing will set up your book to be 1.5 lines spaced, using 11.5 Pt Times New Roman fonts unless you tell us different prior to your book having been laid out/formatted . Your text, the interior of your book, will be full left justified.

If you would like us to use a font other than Times New Roman, please choose from one of the following (This font applies to all interior pages of your book):

You have the option of the following point sizes. If you do not specify we will proceed with our default font size of 12 pt.

10 Pt
11 Pt
12 Pt
13 Pt
14 Pt

4. Submit all front book matter (i.e. table of contents, introduction, dedication, acknowledgments, endorsements, etc. if applicable) AND chapters in the original manuscript submission. Please make sure all content is in the order that you want it to appear in the book.

5. We encourage authors to put an “About the Author” page at the end of their book. This should be written in third person (Ex: John Smith is…). It is usually 1 – 3 paragraphs in length, a biography about the author for the reader.

6. Certa Publishing will create your title and copyright page.

7. If you are submitting endorsements for the interior of the book then they need to be submitted with the original manuscript.

8. Clearly label each chapter and/or section in your manuscript.

9. If you’ve used bullets, use the standard Microsoft Word® bullets only.

10. If you have an index, inform us when submitting your original manuscript, then wait to submit it until after you receive your final interior book proof. This way you can update it with the correct page numbers.

11. In your manuscript do not use any automatic (hyperlinked) references.

12. If using footnotes you must use the Microsoft Word® auto footnote function.

13. When using any Hebrew and/or Greek characters in your manuscript document, use the actual Hebrew and Greek fonts and not Microsoft Word’s special characters or symbols. The actual font files used will need to be submitted with your manuscript.

Things you should NOT include:

Do not put page numbers on your table of contents. Our graphics department will add these when laying out and formatting your book.
Do not add headers or footers, automatically or manually.
Do not use the Enter/Return key at the end of each line (like you would on a typewriter, this creates a Hard Return). Let the text automatically flow from one line to the next. You can put in a return at the end of each paragraph or chapter.
Do not use the space bar or tab keys to align or indent your text. Any indent you want should be done with the margin controller. You may use the tab key to indent the first line of every paragraph.
Do not manually insert a hyphen to indicate a word break at the end of the line. This will change when our graphics department lays out/formats your book.
Do not change your Word® documents page set up. Our graphics department will do this when we lay out/format your book. Leave the paper size set to letter and all margins set to normal. This does not include indentions of specific paragraphs, like quotes.

Graphic Image Guidelines

1. Your graphics (unless quoted as a custom color book) will print in grayscale; however, they can be submitted in color. A graphic image consists of any element inserted into the word document: picture, icon, logo, design element, chart, graph, table, text box, quote out, border, etc. Anything other than straight text is an image. The amount of images included in your book is listed within the publishing package you purchased. Any additional images beyond what is included in your package will incur additional charges.

2. Graphic images should be submitted in separate files from your manuscript Word® document file (*see Exceptions to Graphic Image Guidelines below). Graphics should be scanned at 100% of size and 300 dpi, and then saved as Jpegs. Note we do not let graphics go off the edge of the page (bleed) in the interior of books. If you supply images that are lower than 300 dpi, it will affect the quality of the image in the printed book.

3. Name your graphic image files according to the order in which they appear in your manuscript, do not name them by the content. For example if Image #1 is “John and Suzy at beach,” the file should be named “01” not “John and Suzy at beach.” In your Word® document manuscript indicate where the graphic image is to be placed with an asterisk, bracketed bold note. Follow this format: ***[IMAGE #1]***. Please number the images in sequential order, according to the same note in your manuscript. *see Exceptions to Graphic Image Guidelines below for the only exception to this.

4. If you wish to have captions with your photo, include the caption in the manuscript where your image note is. Ex: ***[IMAGE #1]*** John and Suzy at the beach.

5. Authors may supply the actual images for Certa Publishing to scan, or author can scan and submit images themselves via e-mail. If the file is too large to send in an e-mail, contact your Author Relations Consultant for instructions.

6. We are not able to guarantee your images will appear exactly like you might expect, particularly photographs. If you are providing images that are older, blurry/pixilated, fuzzy, dark, or even too light, then please note they may not produce well when printed in your book. There can also be variances in different print runs, according to industry standards.

*Exceptions to Graphic Image Guidelines: Table/Charts/Textboxes

Please submit, if applicable, your tables, charts and textboxes in your manuscripts final Microsoft Word® document. These are the only graphics that should be submitted in your manuscript. NOTE: use a point size of at least 11 pt in your tables/charts/textboxes to insure readability. Please note these still count as images within the number of images included in your package.

**Please be advised, our graphics department may have to adjust the placement of graphic images according to text flow, book trim size, etc. You will be able to view this in you Interior Book Proof.

Back Cover Copy

Please do not include any of your back cover text in your final manuscript. Submit it with your final manuscript in a separate Microsoft Word® document. Name your file “Back Cover Copy.” If submitting a photo, submit separately. See below for file specifications.

Things to consider for your back copy:

A description of your book (100-150 words). This is not the place to describe “why” you wrote the book, but what it is about. This is very important. In this section you are “selling” your book to the reader. What is the book about? How can this book help the reader? What does the book have to offer the reader? Take your time. Have friends and family review. Out of all the thousands of books this is your chance to persuade a reader to buy your book.
You could use an attention grabbing statement or endorsement above your description to draw the reader in.
We encourage authors to put their photo on the back cover. This can be e-mailed, photo should be saved as a Jpeg and at least 300 dpi. (This is not a requirement, if you do not wish to include your photo inform your Author Services Representative)
Next to your photo you can put a mini biography of yourself; this should be a brief 2-3 sentence overview about yourself, written in third person (Ex: John Smith is…).

Additional Formatting Notes

At Certa Publishing, we reserve the right to decide the style in which the manuscript will be formatted, using a style consistent with industry standards. The author acknowledges that Certa Publishing is under no obligation to perform any special formatting requests. The Certa Publishing standard is to start each chapter on the right hand side of the book. If you do not wish for chapters to start on the right, you must inform Certa Publishing in writing when submitting your manuscript. Due to the flow and layout of a book, blank pages may be added when necessary.

Due to our press requirements the final page count of a book printed digitally must be divisible by 4, a blank page may be added to the back to meet our required page count. A book printed offset must be divisible by 8, blank pages may be added to the back to meet our required page count. Hard bound books and custom books are an exception and the page count divisibility changes depending on the press requirements for the book.

If you have any questions about our manuscript submission guidelines please contact us Toll Free at 855-77-CERTA. One of our Author Relations Consultant would be happy to speak with you.