It’s time to create the layout for your book!

Hopefully you’ve chosen and downloaded a book, as explained in the previous instructions…

When you set up your file, we’ll act as if we’re making a book for print. Set it up with the page size of Letter-Half (5.5 in by 8.5 in.) I recommend an even number of pages (4 or 6) and make sure you turn on Facing Pages! You can adjust margin and gutter settings if you wish. I also really like to set up the Primary Text Frame now, but you could always do that later if you forget.

Of course, you need to SAVE your file in your OneDrive folder!

The most important work takes place on the Pages panel. In particular, it’s very, very IMPORTANT that you take the time to properly set up your Parent pages!

Go into the Pages panel and double-click on A-Parent:

First, did you turn on that Primary Text Frame option when setting up your file? If not, you want to create a text frame that fills up your page along your margins:

Then you want to make sure that the pages are linked so text will flow from one page to the next.

At the bottom right of the page on the left, there’s a little box. Click that to link that box…

Once you’ve clicked the bottom right of the first page, link it with the top left of the next page:

Now your text will flow and all of your pages will be created automatically!

 

Next, we’ll set up the page numbers. Go to the bottom of your page and create a text frame.

Put your cursor into that frame and to to the Type menu, then Insert Special Character/Markers/Current Page Number (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + N – if you have a lot of flexible fingers!)

That will insert a capital A into the box, but it’s just a placeholder for the page number. Highlight that character and use the Properties panel to choose your own font, colour, size, alignment, style, etc.

Now we want that same marker on the opposing page, so make a copy! The easiest way is to use the Selection Tool (V), hold down Alt and Shift, and drag a copy over to the other page!

You may wish to change the alignment or any other options on this page:

Generally, at the bottom of a book there would be the title of the book or chapter, as well as possibly the author’s name on every page. You can set up different sections for different chapters, but let’s make things easy and just have the same thing throughout the book.

I have the title of the book on my left page:

and the author’s name on the right: