LAYOUT AND DESIGN
I joined the newspaper staff my first year of college, and during that year I learned both the old and new methods of laying out a newspaper. The old method involved printing out each story and headline individually and then, along with photographs we developed in our own dark room, stick all the items down on large blank sheets of paper using wax and a roller. This wasn't the 1800's we're talking about -- this was 1991/92. Midway through the year, we switched over to computer-based layouts (PageMaker 5.0 running on Macintosh Classics). While I am aware that many wonderful layouts were created by hand throughout the annals of time, digital layouts gave budding designers such as myself the ability to move things around indefinitely to find the perfect layout without getting wax all over the place.
While using Pagemaker, Quark Express, Adobe InDesign or any of the other expensive layout programs is certainly an option, the vast majority of what you'll need to do can be done directly in your word processing software, whether you're using Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or something else. All major word processors can insert headers and footers, page numbers, table of contents, and photographs.
When it comes to layout and design there are three good pieces of advice I can give you.
The first is, copy someone else's layout and design. Open up another book and look at what they've done. Do their chapters start on even pages or odd pages? How did they format their table of contents? Even better than looking at one book is looking at several. Combine ideas from multiple places. In my high school yearbook class, we combed through hundreds of magazines and cut out the layouts and advertisements we liked (the majority of my high school yearbook's layouts were stolen from skateboarding magazines). As you look at books from different genres you may notice that technical computer books have a different look and feel than joke books. It is probably wise to make your book look like other books in your genre.
The second piece of advice I can give you is, be consistent. There are lots of choices to make when writing a book and the rules of English grammar are constantly changing. The key is to make a decision and stick with it. For example, back in high school (depending on how old you are) you may have learned to put two spaces at the end of a period ending a sentence. This is an old rule that was carried over from monospaced fonts on typewriters. With modern computers it is generally accepted that one space after a period is the rule. Which you choose (one space or two) isn't nearly as important as being consistent with your decision. I cannot stress that enough. If you flip-flop back and forth throughout your work you will distract your readers and draw their attention away from your content. Here's a personal example I encountered. Commodork is all about computer bulletin board systems. What is the correct abbreviation for a bulletin board system? My whole life I've seen it written as BBS, although technically, B.B.S. would be proper. The tougher question was, what is the plural of BBS? Are they BBSs, BBSes B.B.S.s or B.B.S.es? I'll bet you never thought about that before! In the end I decided to go with BBS and BBSes. My argument for "BBSs" over "BBSes" was that since the last capital "S" stands for "System", the plural of "System" has an "s" and not an "es." However, if you treat BBS like a word, then the plural would be "es." Like I said, the decision I made wasn't nearly as important as sticking with it throughout the book's entirety.
Not to belabor the point, but here's another puzzler for you. If a sentence contains a quotation mark at its end, the punctuation should go inside the mark. (Example: Joe said, "I am cool.") Note that the period goes inside the quotation mark. Another use for quotation marks is to make a word stand out. (Example: Joe's idea of "cool" is wearing parachute pants.) So, here's the problem -- what happens when the second use happens at the end of a sentence? Is it:
Joe thinks he is "cool."
- or -
Joe thinks he is "cool".
I'm still on the fence about this one and I could argue for or against either one. Technically I think inside the quotation mark is correct, but it's a tough call. Again, the choice isn't as important as the commitment to the choice.
The third piece of advice I can give you is, when it comes to layout, design, and especially fonts, it is true what they say: less is more. I know it can be really exciting to find sites like 1001 Free Fonts, but try to resist from using all 1,001 of them in your book. Generally speaking, books are written using a common font like Times New Roman or Verdana (which is the new Arial) at somewhere between 9 and 12 point, depending on the application. Don't leave your book looking like a ransom note. The idea is to make your work as simple and pleasing to read as possible. You want to enable people to more easily absorb your words, not hinder the process.
BREAKING THE RULES
"Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind." - Douglas MacArthur.
One of the first rules of layout and design is that any other rule of layout and design can be broken. For example in photography there is something called the rule of thirds. Generally speaking, when taking a photograph you should mentally draw two horizontal and two vertical lines dividing the picture into nine squares (think "The Brady Bunch") and put the subject of your photos in one of the four places where those lines intersect. That's the rule, but I'll bet you I could find hundreds of award-winning photographs that break that rule. The photographers don't break the rule because they don't understand the rule; they break it for a reason. You too can break rules if you understand the rule and have a reason for breaking it. Breaking rules simply for the sake of breaking rules (see: using 1,001 fonts in a book) is a terrible idea. However, let's say you were trying to create a hectic atmosphere of some sort; changing fonts could possibly (and maybe even subliminally) create a chaotic atmosphere that conveys that feeling to your readers. A great example of this is Mark Z. Danielewski's
COVERS
The front and back covers of your book are typically the first (and sometimes only) thing a customer sees before purchasing your book. If your book is picked up by a publisher you may have no control over the cover design. If however you end up self-publishing your book through Lulu or another online publisher, chances are you will be responsible for designing and providing front and back covers to the publisher.
You should know by now that you cannot simply take people's artwork off of the Internet and use it for the cover of your book. That's stealing. You may find someone on DeviantArt or another site willing to let you use their artwork for free in exchange for crediting them, but be sure to cover yourself and get the details any such agreement in writing.
Another possibility is to make your cover yourself. Again, you'll either want to go to your local bookstore or browse Amazon for other books in your genre and look and their covers. You can also take a digital picture (assuming it is not of a copyrighted object) and use that for your cover as well. You may need to do some basic cropping and add some text to your picture to make it a complete cover, so if you don't have PhotoShop or aren't any good at it, there are plenty of people out there who are. Check out Fiverr.com, a website where people are willing to design professional book covers starting at $5. When making your own cover, be sure to find out what the digital requirements are for supplied artwork (300 DPI is standard and probably not your default size).
If your book is picked up by a publishing company, they will most likely create a cover for you.