Manuscript preparation of a book in Google Docs

A good word processing software needs to be used for the manuscript preparation on the computer for publishing. If the author himself inputs the content into the word processor, chances are rare to have typos in the document. If the author possesses the word processing skills, he can prepare the manuscript for publication without any external help. Features and functions of all word processing software are more or less the same. Authors can consider office suites like MS Word and LibreOffice for traditional word processing experience. LaTeX editors can make use for preparing the manuscript for publishing scientific books. Cloud-based word processing services like Google Docs and MS Office 365 can also be considered for preparing the manuscript. Google Docs, a cloud-based word processing service, is recommended considering the security, ease of use, and capability to handle regional languages.

Google Docs for Manuscript Preparation

Docs is part of Google Drive cloud service. The usage of Google Docs is similar to word processors like Microsoft Word and LibreOffice. Those who do not want to use Google Docs can try the same steps mention here on the familiar word processor. Authors with a Google Account can use Google Docs. Now Google Doc is free for personal use. Up to 15GB of storage is free with the Google Docs. Here we discuss how to write and prepare a manuscript for the book using Google Docs.

How to Open Google Docs?

Google Docs’ web address is https://docs.google.com. Try to use the Google Chrome browser to open and works with Google Docs. All the features of the Google Docs work well in Chrome browser. After logging in to the Google website, click on the Google Apps icon at the top right corner to see the Google Drive icon.

Open a New Document

The first step is to create a folder to store everything related to book writing. Create a document within the folder. The folder helps you to organise documents and other items related to the book. Press the New button on Google Drive for creating a folder.

Give a name for the folder, e.g. My Book.

Enter the name inside the new folder created. Create a new document. New > Google Docs > Blank document or From a template.

Create a blank document or select from a suitable template for the book.

Page Setup

From the File menu, select Page Setup. Choose a suitable paper from the array of paper sizes (A4, A3, Letter) and define the margins of the document. There is no default provision to create documents with custom measures. Make use an add on, Page Sizer with Google Doc to customise the page dimensions. To install the Page Sizer, open Add-ons > Get add-ons.

Users can change the paper type at any time.

Give Name to Document

Enter the name of the document

Source: Vimal Kumar V., An Introduction to Self-publishing, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license