Working in the MyBook application

To make your book look right in our design, each of its components must be clearly identified by you – only you know which parts of the text are which. You do this by arranging the parts of your manuscript into a certain hierarchy – for example Foreword, Chapter, or Appendix, which you’ll see down the left hand side of your screen. If you’re not sure what the most usual order of elements in a book manuscript should be, take a look at our suggested book blueprints.

Remember, the text you will see on your screen is not a reflection of what the final book will look like, as our online tool does not use the actual fonts, styles and layouts used in our book design. Don't worry about this – all the text and images will appear correctly once your book is published.

Parts of your book

Our MyBook app will show all the parts of your Word manuscript, divided up into Sections, Components and Elements. Here’s an explanation of what these are:

Sections

There are three parts to your book: front section, main section, and back section. Here’s a bit more information about each section:

Front section (in traditional book publishing, this is called Front Matter). This is the first section of the book, and usually the shortest. The front section is numbered using roman numerals. Front matter generally only appears in the first volume of a series, although some components, such as the imprint page and a table of contents, might appear in each volume.

Main section (in traditional book publishing this is called Body Matter). This is the main body of the book, and it always begins at page 1. The material is often arranged hierarchically into parts and chapters, and there may be subsections within chapters. These components are explained further below.

Back section (in traditional book publishing, this is sometimes called Back Matter). This is the last section of the book, and contains material that is supplemental to the main part of the book. Examples are an epilogue, appendices, a bibliography, an index or additional information about the book’s history or the author. In some books, such as histories, endnotes also appear at the back of the book.

Components

We use this term to refer to the components of one of your book’s three sections. Components available differ according to the section; for example, Table of Contents is a component you can put in your Front section, but not in your Main section. And Conclusion is a component that is only available for your Back section.

In the MyBook app, components show up as folders, like this:

Here’s a full list of components available in our MyBook app. These components make up a blueprint of the book to ensure that your product will look as professionally constructed as those created by the professionals. We’ve also given you some sample book blueprints to help you decide which components your book might need.

Elements

These are the items you can add to your book’s components. You might want to add a heading, a sub-heading, a callout box,an image or a new block of body text to a Chapter, for example. You can create an element then type new text for it, or take existing text from elsewhere in your book and make it into a new element. Again, the elements available for you to add in depend on the section and component of your book you’re working in.

In the MyBook app, elements show up like this:

Here’s a full list of elements available in our MyBook app

Adding new components and elements

You can add new Components to a Section (eg add a new chapter to the main section of your book), and new elements within components (eg add a call-out box to the chapter). After you’ve created them, you can drag components and elements into any order you like. The available Components or Elements will appear in the centre of your screen, like this:

Components

Elements

To add them in, just click on them and they will move into the folder you’re working in. Note: new components and elements always appear at the bottom of the list, so you’ll need to click on their names and drag them into the position you’d like. New components and elements appear with a star on them to help you identify them:

The MyBook text editor

You can use the buttons on the toolbar at the top of the text editing tool to format and align your text, add endnotes or index items.

NB: Some elements allow you to align text centre, middle and right, but some set the alignment for you. If you see the alignment buttons in the top toolbar when working in an element, you can change your text yourself. If no alignment buttons are showing up, it means you’re working with an element that can’t be manually aligned.

Moving text between elements and components

If you would like to change the format of an existing bit of text, or move it to another part of the book, use the Move/edit text dropdown menu at the top of the text box to change this text into a different component (eg Introduction) or element (eg Callout box). Remember to select the text you want to change first. You can also use the normal keyboard shortcuts to cut and paste the text between new or existing components and elements if you’d prefer.

 

Working with images

The D Publishing book template allows you to include black and white and colour images, charts and diagrams in your manuscript. Please note, however, that our template is not suitable for high-resolution, glossy image books such as photography books or wedding albums. You can embed your images into your Word document before you upload it, or add an image element into the MyBook app hierarchy, then click on the button below it to upload an image from your computer. 

You can also generate captions for your images and upload a grid of up to six smaller images to a page. To look their best, your images need to have a resolution of at least 300dpi (most common image editing software can show you the dpi of an image). It is your responsibility to make sure you have the right to publish any images that are not your own.

Endnotes and glossary

The system will not preserve a glossary or footnotes/endnotes present in the Word document you upload, so you’ll need to create them manually using our tool. 

If you would like to add endnotes to your book, you can add these in while working in the MyBook app.

To add an endnote, look for the ‘add Endnote’ folder in the top toolbar:

Select the text you’d like and then click ‘Add Endnote’. A box will appear for you to type in the text of your endnote:

To create a simple glossary, fill in the text boxes in the Glossary tool with your desired words and definitions. These will appear in your book as a two-column list.

To create a references section (bibliography), click Add Reference at the top of the central text screen and fill in your first and secondary fields, like this:

Click Add Reference again to add more fields.

Saving your work

Whenever you make a change to your book in the MyBook app, we’ll prompt you to save your work before continuing. IF these save prompt annoy you, you can turn them off by clicking 'Don't remind me to save' at the top of your text editing window. We’ll save your work online for 24 hours provided you come back to the site using the same browser. But to keep your projects organised and safe, we recommend you sign up for a D Publishing account. Once you do, you’ll have access to your Dashboard, which will show the current status of all your projects and allow to you to download your book files at any time.

Converting your book

Once you’re satisfied that your book contains all the right components and elements in the right order, you can go ahead and convert it. Conversion is where we take your manuscript and make it into a fully designed print-ready PDF, or EPub. Just in case you change your mind after your book has converted, we’ll give you five attempts to go back and amend your manuscript in the MyBook app. After this, you’ll need to pay for another conversion. Once your book is converted, you can go to your Dashboard and download it as a 100% print-ready PDF or EPub. Your book will also be available, for professionals, as a set of InDesign files.

Please note: Certain elements in your book will look different as an EPub. If you have a cover in colour, it will appear black and white in the EPub. Images you’ve placed in an image grid in the printed book will appear sequentially in the EPub. And finally, any side callout boxes will appear as centred callout boxes when the EPub is generated.