Kristy S. Gilbert

Science Fiction & Fantasy Copyediting Survey

November 10, 2020 by Kristy S. Gilbert Leave a Comment

"Copyediting Science Fiction and Fantasy." In the background, line icons of books, ereaders, and a pencil writing on paper. I’ve always been big on helping writers become better writers (rather than simply sprucing up the manuscripts they put in front of me). In my regular contributions to local writing conferences, I prepare presentations on various topics: designing effective book covers, retelling fairy tales, using folklore in worldbuilding, and more. One of my recent presentations “Copyediting Immersive Science Fiction & Fantasy,” always has a lively Q&A at the end. I’m retooling the presentation and developing other materials (blog posts, etc.) to bring more light to the quirks of editing in imagined worlds.

If you’re a writer or editor who works with SF&F (or who is thinking about pivoting or expanding your genre expertise), take a moment to fill out this survey so I can figure out which topics would be most useful.

And hey, if you’ve got a really specific copyediting question, drop it in the comments below. (And if you need a lot of really specific editing advice, contact us about editing services tailored to your work!)

Book Design Templates & Tutorials

September 29, 2020 by Kristy S. Gilbert Leave a Comment

I’m passionate about creating beautiful books, and while a pitch-perfect cover makes for a great first impression, readers are going to spend the slow burn of a book with the interior book layout. I love creating a smooth reading flow, margins that give a story the right about of breathing room, and an immersive reader experience.

But as more authors turn to self-publishing to find their audience, more of them stumble into newbie formatting mistakes in their efforts to create really readable books. Many indie and hybrid authors are publishing quick-to-market books with streamlined budgets, and custom book design doesn’t always fit that modus operandi.

The Solution

So this summer, Looseleaf’s first-ever intern (Rachel Hulet) and I developed industry-standard, elegant book design templates to make reliable, reader-ready book design more affordable, accessible, and adaptable.

We made five templates tailored to specific genres and tones. Each one has everything you need for print and ebook interiors (plus bonus cover templates). The templates (along with tutorials and blog posts about book design techniques, software, and ebook considerations) are now all available at BestBookTemplates.com. More templates are on the way (probably one every 3-6 months), and I plan to post at least once a month with either new tips or a video analyzing a real book design by a different designer.

The Templates

Custom book interiors are still very important here at Looseleaf, but if it’s outside your budget, consider either a DIY template or a template + typesetting assistance to get your book reader ready.

Scáthach (Fantasy)

Scáthach is designed for fantasy novels and novellas. Everything is tailored for a high fantasy feel, and the kit has specialty text options to support all the immersive elements of your story. It includes options to put epigraphs at the start of chapters, an elegant unicase font for all the titles, and easy-to-use styling for letters and blockquotes, poetry, and more.

Joyce (Literary & Memoir)

Joyce is designed specifically for character-driven narratives with strong themes. It features simple but striking horizontal lines to set off chapter starts, scene breaks, and section/part dividers, and the body text feels at once both classic and contemporary. It’s particularly genre-fluid so long as the book at hand trends more literary. So far, Joyce is the most popular template in the stable.

Enceladus (Science Fiction)

Enceladus sits on a design boundary that makes it a good fit for both tech-heavy science fiction and techno-thrillers. It includes special text styles not only for the usual letters and poems but also for computer code and other digital comms. Chapter starts have options to include (or not) timestamps that are common in thrillers in which knowing the time and place is essential and space operas that span various planets and solar systems.

Meet Cute (Contemporary Romance)

Meet Cute is one of two romance-genre templates we have right now. It works best for books with electrifying first meetings and beautifully complementary characters, and it has specialty text options to support all the details of a modern-day happily ever after. (And if you employ one of the options that doesn’t use the cursive font, it can be a solid choice for other contemporary fiction!)

Dashwood (Historical Romance)

Dashwood is the second romance template, and it’s tailored for an elegant, period-piece experience. It also includes options for time and location stamps for books that really dig into their time-and-place research.

The Training

BestBookTemplates.com is also where all my future articles about book design will post first, but I’ll post a quarterly digest of all the articles and videos here on LooseleafEP.com.

Font Licensing for Ebooks. If you’re particular about type design, ebooks can present special challenges because font licensing for ebooks is different (and usually more expensive) than licensing for print book design.

Book Design in the Wild: The Phlebotomist. There are many places to find book design ideals—design textbooks and blog posts seem happy to provide rules and regulations for creating the perfect book layout. But in my own study, I found that pages set up using the golden ratio and perfectly harmonious margins were hardly the norm, even when the book design worked well for the project and its audience. So I started making videos about real books with real-life constraints and solutions.

Immersive Worldbuilding through Copyediting

August 5, 2020 by Kristy S. Gilbert Leave a Comment

Copyediting for More Immersive Worldbuilding (an in-depth webinar). A partnership between Looseleaf & The ACES Academy Worldbuilding often comes down the everyday details for the characters. Copyediting choices like capitalization, italics, and more can support your epic worldbuilding or undermine it and keep your reader at arm’s length. I put together a one-hour webinar (together with the American Copy Editors Society) to teach authors (and editors) how to better invite readers to see the world through a character’s eyes.

Worldbuilding Language Details

In this webinar, I don’t just discuss “correct” ways to treat invented terms, species, and items. I also talk about considering these worldbuilding elements from the view of your characters so you can better convey the characters’ relationship with those things to your readers. Because as cool as worldbuilding can be, it’s even cooler to see interesting characters interacting with that world!

The two things I discuss most in the webinar are capitalization and italic text, both of which I see overused a lot. I think some of this can come from some authors’ lack of confidence in themselves and their readers, so in the webinar I talk about ways to determine if something needs capitals or italics based on the way characters interact with that thing and how often a reader is going to interact with it.

Access the Webinar

New Year Changes

January 13, 2020 by Kristy S. Gilbert Leave a Comment

A black and white image of some books Looseleaf has worked on. Notables are Batman Black and White and leatherbound Elantris by Brandon Sanderson.

Welcome to a new year from Looseleaf Editorial & Production! Thank you all for a lovely 2019 spent helping you get your books reader ready. I love working on your books!

With the starry-eyed new year come a few changes for Looseleaf. The most notable is that rates for editing and book design have been adjusted slightly. The rate changes are listed below. These changes will not affect any existing contracts! The new rates go into effect for all contracts written on or after February 1, 2020. (There are also some changes that are a little more fun, listed after the rates changes.) [Read more…] about New Year Changes

Gifts for Writers: Editing & Book Design Gift Cards

November 22, 2018 by Kristy S. Gilbert Leave a Comment

Perfect Gifts for Writers

Gifts for Writers: Looseleaf Gift Cards There are lots of great options for holiday gifts for writers. Notebooks, pens, and books spring to mind. But if you want to go beyond the basic and give your beloved writer a catalyst for their craft, consider Looseleaf Editorial & Production’s new gift cards. They can be redeemed toward any editorial services and any of our book design packages. Until November 30, all gift cards are 15% off!

Level Up Your Writer Friend

When you give your writer access to professional editorial feedback and publishing support, you also give them your vote of confidence. Writing can be a lonely pursuit, but knowing you have friends rooting for you can boost you through the rough patches. Many writers get nervous about taking the step to get professional input on their work, but almost all of them benefit from even brief consultations with a practiced editorial pro. Looseleaf’s philosophy is to help writers become better writers, not just improve a specific book or manuscript. We work to help every writer we interact with to level up, no matter their writing level or goals.

A Versatile Option

Because writers’ goals and backgrounds vary widely, it can be difficult for friends and family to know what would help them most right now in their writing journey. With a gift card option, they can decide for themselves what will be most valuable! Some may need a quick look over their first chapter; others might be saving up to hire a team to self-publish their book next year. Whatever your writer’s goals are, Looseleaf can help them on their way.

We offer services for writers of all levels and goals:

query letter consultations (for writers submitting to agents and publishers)
manuscript evaluations (for writers getting ready for heavy revisions)
copyediting (for writers who need some final polish)
line editing and developmental editing (for writers who want in-depth editorial support)

Especially for self-publishers, we offer book design too:

You can’t go wrong! Pick up a gift card for your the writer in your life today.

New: Comic Book Ebook Design for Kindle

October 2, 2018 by Kristy S. Gilbert Leave a Comment

Cover for comic book ebook design for Kindle Looseleaf now offers comic book ebook design for Kindle! The first two projects we’ve helped produce are Book 1 and Book 2 of Children of Eldair, a full-color portal fantasy comic by Jemma M. Young. (Looseleaf also copyedited and proofread Book 2.) You can buy both the ebooks and the gorgeously printed paperbacks on Amazon (Book 1 is available now; Book 2 is forthcoming), and when you’ve finished those off, you can see the latest pages on a regular basis at Eldair.com.

File Formats for Comic Book Ebook Design

Ebooks aren’t usually the first option for comics. Most ebooks are reflowable, which means the text can shift around to let readers adjust the size and other aspects to suit their reading choices. Comics, with their rich, dense illustration and specifically placed text, don’t do well in a reflowable book. But if you want to publish a portable, electronic version of your ebook, don’t settle for a static PDF. The Kindle format is your best bet. Amazon has created a platform that readily integrates panel magnification in a way that keeps file sizes low while making it easy for readers to zoom in on intricate artwork, dialogue text, and more. EPUB format (which Nooks, iBooks, Kobo devices, and more use) can do similar things, but the code is more complex, and the files can become large, especially with detailed or lush artwork (like Jemma’s work with Children of Eldair). EPUB files need to be compatible with many different platforms and devices, while Kindle files wrangle only with different devices.

But even with a ready-to-run format, the time spent building an ebook is time you aren’t writing, drawing, inking, lettering, and/or coloring your comic. If you want a Kindle-ready version of your comic, trust Looseleaf with your story. We’ll get it reader ready. Need more information? Get a quote on your comic book ebook design.

Not a comic book writer? We’ve got you covered with standard print and ebook design pricing.

What Is Typesetting?

September 15, 2018 by Kristy S. Gilbert Leave a Comment

What is typesetting? Most of the time, it no longer means digging through bins of movable type, like these. I used to introduce myself as a book editor and typesetter, and people often asked me: What is typesetting? Though I now introduce myself as a book editor and designer, I’ve practiced delivering a simple answer.

Typesetting is the process of composing a text using fonts, sizes, line spacing, and other details that make it appropriate for a given audience and purpose. Professional typesetters pay particular attention to readability and strive to eliminate line breaks, paragraph breaks, hyphenation issues, and other typographic elements that can distract from the reading experience or impede a reader’s understanding.

Some professional definitions of typesetting include only the interior book design—selecting the fonts and styling to package your story—or finessing your book into a smooth ride for your reader. Here at Looseleaf, we do both, because one without the other is a little lame, and your book should never be lame. Below are some of the wrinkles Looseleaf irons out in a print layout after making the important design decisions for your book. [Read more…] about What Is Typesetting?

Looseleaf Word Nerd T-shirts Launched

July 10, 2017 by Kristy S. Gilbert Leave a Comment

I work with storytellers and writers . . . which normally means they’re avid readers too. Last month I put together two t-shirts for my word nerd friends and writerly clients, and today the initial designs launch!

The first shirt is one I’m particularly proud of. It says, “I’m not a grammar Nazi: I’m Captain American English.” Because when I nitpick over your comma placement, I’d rather see myself as heroic rather than neurotic. The stories we tell ourselves matter, folks.

The second shirt is a constellation star chart (northern hemisphere, Greek & Western constellations) and words celebrating story. Cultures worldwide have tamed the stars with constellations and stories, claiming the distant stars as their own. Storytellers of all stripes—writers, artists, parents of small children—create new ways of seeing our wild universe. They give us narrative maps to navigate by, guidebooks to exploring and expanding ourselves. Our stories have the power to tame the untambeable.

The third shirt is the first in what I hope will become a series of shirts spotlighting particularly powerful poetry. I’m leading off with the estimable E. E. Cummings and my favorite phrases from his poem “In Just-.” The poem is equal parts poignant and playful, but in lifting only the springtime descriptors mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful, I focus on the splish-splash joy of April showers.

Joining the E. E. Cummings shirt is another watercolor poetry tee with a quote from Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It’s perfect for hiking or walking through the everyday divine of nature: “Earth’s crammed with heaven, / And every common bush afire with God.”

All shirts come in both unisex and women-specific styles.

Science Fiction & Fantasy Copyediting Survey

Book Design Templates & Tutorials

The Solution