Formatting a Book Series Bundle

CREATING YOUR FIRST BOOK SERIES BUNDLE:

How exciting!  I just recently put together my first book bundle for my Newport Vampire Series and decided to put together a how-to blog and video for anyone else who wants to learn how to do it.  I've organized the process and I've posted it below and will have a video to accompany it.  I hope it saves you several hours of research!

It turned out to be easy enough, but when I first set out to figure out how to do it, it was nerve wracking!  I think I figured out an easy way to do it for next time, and I off that to you now with this blog post.  Below I have organized how to put it together easily without the worry of ruining your original manuscripts.

HOW TO SET UP EACH OF THE BOOKS:

You will be stripping out front matters and back matters from all the middle books, but leaving the front matters, with a few changes, on the first book, and keeping the back matters on the last book.  I'll go into a little more detail below.

The biggest tip I can give you is to make a "bundle-copy" of each of your final eBook manuscripts so that when you alter them, you are not ruining your original manuscript.  This is a little bit of a tedious process and the more organized you are from the beginning, the smoother it will go.

THE FIRST BOOK:

• Using the new bundle copy you have saved, go into the eBook and change the title of the book to the title of your series.  For example:  My book was called Darius - A Vampire Story so I changed it to Newport Vampire Stories Series, and listed all five books followed by my author name.  I was happy with the way it looked in the final manuscript. If your books have subtitles, I would just put them under the title of the books.
• If you want to have a Title, Subtitle, and then add language about the bundle, you will make this change on the two title pages.
• Leave the copyright page and change any language about the book to the book series.
• On the line above Chapter one, add in the Name of the book and give it a style -- from the style gallery -- of H1.  (See graphic below)
• Then change all of the Chapter names to H2s.
• Strip out all of the back pages.  The last page should be the last page of your first ebook.

THE MIDDLE BOOKS:

• Strip out all front matters and back matters.
• Add the name of the book above Chapter 1.  Give the book name an H1 Style. See graphic below.
• Go through the document and change all chapter headers from H1 to H2.
• These books should begin with the Title of the book, Chapter 1 through the last chapter and end after the last word in the last chapter.

THE LAST BOOK:

• Strip out all front matters but leave the back matter, the acknowledgement page, the thank you for reading my book page, the other books by page.
• Add the Name of this last book right above Chapter 1 and give it the H1 style.
• Then change all of the chapter headers from H1 to H2.