Planning, preparing and organizing your book content is the first step in producing your novel.
RTF Document Preparation
In order to import your text into BookWright’s flowing text containers, you will need to use Microsoft Word or similar text editor to output .RTF (Rich Text Format) documents.
It is recommended that your full novel is output as multiple, manageable chapters, or in whatever the natural segmentation of your work is. Follow these steps to prepare your chapters for BookWright import:
- Copy and paste a single chapter into a new Word document.
- Change your font to either Times or Helvetica as a placeholder font, set it to 10 pt., full-justified, with paragraph line-spacing of 1.5. Set the paragraph indents to .50”.
- Save the file as Rich Text Format (.rtf). Repeat these steps until all chapters (and any other sections of text) are completed.
Graphic Preparation
Any graphic files you plan on including in your book—photos, illustrations, and artwork of any kind—should be saved as either .jpeg or .png file format.
Print or eBook? Or Both?
First, you must determine if you are creating an 6x9 inch printed novel and/or an ebook. If you plan to make an ebook you will need to choose from BookWright’s licensed ebook fonts. Even if you are not immediately planning an ebook, it’s a good idea to use these fonts in the event you choose to output an ebook in the future. All the Blurb Flourish templates composed of only ebook licensed fonts. This guide provides direction to first develop a printed or fixed-format .epub ebook.
BookWright Layout
Import Rtf Files Launch the chosen 6x9 inch template in BookWright—if this is your first time using BookWright it may be useful to refer to the User Guide to get a general understanding of the tool interface. It is important to first import all of your .rtf files into BookWright at the same time, however you should style each import and style chapter, one after another, until complete.
- Click on the
Text Files icon in the main toolbar at the top of the BookWright interface. - Next, click on the
Add Text icon to navigate to the location of your .rtf formatted files. Select the files you wish to import. The .rtf files will appear to the right of the add text icon.
- Click on the page spread where your first chapter will begin—this is the 7th page in the template.
- Hover your cursor over the chapter start text container, this is a reflowable text container that you will flow your .rtf files into. Locate your .rtf text icon and click and drag it over the chapter start text container, release to replace placeholder text.
- Click on text container, select all the text, and change your font. Click on “Update text flow”.
Adding Additional Text Containers
Depending on the length of the imported text, you may need to add additional pages with text containers to complete the placement of the .rtf file. To determine this, go to the page that contains the end of the imported text. If there is a yellow warning icon in the upper right-hand corner of the container, this warning may indicate that there is more copy which needs to be displayed on additional pages. Complete the following steps to accomplish this:
- Click on the
Layouts icon in the main toolbar at the top of the BookWright interface. - Next, click on the Layouts pop-up menu and select Novel Layouts to display the layout options.
- Drag the second layout, MS Word Moderate, on to the page spread that follows the page with the text container with the yellow warning icon. You will now have an empty text container adjacent to the incomplete text container. (MS Word Moderate is used in all of the templates)
Linking Flowing Text Containers
- Hover over the incomplete text container to see the text flow icon in the lower right corner.
- Click on the
text flow icon in the first container, then click anywhere 
in the second container—the text will flow into it automatically. - Repeat this process of adding text containers and linking them until the yellow warning icon no longer appears, indicating that your entire chapter has been imported.