This year I wanted to push through and get myself to a point where I knew how to format text and images such tha I could publish a Print on Demand book, in my case specifically on DrivethruRPG. Although printing fulfillment businesses will have different expectations on the format of print files, I think my simple journey will resonate for other printers than OneBookShelf Publisher Service, as used by DrivethruRPG.
Another well documented place to go is Lulu.com. They have some great guidance there to step you through creating your own book, including the tools that you will need:
https://www.lulu.com/create/print-books
https://blog.lulu.com/how-to-create-and-print-a-book-for-beginners/
I generate my text in Google Docs. As a Chromebook user it means that I always have access to it i the cloud, don’t worry too much about backing up precious hours of work, can acess across any device I use, and have the potential for simple collaboration with others if I wish.
My own journey in formatting a book started with a big bounce off Affinity Publisher. I just couldn’t seem to get going with it, particularly flowing text across pages. With some perseverence I got there, and can now skip lightly around the software features I have found, with enough capability to generate a formatted book. The Affinity suite is a really powerful and affordable set of tools to get the layout to a point that you will be happy with it. I used Affinity Photo for the cover format, but thatis largely through preference, as I am familiar with some of the artistic text style functions in that member of the suite family. I reckon you could stay in Publisher and do everything.
Both OneBookShelf and Lulu provide layout templates for lots of sizes of books. This gives you the confidence to start with a secure base and tweak slightly for your own prefereed layout. Text styles are key, giving you the means to simply make one quick change that updates all instances of that style across the whole book.
My first book proof failed, but only because OneBookShelf have a very specific PDF format required for the cover. If you provide a different format then it may print but the colours and text frames don’t come out as you might expect.
It looks as though my next print book will be a not for sale personal project. I’m taking the SRD text of Stellagama Publishing’s ‘Cepheus Deluxe’, formatting into a digest sized book design of my choosing, with free to use art from Kevin Crawford’s ‘Stars without Numbers’. I hope to buy some cover art too. This book will be printed as gifts to friends. I don’t want to sell the book because I want people to support Stellagama Publishing and buy their title. Safe to say I will prefer my simpler layout to what is being planned for their book.
Give me a shout if you’re stuck, and I’ll give some pointers if I can.