Technical Specifications
Manuscripts can be sent to us either by email, in a word document, or on a disc. We give you a free datastick when you decide to publish your book with Pasttimes, this is the simplest method of supplying us with your files. It is your responsibility to give us a correct version of the text.
Text
Pasttimes Publishing can only accept electronic files, MS Word files are our preference.
The layout and formatting of your Word document is not important, we prefer to receive the text without design or layout.
Although the formatting of the Word document is unimportant, if you could follow the following guidelines in the presentation it would be most helpful:
| Main text | Arial 12pt |
| Chapter headings | Arial 14pt bold |
| Sub headings within a chapter (if any) | Arial 12pt bold |
Indicate position of graphics (photographs, drawings, plans, maps, documents) within the text. Please indicate within your text where you would like a graphic to appear. Put a line space above and below, and centre the instruction eg ‘Graphic 4 to appear near here’.
This will be a great help to us when we design your book, we will make sure we place the graphics in the correct places.
You can supply your text as a single word file, or each chapter as a separate file. It would be helpful if you could number the files in chapter order.
Captions
Your graphics will need captions. These should be supplied in a separate captions file. For consistency these should be in Ariel 12pt, and the caption text should be prefixed with the graphic number so that we can easily tie up the caption with the graphic.
Do not insert graphics into your Word file, indicate the postion of the graphic in the text as described above.
If you are unclear about anything in these guidelines please do not hesitate to contact us.
Graphics
These are all the illustrations you may wish to include in your book. They could be photographs, drawings, plans, maps, illustrations, documents such as birth, marriage, death certificates, census records.
Pasttimes cannot handle your valuable original documents. They will need to be scanned and supplied to us as electronic files.
The following are guidelines for scanning different types of documents and the different file formats.
Photographs
We can only accept electronic files.
They should be scanned to a resolution of at least 300 dpi (dots per inch). The higher the dpi, the better the print quality.
They must be in Tiff or eps file format.
Photographs downloaded or copied from the web are likely to be only 72dpi and will not be of acceptable quality for printing.
Line Drawings
We can only accept electronic files.
They should be scanned to a resolution of at least 600 dpi (dots per inch). The higher the dpi the better quality of reproduction. They must be in Tiff or Eps file format.
We like to keep in touch with you throughout the whole process of book production, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch if there is anything written here that is unclear.
