Kat, How small is your book? And are you self-publishing? That is, are you going to have it printed and bound and do your own distribution?

I ask these questions because one of the best systems used by professional printers and publishers for the books you see at the store is in fact entirely free. The system is called TeX (pronounced tech) and, together with Lamport's LaTeX macros, is possible for a mere mortal to learn to use.

The system isn't WYSIAYG (what you see is all you've got), it's based on a text markup system that lets you focus on the structure and content of your book while it takes care of the details. It includes much better typographic details (e.g., proper ligatures for fi, ffi, etc.) than you'll find in a word processor intended for business correspondence and documents.

Your working tool is a text editor rather than a word processor. This will overcome the problems most word processors (i.e., MS Word) have with documents more than a few pages long. You "compile" the text to produce a DVI (device independent) file and display or print it using a DVI driver. All software is freely available although it's fair to say that it's use is not trivial.

The TeX/LaTeX system will provide beautiful pages all uniformly gray with micro adjustments made in kerning and leading so each page has a uniform appearance and there are no ugly word gaps in justified type.

If you intend to have your book commercially published, they may also appreciate having the TeX/LaTeX source available as it can greatly reduce typesetting costs.

If any of this sounds interesting, drop me a note and I'll give you more information.

      - Mark