Self-publishing authors can save a lot of up-front investment by taking a do-it-yourself approach to book publication. Free and open-source programs such as LibreOffice (office suite) and Scribus (desktop publishing) can be a big help. I have developed some book templates for both LibreOffice and Scribus to help would-be publishers get started with free software. In this post, I introduce a romance-novel template for Scribus. This template gives similar results to the LibreOffice template from my previous post. Like the LibreOffice template, the Scribus template uses the Honey Script font by Dieter Steffmann to give the book a breezy look that is compatible with romance or fantasy novels. The template file uses free fonts and comes with specifications and instructions. The package is free.
If you are self-publishing, one of the many things you must do is to produce the interior of your book in .pdf format. You can pay someone a lot of cash to do this for you or you can do it yourself with a publishing program such as Adobe InDesign ($$$) or Scribus (free). If you have decided to do it yourself, be sure to look at my previous posts, Book Interior Design: Tips to Avoid the Amateur Look and Twelve Tips: How to Reduce the Cost of Your Self-Published Book. To help you get started with Scribus, I have developed a few templates. The latest template is the romance-novel template.
Scribus
Scribus is an open-source desktop publishing program available for a variety of operating systems. It is free. (Need I say more?) If you don’t have Scribus, go ahead and download it. I’ll wait…
The Romance Novel Scribus Template. 
The romance-novel template for Scribus is for the 6×9 in format. To the right is the first page of Chapter 1 of a novel laid out with the template. The chapter title is in Honey Script, the chapter number is EB Garamond 12 Italic and the body of the text is Cardo. You can download the front matter and first chapters of “Dillemma” the exciting new novel by Priscilla Prudhomme here: Romance_Scribus_Example.pdf.
The Fonts
I used three fonts in this template. Download them here: Honey Script by Dieter Steffmann, EB Garamond by Georg Duffner, and Cardo by David Perry.
The Downloads
Romance_Novel_Scribus.zip – This .zip file unzips to a folder containing everything below.
Romance_Scribus_Front_Matter.sla – The Scribus .sla file for the front matter.
Romance_Scribus_Chapter.sla – The Scribus .sla file for the chapters.
How_To_Use_the_Scribus_Romance_Templates.pdf – A PDF file containing instructions about how to use the Romance template.
Romance_Scribus_Specifications.pdf – Specifications of the template: margin sizes, fonts, style and sizes.
Romance_Scribus_Example.pdf – A PDF produced from the Romance Template.
Forward!
Have fun with the template. Remember, it’s a starting point. If you don’t like the position of the Chapter number, change it! If you don’t like the font, get your own! It’s your book. Go crazy!
Other Scribus Templates
Basic Book Template for Scribus – a 6 x 9 inch book template using EB Garamond as the body font and Sorts Mills Goudy as the display font.
New Book – New Template – Just Lorem Ipsum. – a 5.25 x 8 inch book template using Latin Modern Roman for the body font, Fira Sans Condensed for the chapter titles and Cinzel in various other roles.
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