Books

AuthorLab - Write, Publish, Promote Your Book. Book Design Basics: Choosing a Book Font. Select­ing a book font seems sim­ple enough, but im­por­tant sub­tleties and fine points of ty­pog­ra­phy are not ob­vi­ous to the av­er­age writer. This ar­ti­cle of­fers in­sights into fonts suit­able for book ty­pog­ra­phy. Though it won’t turn the av­er­age au­thor into a pro­fes­sional type­set­ter, it will in­form indie pub­lish­ers about the kind of guid­ance they should ex­pect to re­ceive from one. And if eco­nomic con­straints force you to type­set your own book, the in­for­ma­tion of­fered here will help you make in­formed choices. Book ty­pog­ra­phy is an un­usual art. Choos­ing a Book Font: Why Bother? Choose a book font to set the tone for your book. Study the ex­am­ples in the gallery of font sam­ples below (click any one and a gallery will pop up full-size). Book Type­faces and Font Ter­mi­nol­ogy: Un­der­stand­ing the ba­sics of font ter­mi­nol­ogy will help you un­der­stand what you’ll get when shop­ping for a book font.

Hel­vetica Neue font, 1983 by D. Ser­ifs. Smart Quotation Marks, Dumb Quotes, and Primes. Writ­ers often ask about the dif­fer­ence be­tween “straight” or “dumb” quo­ta­tion marks and tra­di­tional print­ers’ quotes, com­monly re­ferred to as “smart quotes” or “curly quotes.” Add in the need to dis­tin­guish be­tween left sin­gle quotes and apos­tro­phes, and the primes used to spec­ify feet and inches or min­utes and sec­onds and you end up with a ty­po­graphic co­nun­drum that con­founds many a ca­pa­ble au­thor. This ar­ti­cle ex­am­ines the var­i­ous types of quotes and primes and ex­plains how to use them. Book De­sign Ba­sics: Straight or Dumb Quotes Straight quotes evolved to fa­cil­i­tate in­for­mal writ­ing sit­u­a­tions.

When typ­ing into a dis­cus­sion forum, twit­ter feed, or com­ment box, use your apos­tro­phe and dou­ble-quote keys for all the spe­cial char­ac­ters (ex­cept the “de­grees” sym­bol.) “Dumb” text ed­i­tors don’t try to fig­ure out which di­rec­tion to slant your punc­tu­a­tion. Straight quotes make it quick and easy to ex­press a thought.

Book Cover Design: Moving from Screen to Printing Press. Once you have your book cover de­sign look­ing spir­ited and pro­fes­sional on your com­puter screen, how can you en­sure that your mas­ter­piece will trans­late ac­cu­rately to the print­ing press? Ink on paper is an en­tirely dif­fer­ent medium from pix­els on a mon­i­tor. Un­der­stand­ing how to ad­just your book cover im­ages to your printer’s spec­i­fi­ca­tions will make the dif­fer­ence be­tween a cover that sings and a cover that barks. Using the cor­rect color space and con­trol­ling ink den­sity are key fac­tors. I cre­ated a sam­ple, low-res­o­lu­tion book cover de­sign for this ex­er­cise. Fig­ure 1.

I set some body text on my orig­i­nal de­sign so I could vi­su­al­ize my final re­sult, but for pur­poses of ad­just­ing color, I’ll strip it out. Book Cover De­sign: RGB vs. Com­puter mon­i­tors rely on ad­di­tive color. Fig. 2 RGB and CMYK Print­work re­lies on sub­trac­tive color. Fig­ure 3. Fig­ure 4. Book Cover De­sign: Man­ag­ing Ink Den­sity Fig­ure 5. Fig­ure 6. Fig­ure 7. Page Layout: Illustrated Books and the Rule of Thirds. This ar­ti­cle ex­plores page lay­out strate­gies for books based on the Rule of Thirds. A grid sys­tem based on tra­di­tional guide­lines en­sures har­mo­nious pro­por­tions and place­ment of ob­jects on a page.

Page lay­out for books is gov­erned by a range of fac­tors. Trade pub­lish­ers ship­ping 30,000 copies of a title re­al­ize sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings by using smaller type, tighter lead­ing (line spac­ing), and nar­rower mar­gins. For them, aes­thetic sac­ri­fices are smart busi­ness. But indie pub­lish­ers print­ing short runs are free from the busi­ness re­al­i­ties of mass pro­duc­tion (POD pub­lish­ers often order sin­gle books made to order).

I dis­cuss page lay­out in-depth in an ear­lier post, and Wikipedia’s Canons of Page Con­struc­tion is an ex­cel­lent re­source, but though these ar­ti­cles pre­sent lay­outs based on page di­vi­sions of 1/9, read­ers are left won­der­ing, why not 15ths or 8ths? Text set on a page is fun­da­men­tally a box within a box. Simulating the Appearance of Traditional Print. Dig­i­tal ty­pog­ra­phy of­fers ca­pa­bil­i­ties that print­ers work­ing with hot lead type and wood type could only dream of. Dig­i­tal type can be stretched and re­sized in­fi­nitely, jus­ti­fied within un­usual bound­aries, or wrapped around al­most any shape. And yet, tra­di­tional let­ter­press and wood type spe­cialty shops con­tinue to marry ink and paper. Their work of­fers a spe­cial, or­ganic warmth that dig­i­tal type lacks.

This ar­ti­cle ex­plores the dif­fer­ences be­tween dig­i­tal and tra­di­tional type, and sug­gests tech­niques for sim­u­lat­ing the ap­pear­ance of tra­di­tional print. The best source for his­tor­i­cal in­for­ma­tion is old books. You may not want your text to look like it was type­set 100 years ago; styles change, but so have meth­ods for ap­ply­ing ink to paper. Printed let­ters are full of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties that come from sev­eral sources. Ink cov­er­age is an­other vari­able. An­other con­sid­er­a­tion is ink spread. Con­grefs shall make no law… Simulating the Appearance of Traditional Print. Article: Fine Control Over Justified Text. Page lay­out pro­grams like Adobe In­de­sign and Quark, allow ty­pog­ra­phers to exert fine con­trol over jus­ti­fied text to re­move gaps and “rivers.” The de­fault set­tings pro­duce “pretty good” re­sults—bet­ter than a word proces­sor—but a few small tweaks will dra­mat­i­cally im­prove the spac­ing of your text.

This ar­ti­cle ex­plains how to bal­ance hy­phen­ation set­tings with word spac­ing, let­ter spac­ing, and glyph scal­ing to op­ti­mize the ap­pear­ance of jus­ti­fied text. My last “Book De­sign Ba­sics” post dis­cussed the im­por­tance of hy­phen­ation set­tings. These should be ad­justed to suit the line width and the pur­pose of the text. Dis­clo­sure: If you’re read­ing this ar­ti­cle, you’re prob­a­bly work­ing on your own next book and don’t care about mine (sell­ing books to writ­ers is like sell­ing boxed lunches at a chef’s con­ven­tion). Still with me? Here’s the same text with hy­phen­ation and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion at their de­fault set­tings: Book Design Basics - Use Hyphens for Justified Type. Hyphens are an im­por­tant con­trib­u­tor to el­e­gant, easy-to-read ty­pog­ra­phy, es­pe­cially when text is fully jus­ti­fied as is the con­ven­tion in book ty­pog­ra­phy.

This ar­ti­cle ex­plains how jus­ti­fied text works, and how proper hy­phen­ation im­proves the leg­i­bil­ity of your type. Text jus­ti­fi­ca­tion works by ex­pand­ing the spaces be­tween words on each line until the evenly spaced words pre­cisely fill the width of the text field. Some ty­pog­ra­phers hate jus­ti­fied text; they pre­fer the nat­ural spac­ing of the type to the ar­ti­fi­cially ex­panded spac­ing, and they don’t mind the un­even right edge. A com­pelling ar­gu­ment can be made that ragged-right (left-aligned) text is the most leg­i­ble, but a beau­ti­fully pro­por­tioned rec­tan­gle of text set in­side the rec­tan­gle of the page is like­wise an en­gag­ing aes­thetic ex­pe­ri­ence. Vary­ing spaces be­tween the words on a line re­sults in slightly dif­fer­ent spac­ing for each line.

Book Design Basics - Drop Caps and Initial Impressions. NI­TIAL CAP­I­TALS have his­tor­i­cal roots in the early days of book de­sign; their use pre­dates the print­ing press and the in­ven­tion of move­able type. Today’s ini­tial caps are not as fancy as those care­fully ren­dered in gold leaf in an­cient scrip­to­ri­ums, but their as­so­ci­a­tion with clas­sic book de­sign re­mains strong. Ini­tial Cap­i­tal let­ters are often re­ferred to gener­i­cally as “drop caps” though a drop cap­i­tal is ac­tu­ally a spe­cific style of Ini­tial Cap. Some mod­ernists dis­cour­age the use of ini­tial caps, cit­ing a host of ty­po­graph­i­cal prob­lems, but “Once upon a time” just wouldn’t be the same with­out a great big let­ter “O” at the be­gin­ning. Though not ap­pro­pri­ate for every book, ini­tial caps an­nounce the be­gin­ning of a chap­ter with clas­si­cal style. They sug­gest that the text you are about to read tran­scends mere data; this is lit­er­a­ture.

Book De­sign: Dif­fer­ent Styles of Ini­tial Cap­i­tals. Book Design Basics - Drop Caps and Initial Impressions. Book Design Basics: Small Capitals – Avoiding Capital Offenses. Use of Small Cap­i­tals—up­per­case char­ac­ters de­signed at low­er­case scale—is one as­pect of writ­ing and book de­sign that isn’t taught in gram­mar school. We all know every sen­tence be­gins with a cap­i­tal let­ter and ends with a pe­riod. We all should know that writ­ing in all cap­i­tal let­ters is the ty­po­graphic equiv­a­lent of shout­ing—a “cap­i­tal” of­fense. A Small Cap­i­tal (or “small cap”) is a spe­cially de­signed char­ac­ter—not a reg­u­lar cap­i­tal let­ter scaled down to a smaller size. Word proces­sors and even some type­set­ting pro­grams re­in­force the abuse of small caps by of­fer­ing a “small caps” short­cut that scales down the up­per­case let­ters to match the height of the low­er­case char­ac­ters.

A real small cap is dif­fer­ent from a full-cap­i­tal let­ter in sub­tle but im­por­tant ways. Book De­sign Tip: Use a Small Cap Font. The “fake small caps” ex­am­ple uses scaled down cap­i­tal let­ters. Book De­sign Tip: Use Small Caps In­stead of All Caps. Book Design Basics - Dashes, Hyphens and Dots. I par­tic­u­larly like this sec­tion on dashes, hy­phens and dots be­cause it goes be­yond ty­po­graphic aes­thet­ics to ex­plore how we can com­mu­ni­cate more ef­fec­tively as writ­ers. The sub­tle in­tri­ca­cies of hy­phens and dashes af­fect all au­thors whether they type­set their own books or not. Know­ing how to punc­tu­ate cor­rectly em­pow­ers you to con­trol em­pha­sis and han­dle chal­leng­ing sen­tences that con­tain par­en­thet­i­cal asides, omis­sions or in­com­plete thoughts. Here, good ty­pog­ra­phy is an ex­ten­sion of good writ­ing. Many writ­ers are un­aware that the sim­ple dash comes in sev­eral fla­vors.

Be­cause dashes are often used as al­ter­na­tives for other types of punc­tu­a­tion, they are ex­plained here in con­text with the marks they sub­sti­tute for. Book De­sign Tip: The Hy­phen Dash The hy­phen dash is used to split words across a line break or to join two words into one. The waves glowed blue-green in the trop­i­cal sun. Book De­sign Tip: The En-Dash. Book Design Basics Part 3: Running The Numbers. Part 3 of Book De­sign Ba­sics ex­plores bet­ter ways to pre­sent num­bers on your pages. Num­bers (called fig­ures) look sim­ple at first glance, but they pre­sent in­ter­est­ing type­set­ting chal­lenges.

Many dig­i­tal type­faces offer sev­eral num­ber styles but few de­sign­ers know what they are or how to use them prop­erly. If you got to class late, Read Part 2 of Book De­sign Ba­sics first to learn about op­ti­cal mar­gins, para­graph for­mat­ting and spaces. Read about mar­gins, lay­out and lead­ing in Part 1. Num­bers (fig­ures) come in four pri­mary cat­e­gories. Though they play a very small role in the text of an av­er­age novel, num­bers still have an im­por­tant ef­fect on the ap­pear­ance of your text. Ta­bles, menus and recipes use num­bers in dif­fer­ent ways than text set in para­graphs. Book De­sign Tip: Tab­u­lar Fig­ures and Pro­por­tional Fig­ures Tab­u­lar Fig­ures are mono­spaced. Book De­sign Tip: Old­style Fig­ures and Lin­ing Fig­ures. Book Design Basics Part 2: Optical Margins, Indents and Periods.

Part 2 of Fun­da­men­tals of Book De­sign ex­plores op­ti­cal mar­gins, para­graph for­mat­ting and spaces. Read about mar­gins, lay­out and lead­ing in Part 1. The self-pub­lish­ing rev­o­lu­tion is (aside from the In­ter­net) the great­est thing ever to hap­pen to free­dom of speech and ex­pres­sion, but self-pub­lished books are widely stig­ma­tized as poorly pro­duced. Why? Be­cause they al­most uni­ver­sally are.

After all those hours writ­ing and edit­ing, why not pro­duce a book that con­veys your good taste, at­ten­tion to de­tail and care? Book De­sign Tip: Op­ti­cal Mar­gins Op­ti­cal mar­gins are one thing you won’t get your word proces­sor to do, but with a ded­i­cated type­set­ting pro­gram like Adobe In­De­sign, you can im­prove the look of your book de­sign with a sim­ple but un­der­used fea­ture. Let’s look at an or­di­nary block of text (from Oliver Twist by Charles Dick­ens). No­tice how all the punc­tu­a­tion stays strictly within the bound­aries of the text box. Ever! 1. Book Design Basics Part 1: Margins and Leading.

Book de­sign is a lost art. Though book de­sign dis­cus­sions usu­ally focus on cov­ers, con­sider how much more time a reader spends star­ing at the text. An el­e­gant book block is just as im­por­tant. Decades ago, pro­fes­sional trades­men prac­ticed the fine art of type­set­ting. Today, book de­sign is often ex­e­cuted (pun in­tended) by am­a­teurs. As easy as it is to set type, many fine points of ty­pog­ra­phy are com­monly over­looked. For­tu­nately, for the de­sign-aware, dig­i­tal tools like Adobe In­De­sign make it pos­si­ble to pro­duce pages that as­pire to the old stan­dards of hot metal type. Sac­ri­fic­ing com­fort­able mar­gins is un­for­tu­nately a good busi­ness de­ci­sion, even if it’s a bad de­sign de­ci­sion. For­tu­nately, self-pub­lish­ers don’t have this prob­lem be­cause print-on-de­mand (POD) al­lows for the pro­duc­tion of one book at a time. Book De­sign Tip: Mar­gins Line Width is an­other im­por­tant book de­sign con­sid­er­a­tion.

The J.A. Book Design Basics Part 1: Margins and Leading.

Books by Philip Espinosa

Sell On Amazon. Books Sources. 10 Ways to Promote Your Book on Your Blog. Writing a book is an amazing achievement, one you should celebrate and enjoy. Getting your book from a raw mess of words to a polished, publishable entity, complete with a kickass cover and proper formatting, is even more incredible. The day my latest novel The Sunken went live, I did a happy dance. (The cat, asleep in my lap at the time, did not share my enthusiasm.) If you’re at this stage of your writing career, I salute you, and offer you a glass of wine from my own bottle. How to Promote Your Book I have been blogging about music since 2009, and have a small following. Instead of starting from scratch with a new website for my fiction books, I decided to promote my writing through my blog. In March 2014 I self-published my first novel At War With Satan to learn about the process, and check whether self-publishing would work for me.

It worked so well that I was hooked. That went quite well too. Here are the 10 things I did to succeed. #1. Are readers really interested in that stuff? #2. . #3.

Publishing

Publish iBooks. Fonts for books. Book Covers.