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The Key Elements For the Inside Pages of Your Self-Published Book

By Karen Saunders

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 11Mar2010 Word count: 671 Viewed: 302 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

While it's very important to have written a great book, the design of its cover and the design of its inside pages plays an equally important role in the overall success of the book's sales. All three elements need to work together harmoniously toward a common end, book sales.

Typography

Johannes Gutenberg, who invented the first printing press in 1439, would be thrilled and amazed at the wide array of fonts available in today's printing environment, and how the specialization of this aspect of printing is now available inside the home on a personal computer. The look and the arrangement of type in the layout of your self-published book makes the design attractive as well as easier to read.

The font you choose for your book's body copy can be personable, but it absolutely must be easy to read. It's a good idea to choose one font for headers and another for body copy. Fonts that have standard proportion and work well for body copy are: Garamond, Caslon, Goudy, Stone Print, New Century Schoolbook, and Janson Text 55 Roman. Many of these fonts are available inside Microsoft Word, although your designer would probably be using a higher end software for the book's interior, such as InDesign or Quark Xpress.

Understanding Types of Fonts

The font and style you choose for the inside of your self-published book probably requires a professional's guidance, but a bit of understanding about fonts can go a long way in making your own choices.

Open Type fonts work on both a Mac and a PC. It's wise to buy the whole font family (italic, bold, regular, etc.) as you'll use them throughout your book's layout. PostScript or Type 1 fonts are the second choice of fonts to use particularly if your self-published book is going to be offset printed.

TrueType fonts come with most Microsoft products but may cause some problems when your file is "ripped" (converted for printing). It's wiser to stick with PostScript, Type 1 or Open Type. Adobe fonts are high quality fonts.

Kerning, Tracking, and Leading

Now you may personally not be interested in the technology that uses kerning, tracking and leading, but you'll need to be aware of it so that you can appreciate the role it plays in the readability of your words. Kerning, tracking, and leading determines the overall appearance of your text. Kerning is the process of adding or subtracting space between specific sets of characters, generally in headers or headlines. Tracking is the process of loosening or tightening a block of text. Leading is a measure of the space between lines of text.

If your mind goes a bit flat over all this technology, it's time to consider hiring a good graphic designer to accomplish this for you. They actually enjoy working with kerning, tracking and leading!

About Styles

Flipping through any book will tell you about its style. Look at the headers throughout the book. Look at the paragraph format. See how each chapter begins. See the paragraph spacing. Watch if new chapters begin on the right hand side of the book or see if they begin on the page immediately after the previous chapter. Do the paragraphs have single or double spacing? Is the first line of a paragraph indented or flush left?

Does the book have different layout on the left side pages as the right side pages? Where is the folio (page number) placed? Center? Top? Bottom? Once you have made yourself aware of how others have set up the inside of their books, you can decide which of these formatting styles will work best for the book you are self publishing.

The inside pages of your book probably require more decision making on your part than you realized. Having a professional design the inside of the book might make more sense now, but you are truly armed now with the basics of what that designer will be accomplishing for you and your ultimate success.

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