What font do you use when publishing your books?
I am working on a major edit/update of my story Costumes. I wrote it and posted it here back in 2012. I felt it was time to publish it. In the two weeks I have gotten through half the book. I figured it was time I actually start looking into what I need to do for publishing this thing beyond the edit / update. Fonts, paper size, margins, format, and stuff like that. There is a lot of guidance online, but Font and font size is not clear.
The other challenge I face is coming up with a good book cover, but I think I have found an AI that can do that for me for much less than what a person would charge (to do it on an AI themselves, most likely).
Comments
My defaults
Are Tahoma in 12pt using a standard ‘6x9’ template that most wp programmes have. I learnt long ago that playing with margins is pointless, that’s the printers area of expertise, you don’t need to overthink this stuff.
Just write then save as a txt file with basic page layout et voila.
I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, since I stopped trying to set everything I’ve not had any issues - I even managed to print my Bsc dissertation with photos and drawings this way.
Madeline Anafrid Bell
My Favorite
My favorite has always been Garamond for whatever reason for font. Tahoma as Maddy mentioned is also good. If you're thinking about going up into Kindle, go download their eBook creator that you have to use now. You can use the options in there and be certain of what will work really easily. It'll handle the setup for the file too for you. You'll need to go through then and create the structure of the book (cover, tables, chapters, end notes, extra material at end, etc.). That was a big change for me with the last book I published because I'd always just uploaded a word doc before.
Good luck! Love the idea of you publishing it! :-)
I don't think it matters much
I use Times New Roman 12 for the body text; 20 for the title; 16 for author and 14 for chapter heading.
A wealth of information on indi publishing can be found in Smashwords Style Guide by Mark Croker
I've used the information in there to publish both on Amazon and Smashwords.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
Montserrat
Not really the same, but for QueerDispatch featured images, I've been using various weights and variations in the MONTSERRAT family of fonts.
On my e-readers I generally override the book setting and read with opendyslexic
-Piper
OpenDyslexic
As an individual who is dyslexic. I love the OpenDyslexic font. When it first came out, I tried to use it with kids, but it was in so few places. I am glad it is more available now.
Keep Smiling, Keep Writing
Teek
(Teek's Author Page)
Dont stress the font.
Stress the adaptability.
Assuming you're talking about digital publishing, keep your book's fonts and design as simple as possible, on the assumption that:
A) Someone's device will have legibility issues if you use anything too complicated, like PDF formatting to enforce certain page sizes and layouts,
B) The end user might have settings in place to make text larger or change the font anyway to make it easier to see or read, and
C) Different storefronts handle conversion of materials differently, so by maintaining simple formatting you keep your book itself as broadly compatible as possible.
A nice looking book with different colored fonts and effects in the text and fancy scrolling etc. might not look so nice on an older, lower-resolution device, or if a user has custom color settings like a dark mode enabled or a hight brightness screen, or the fonts themselves aren't friendly to disabilities like dyslexia.
Mel E.
Focus on Function instead of Form
While Maddy, Sofia, Patricia and Piper have given some good suggestions, Rasufelle is actually making a very important point. And I would like to reinforce it as well. Word processors (like M$-Word, LibreOffice, WordPerfect, etc.) for all the convenience they offer while editing the text, have been wreaking havoc with the most important aspect of any semi-professional publishing project: consistency! Especially with WYSIWYG interfaces, user have shifted their focus on presentation and formatting; instead of the content and function of the text.
A best practice fiction authors should copy from academia and professional publishing would be to concentrate on the content of the story, and identify the functionality of various pieces of text. Then allow the publisher to apply the best presentation formatting to each text functionality for a consistent, balanced and [hopefully] pleasing visual end-product.
What do I mean by text functionality? The function (or functionality) is the purpose that the text fulfills. Among others we have: Book Title and Subtitle; headings for Parts, Chapters and Sections; author; copyrights; markers for footnotes and the footnote text itself; running story text; lists and sub-lists that can be ordered or unordered. But then we could also have: direct speech; quoting someone else; internal speech; direct speech in a foreign language; translated speech (for the benefit of the reader) that actually is in a foreign language.
The tool for this purpose is called „Formatting Styles“. Styles are available in virtually all current word processors. Most have a substantial set of predefined styles, but you can also define personalized styles that can be saved in personalized templates.
The main benefit of using styles is consistency in presentation. If you decide that second level headings would be better with a different font size, you can just modify the setting in the style, and all text marked to function as a second level heading with that style will be changed. Unlike with manual formatting, where it is very easy to overlook or miss one or more relevant headings.
Rasufelle also mentioned accessibility (without using that specific term) where users can and will adapt the settings of their e-readers for their own personal needs and preferences. (Such as color schemes for specific contrasts, font face and sizes, etc.)
In hard-copy or dead-tree-edition publications the presentation is generally limited to monochrome (a single color), serif or sans-serif font, bold and/or italic, and size to differentiated the various text functions. A good publisher will have at least one or two suggestions for font face combinations that work well together on a printed paper page.
But even in electronic publications (such as e-books or websites) it is better to refrain from applying colors directly to the text, for the accessibility issues mentioned above. (Keep in mind that most e-books are just a set of HTML files with CSS formatting.) The e-publishing standards have defined up to 16 text function colors (depending on the support of your specific browser or e-reader) that should be used by authors and/or publishers. These function colors are reflected in the configuration of the color scheme of your browser or e-reader.
By applying colors directly to the text, the author can render the text unreadable for some readers. Either because of a specific color blindness, or because of too much or too little contrast for their specific color scheme or the reader's environment. By configuring the default function colors, the author/publisher can suggest a certain color scheme that can still be adapted to the user's/reader's needs and preferences.
My preferences and suggestions are:
Your publisher and your readers will thank you!
For electronic publication, I suggest using the ePub format. Apart from being an open file-format, it re-flows the text based on the screen size and users settings. So the reader only needs to gently scroll vertically to read the story/book.
I would only use the PDF format if you want the user to print and bind the book on their own. Especially on hand-held devices, it is impossible to read the text of a PDF file without scrolling horizontally. This gets very tedious and annoying fast, more so with a two or three column page layout. The PDF format is generally the last electronic file format before hard-copy production.