Print-ready novel, advice needed for page layout

First off, I'd recommend not using Times New Roman. The font choice is really important for looking like a trade published book. Some books will say what they've used in the copyright section and you'll find people talking online about various book interior fonts. Garamond is popular because a lot of people have it, but there are quite a few available. I used Minion Pro. Do make sure you have the proper license for whatever font you choose.

I suspect your words-per-line issue will solve itself after getting a better book interior font.

You might find this post on typesetting in my diary useful.

Lorcanmc said:

Thanks a lot for the reply. I must play around with font, is there a reason you don't recommend Times New Roman?

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It was designed for a newspaper, so tends to produce overly dense text, as you've discovered. It went on to be the default font in Word (so it was used everywhere). Which means it can hard to read for a whole book and people associate it with cheap mass production.

I find it hard to tell what is going to be readable and what is not.

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A few common ones that aren't free: Garamond, Janson, Bembo, Minion, Caslon and Sabon. A big name in professional fonts is Abode. The advantage of this route is their fonts are polished and tend to be complete (they have all the odd symbols and characters). That makes them a lot easier to work with. But they're also fairly expensive (a few hundred pounds isn't unusual).

You will find similar fonts on the free font sites, but I haven't tried any of those. A couple of blog posts that mention some free alternatives:

http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2015/08/5-favorite-free-fonts/
http://www.creativindie.com/the-8-b...ok-layout-with-type-combinations-and-samples/

I've found that fonts ideal for book interiors often look a bit thin in Word, but it's not how they print or how they look in the final PDF. So always print a few test samples.

Also, I wasn't aware that a license was needed for a font. Do you mean those already on Word? What does getting a license for a font entail? This is all new to me.

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To use a font for commercial purposes, you need a license that says you have the right to do that. I couldn't find a firm answer to what rights the user has for the fonts in Word, which is why I don't use them. If I really wanted to use one of those fonts, I'd get a separate license. You can't assume that having it on your computer means you have the rights to use it commercially.

Random note: technically they're typefaces, so though a lot of people call them fonts, that may not be the wording on the license.

I agree about TNR; it's a terrible choice for typesetting a print book. Apart form the issues that Polenth mentioned, it just looks amateurish, for lack of a better word.

Take your time choosing a font family. It will be the most important decision you'll make in terms of printing your book. Compose a few pages of text and then try out different typefaces by printing them out. Some trade-published books mention the typefaces that were used, so you can get a feel for what the industry considers standards.

I also don't recommend using Word for formatting a print book, but that's probably veering off topic if you don't have other options.

You may be too far down the path now to think about this, but I think the templates that Createspace provides are incredibly helpful in setting up at least a baseline of how a print book should be formatted and laid out. (And I just use the default font that they suggest, Garamond.) Sounds like you've caught most of the big issues already, but may be worth a final comparison check...

WriterBN said:

I also don't recommend using Word for formatting a print book, but that's probably veering off topic if you don't have other options.

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That seems on-topic to me, as software recommendations that aren't InDesign would be useful. Has anyone used anything else? (The InDesign issue being that it's a monthly subscription rather than a proper software purchase... which might not have been the case in the past, but is an issue now.)

Adobe is giving away (okay, they took down the activation servers and posted an EXE) for InDesign CS2. Yes, it's old, but it has all of the functionality that you need. I really don't like any of the comparable programs. Quark XPress might be the closest thing; I refuse to touch MS Publisher with a 20 foot pole.

As for fonts, I tend to use Book Antiqua for body text, Century Gothic for accents / headers / etc.

I've used Word for the approximately 20 titles I have in print. Worked just fine for me using the CS templates and then saving as a PDF to upload to CS.

I just checked and looks like most of mine are in 11 pt. I think 14 pt would come off looking pretty big...

Another thing you could do is set the title up in CS just so you can order preview copies to see how it looks when printed and physically in your hand. For my shorter titles it was something like $3 a copy plus shipping and for the longest one I think it was $5.50 or so plus shipping.

M. H. Lee said:

I think 14 pt would come off looking pretty big...

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Indeed. We're required to use 14-point fonts in our briefs by decree of the court. Presumably because it's hard for the old judges to read anything smaller.

In your position I'd reconsider the print edition of the book, and launch with digital versions only, and perhaps a POD print edition if you really want one. Most self publishers find the bulk of their sales are in e-book form. It's extremely difficult to sell print editions without the distribution systems trade publishers use, and you might well find yourself stuck with a big heap of books you have no way of selling, and no way to recoup the money you paid for them.

Test the waters with a digital edition. Put up a POD edition too, if you want a print option. And if they start to move well, consider how you'd sell all those print copies and put a strong and realistic business plan in place to do so before you commit to the expenditure.

ZachJPayne said:

Adobe is giving away (okay, they took down the activation servers and posted an EXE) for InDesign CS2. Yes, it's old, but it has all of the functionality that you need. I really don't like any of the comparable programs. Quark XPress might be the closest thing; I refuse to touch MS Publisher with a 20 foot pole.

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Adobe made it clear it was intended for people who'd previously purchased the product only. Much as I'm very careful to make sure I have all the font licenses, I don't want to use software I don't have the rights to use. I'm not going to assume I'll always be making peanuts and will go under the radar (ethics issues aside). Word is a clunky bucket, but it's a completely legal one.

Lorcanmc said:

I am going to do a digital version too, but I do want a physical book. I'll prob get a hundred or so copies at first, I at least want something physical so I can give to family and friends.

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One hundred copies is a lot to store, and a lot to sell. Even if you're going to give a lot of them away, I'd still caution you to buy fewer copies. And from what I remember, you're way under the break-even point for an offset run there: POD might well be cheaper at such a low number.

At least in Ireland, physical book sales are still more than 50% of the market, people still like an object they can hold in their hand.

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Physical book sales make up a good proportion of total sales in the UK and in the USA too. However, that's for book sales overall. If you consider self-published books, print editions make up only a tiny fraction of sales.

This is not really a money-making venture for me, at least not now. If I can cover the cost of publishing, that will be a success for me. Any money I make from this book is really a bonus, I am doing it because I have written something I think deserves to be read and I don't want to just leave it in the proverbial drawer.

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If you pay for one hundred copies you are very unlikely to cover your publishing costs.

I'm sorry to be so blunt but I've watched so many of AW's members, and writers elsewhere, go through this and can't remember many who sold even fifty print copies. Please be careful.

It is an experience, first and foremost, a learning process. Maybe in the future I can look on it as a business, but for this one I just need to do it as well as possible, promote it well, learn from the whole thing and see what happens.

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I hope it goes well for you.

Polenth said:

That seems on-topic to me, as software recommendations that aren't InDesign would be useful. Has anyone used anything else? (The InDesign issue being that it's a monthly subscription rather than a proper software purchase... which might not have been the case in the past, but is an issue now.)

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Really, the only professional options worth considering (unfortunately) are InDesign and Quark. I was a long-time Quark user who switched to InDesign around 10 years ago. I do have the CC subscription, but I depend on it for my freelance business, so the cost isn't really an issue.

To the OP (sorry, haven't figured out a quick/easy way to multi-quote different posts):
14 pt will definitely be on the large side, unless you're doing middle grade or children's books. If you don't find other fonts, Adobe Garamond is a good default to use. And, FWIW, I agree with Old Hack about stockpiling print books. I sell maybe 1 or 2 print copies for every 100 e-books, although that percentage goes up a bit when I have a new release.

Some general observations:

1. Consider POD; you can always upscale later, and you'll likely be able to use the same files.

2. InDesign, Quark Express and Frame Maker are still the professional standards. They're not easy to learn, and quite often people who think they've mastered them in a couple of days use are absolutely wrong. They're also pricey.

3. Consider using a professional template from a trained layout designer. They're not that expensive; typically $40.00 or so, and they tend to use faces that are both available and affordable in terms of licensing. Better still, consider using a professional designer and typesetter, if you're serious about a print run of 100. You're going to be spending so much that the designer costs will be minor in comparison.

4. What you really need to be able to do for a first-time typesetter is tracking, rather than kerning. There are decent apps for both Windows and OS X that will allow you to track (adjust the spaces between words) rather than kern (adjust the space between letter pairs).

5. It's less the size of the type than the leading (space between lines of text) that make some print books more readable than others. Consider 11 pt. type on sixteen or even 17 pt. leading. Go look at the colophon (small paragraph about the book design) at the very end of a book or in the front matter for many books.

6. Look at typefaces that have been used for books for many years: Book Antiqua, Schoolbook, Garamond, Janson, Palatino, etc. There are about 25 or so standard book faces that are serif, and about 25 standard book faces that are sans serif. Serf vs sans serif (serifs are the little "tails" on letters) are a religious issue, but you'll notice most fiction uses serif faces. For non fiction it very much depends on the book. I am firmly on the serif side for body text, with limited exceptions, but ultimately, it comes down to design choices.

Designing and setting your book carefully will not only make it more readable, it will lower the price substantially. Did you see the typesetting FAQ? Some good resources there.

Lorcanmc said:

Am I missing something, or am I deluded? Because, once I learned about mirror margins, widows and orphans, headers, footers and page breaks, it is not really a diffiuclt process. It seems absolutely doable on Word.

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It's certainly doable in Word, but you may be too close to it to see the problems. It's not trivial to adjust tracking, for example, in Word whereas you can do so in a professional layout app much quicker. Drop caps are also easier using a professional app, and I don't believe Word allows for optical margin alignment. I also find Word's kerning ugly compared to that from InDesign.

In the end, these are relatively minor issues, and most readers probably don't care. If you're happy with what you achieved in Word, that's probably good enough.

Or you could use a Createspace template and spend an hour or so tweaking. Slightly cheaper than paying a designer. I've honestly never understood the panty-twisting that goes on with formatting for print and Kindle. Anyone who doesn't know what to look for (i.e 99% of readers) would not even notice the majority of things people fuss about.

And I have done it all on Word. A number of people here suggested that Word is not a good programme for typesetting, and I was told that by the graphic designer that did my cover, and by a writer friend of mine. In fact this writer friend was horrified that I had even imagined setting the book myself, and didn't hire someone to do it for me.

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Word is workable. It also sets type kinda ugly in comparison. This is why many professionals have a strong negative reaction.

So it's all about your personal threshold for professionalism.

Most readers won't notice, or won't know why something is a little "off" about your book if they do happen to notice. But some will.

Are you okay with that?

Am I missing something, or am I deluded? Because, once I learned about mirror margins, widows and orphans, headers, footers and page breaks, it is not really a diffiuclt process.

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It's hard to guess if you're missing something. You don't know what you don't know, and I don't know what your pages look like. I can tell you there's a lot more to typesetting than you've mentioned, even for a "simpler" job like narrative fiction, and I wouldn't profess to know that much about it either. I'd be additionally concerned about whether you handled scene breaks well, handled acronyms and dates/times and em-dashes and ellipses to convention, and have your front/back matter, chapter headings and header/footer content not just technically functional, but up to industry standard in design.

Abderian said:

Or you could use a Createspace template and spend an hour or so tweaking. Slightly cheaper than paying a designer. I've honestly never understood the panty-twisting that goes on with formatting for print and Kindle. Anyone who doesn't know what to look for (i.e 99% of readers) would not even notice the majority of things people fuss about.

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You're right that many people won't notice what's wrong if a book is poorly typeset. But they will notice that something's off, on one level or another, and it often does make potential readers put the book back on the bookshop shelves, and take something else.

Good typesetting makes a book far more saleable, and is worth getting right. If it wasn't, trade publishers wouldn't pay people good money to do it for them.

Old Hack said:

You're right that many people won't notice what's wrong if a book is poorly typeset. But they will notice that something's off, on one level or another, and it often does make potential readers put the book back on the bookshop shelves, and take something else.

Good typesetting makes a book far more saleable, and is worth getting right. If it wasn't, trade publishers wouldn't pay people good money to do it for them.

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This assumes that tweaking a Createspace template will create a book that's noticeably poorly typeset, and that the book will be available in a bookshop. Even an artistically challenged person such as myself can iron out noticeable oddities, and indie-published books are rarely on bookshop shelves.

I have never put a book back on a shelf because it was there was 'something off' about the way it looked. I'm interested in reading it, not studying its typesetting. What's your evidence that good typesetting makes a book far more saleable?

Lorcanmc said:

So I am looking for a little advice on formatting and laying out a page.

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Best advice is to find a graphic designer to handle this. In the US, no printer will take a Word file and use it, it will get converted to a PDF, likely though Adobe Pagemaker, which will likely not hold your careful formatting. Your graphic designer will be able to get your printer the right bleeds, gutter sizes and page layout while meeting your needs for the look and feel. You'd pay as much additional to the printer for the conversion as for a better result by using your own designer.

If the printer is perfectly happy to print directly from your Word file, then there's a reason he's cheaper by far. And it will show.

Jeff

Abderian said:

Old Hack said:

You're right that many people won't notice what's wrong if a book is poorly typeset. But they will notice that something's off, on one level or another, and it often does make potential readers put the book back on the bookshop shelves, and take something else.

Good typesetting makes a book far more saleable, and is worth getting right. If it wasn't, trade publishers wouldn't pay people good money to do it for them.

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This assumes that tweaking a Createspace template will create a book that's noticeably poorly typeset, and that the book will be available in a bookshop.

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That's not what I wrote at all. You might want to reread my comment.

Even an artistically challenged person such as myself can iron out noticeable oddities, and indie-published books are rarely on bookshop shelves.

I have never put a book back on a shelf because it was there was 'something off' about the way it looked. I'm interested in reading it, not studying its typesetting. What's your evidence that good typesetting makes a book far more saleable?

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You might not realise that you did, but if you have spent much time browsing through print editions in physical bookshops, chances are you've done it.

My evidence? I've read quite a few studies about how readability affects readers' buying decisions; I've talked to booksellers, publishers and readers about it, I've seen what happens to good books when they are poorly put together and how you can change a book's future by redesigning and repackaging it. I've seen that last one happen numerous times over the thirty years or so that I've worked in publishing. It's quite astonishing.

You can probably find some of those studies and surveys online: some are academic papers so you might have to go to your local university to see them. Others were privately commissioned by the publishers I've worked for, so won't necessarily be available to the general public. Some, however, made it into the media and so you could almost certainly find news stories about them. It's interesting stuff, and there's a lot of it: you're bound to find something.

If you're reluctant to invest the time in researching and reading, though, I pointed to the proof in the final sentence of my previous post. Trade publishers don't incur costs unless they're absolutely essential.