Consider these details before formatting your book!

When you start typesetting (a.k.a. formatting) your book, the tiny details that are so easy to overlook are some of the most critical to ensuring a comfortable, pleasant reading experience! Here are some to keep in mind, plus publishing standards or suggestions for each one.

Typeface (a.k.a. font)

Fiction is typically typeset in a serif font—that is, the fonts with the extra little strokes on the ends of the letters. (Those strokes are called serifs, hence the classification.) Think the classic look of Times New Roman, as opposed to Calibri with its totally clean, modern letters (that’s called sans serif). Very occasionally you might see a novel set in a sans serif font for stylistic purposes, or you might use it, for example, if you have text messages in your story that you want to stand out. But the rule of thumb is serif.

Don’t use just any serif font, though! Times New Roman is a prime example. It’s the standard when you’re submitting to a publisher, but you should not typeset your published book in it. It wasn’t designed for that purpose; it’s too wide and dense for a good reading experience.

You should NOT set your published book in Times New Roman.

My personal favourites are Cardo (size 10.5 or 11) and Cormorant Garamond (size 11). They give a lovely clean, professional look. As a bonus, both are free for commercial use on Google Fonts!

This doesn’t apply to chapter headers, by the way. You can absolutely use a sans serif font there, or a more decorative display font. But as a rule of thumb, always set your manuscript body in a serif.

Font size

The best font size for your book varies on the font you’re using, but it’s usually somewhere between 10 and 12 points. As mentioned above, I hover around 10.5 or 11 points. For children’s books, you’d probably go bigger.

Keep in mind that if the text is too small, no one can read it; if it’s too large, it looks unprofessional.

(Of course, large print editions are an exception to that.)

Many indie authors are concerned about making page count as low as possible, to keep printing costs down. I firmly maintain that saving a couple cents by cutting down 20 pages is NOT WORTH your book looking unprofessional!

Pro tip: Most software you might use for formatting supports decimal font sizes. In Microsoft Word you can add .5, so instead of 10 or 11 points you can do 10.5. Professional software like Affinity or Adobe can do any single-digit decimal, like 10.1 or 10.7.

Line spacing

The amount of space between lines of text isn’t quite as simple as hitting the double-spacing setting in Microsoft Word. (Please don’t do that, lol.) Standard line spacing is 1.4 times your font size. In other words, if your font size is 11 points, your line spacing should normally be 15.4.

You can do that custom setting in Word or your professional software. However, if you’re not super fluent messing around in Word, the existing 1.5x setting is a fine compromise.

Depending on trim size and other factors, 1.4x might be too tight or too loose, so do adjust if necessary. Just keep in mind that ease of readability is key for a professional appearance. A good rule of thumb: always make it greater than single spacing, and never as much as double spacing.

Text alignment

Your body text should be justified, a.k.a. evenly aligned with both the left and right margins. It should not be left aligned, a.k.a. jagged on the righthand side!

That said, the final line of a paragraph usually won’t stretch all the way to the righthand margin, which of course is fine. The paragraph ends where it ends. :)

Justifying your text means that sometimes the spacing between words will be wider or narrower than in other places, and that’s okay. If you take a look at traditionally published books, you’ll notice how common it is, even though you don’t usually notice it because you’re so used to it!

To avoid extremely wide spacing, use hyphenation as needed.

Indents

Instead of using the tab key to set the indent for a new paragraph, use paragraph settings to set a first line indent. It should be around 0.25 inches, not much deeper. It should certainly not be as deep as the tab key gives you!

However, the first paragraph of a new chapter and following a scene break should not be indented.

Pro tip: if you’ve been using the tab key to indent, you don’t have to go through the entire document to remove them all! Instead, turn on non-character markup in your document (Ctrl-Shift-8 in Microsoft Word on Windows) and find a tab character. It should look like a little arrow pointing right. Highlight and copy it, open the find-replace window (Ctrl-H on Windows), paste it into the find field, put nothing in the replace field, and hit replace all. Voila, hours of work saved!

Headers and footers

On the body pages of your books, you want page numbers and possibly your nae or title. These can be arranged in different ways—centred, left or right aligned, header or footer. Look at different books in your genre and choose your favourite. (Try not to do something wildly different!)

You should not have headers or footers on your front matter pages such as title, copyright, dedication, or table of contents. You should also not have them on the first page of a new chapter, though you could do a page number in the footer if you prefer. Page numbering only belongs on the story pages, foreword, etc. Again, do as the trad pubs do.

Trim size

Don’t let print on demand distributors fool you into thinking that your book should be 6x9 inches! Yes, this is the standard trade paperback size, but your book may not be appropriate as a trade paperback. 5.5x8.5 or 5x8 is standard for many genres.

You don’t want to make this decision in a vacuum. It’s too important, because you want your book to fit next to similar titles on the bookshelf. This is not a situation where you should be standing out; in this case, that just looks unprofessional.

Look up comp titles on Amazon and scroll down to that horizontal section where they show you publisher, page count, etc. This section will also tell you the trim size. (Or you can physically measure comp titles that you own.) Figure out the average size for your comps and base your trim size off that.

Margins

Here’s another area where you shouldn’t blindly follow a distributor’s guidelines! Do not use whatever minimum margin size they require. It’s usually too small for a comfortable reading experience.

Think of that minimum size requirement as exactly that: if your margin is smaller, they won’t print it, but that doesn’t mean it’s the appropriate margin size for a professional book release.

Instead, check out your comps yet again and physically measure their margins to get a sense of what works and looks good. Remember to add 0.125 inches to the inner margin to account for the gutter! That’s the part that’s going to get lost in the binding.

Same as with font size, don’t make your reader’s experience uncomfortable for the sake of a few saved cents. :)

What are your biggest pain points when it comes to formatting your book? Jump in the comments and ask me anything—or suggest a topic for a future newsletter!