Choosing Fonts for Your Self Published Book

How to Choose a Font for your Book

You’ve written a great book that you are sure will keep your readers completely rapt but if you are planning on self-publishing, you will have to consider a number of factors in addition to the content of the book. You need to look at the entire layout of the content, including which fonts to use, the ideal margin space to keep, the best font size and the page numbering amongst others. And with the number of options available, it can be pretty tough to choose the perfect layout for the book.

Since most of the writing programs on a computer are usually set to either Times New Roman or Arial as the default font, several writers do not bother to change this font and they publish their books in either of these two fonts. However, while these fonts may read well on a computer screen, neither of these fonts is meant for physical books since they are not easy on the eye for large bodies of text.

How to Select a Font

A lot of the older fonts that were traditionally used are often the best fonts used in books. If you are looking for an older font for your book, there are three things that you should keep in mind in order to help you find these fonts:

• A tilted axis where the letters are slightly off center
• Rounded serifs that help words to stick together and separate them from other words
• A stroke variation between thin and thick strokes

Popular Fonts Used in Books

If you do not want to risk choosing a font yourself in case it may not look good in your book, here are some fonts that are commonly used in books that are easy to read and understand.

• Garamond: This is one of the oldest and most popular fonts that is used everywhere from documents to books to all other kinds of written material. This classic font has also been modified in a number of ways and it is used as the base font for a number of other font styles.
• Palatino: This font is a very popular font and it is one of the oldest fonts available. It was used as the base font for every Macintosh that was sold earlier. This makes it very familiar to a lot of people.

Other fonts include Minion (which is a newer invention and is becoming very popular) as well as Janson Text and Caslon.

Choosing the Best Font

The best way to go about choosing a font is to compare a number of fonts with each other. After selecting your top three or four choices, type out the same page in all these three or four different fonts and then compare them with each other. See which font is easiest to read and which looks the best overall. Once you settle on a font, you should use the same font for the whole book.

If you are unsure about which font best matches the genre of your book or which layout works best in terms of ease of reading, then it is best to hire a professional to work on the layout of your book. Professionals have an eye for spotting what looks good and what doesn’t. Moreover they are trained in what works for the readers and what doesn’t. You know that with the help of a professional, you will be able to publish a book that is interesting and easy to read too.