Thank Mike Cane for this rant.
I’ve read a few self-pubbed books lately. None of them were egregiously horrible in the design department and a couple of them were even fairly decent. And frankly, after I converted them to digital and put them on my ebook reader, it wasn’t an issue at all. But let me take the opportunity today to piss off everybody right up front and then we’ll get to the good stuff.
1. If I hear one more word out of self-pub haters that someone self-pubs because she sucks as a writer– Oh, wait. I hear that all the time and move along on my own business. Nebber mind. You go ahead and keep doing what you’re doing, Mr./Ms. Author, because obviously it’s working for you. (Note: I saw the writing on the wall for me when an editor said, “We love it and it’s well written, but we don’t know where to put it.”)
2. If I hear one more word out of proudly proclaimed self-publishers that no one can typeset anything in MS Word and make it look right, I’ll scream. Yeah, I have seen your books and yes, like you, I can tell who did and didn’t use Word for typesetting. Yes, you proud InDesign/PageMaker users, I can tell that you (or the interior design person you hired) used InDesign/PageMaker. How can I tell? Because you (or the person you hired) suck at InDesign/PageMaker. I cut my teeth on PageMaker in J-school, so I know what it can and can’t do and how well you have to know it to do it right. GIGO.
Design, people. Design is the first reason independent publishing gets no respect. If a reader can’t get past the design, doesn’t matter how good the writing is or isn’t.
I’m not going to worry about discussing cover art today, because, well, I can’t speak. I winged that and after about a year and sixteen different covers, I had enough skills to put this together:
CLICK TO ENLARGE
So let’s talk about interiors, shall we? In this I have a wee bit of knowledge, but mostly it comes from J-school.
In my opinion, there are a few basics that should be fairly commonsensical but I’ve seen violated as of late:
1. Don’t use Times New Roman 12 pt single spaced. Please. Pleasepleaseplease. Pwettypweeze with sugar on top. (And as a personal favor to me, don’t use Garamond or Palatino Linotype, either. Ask Lulu to please add some more fonts to their repertoire you don’t have to embed OR learn how to embed your fonts, but then you wouldn’t need Lulu.) If you choose to use a sans-serif font, pick one that’s easy on the eyeballs like Calibri or Candara.
2. Justify your margins.
3. Don’t use 1/2-inch paragraph indent. Use something a lot smaller.
4. White space!!! You can get away with using a smaller font size if you make sure your line spacing is adequate.
5. Don’t put your headers on the chapter page break.
In my case, I had a 283,000-word book. I wasn’t going to be able to mess with font sizes much and still fit it all in one spine, which meant I had to do a couple of things I wasn’t happy about, but won’t do on books any shorter. One thing was having to make the font 11 pt. Because in Adobe Jenson, that’s really really really small; on the other hand, the line spacing is 14 pt, which, according to some typography books I’ve read, is a good ratio and I must say my eyeballs agree. The other thing was:
6. Start all chapters on the odd page, not the even. This isn’t a “rule” so much as simple polish. I couldn’t do it because of my page count. On the other hand, I haven’t read a book that stuck to this “rule” in so long I’m not even sure why I care.
Okay, so here’s an example from The Proviso:
CLICK TO ENLARGE
Let’s break it down.
1) No header on chapter page, and no page number, either.
2) Right margin justified.
3) 0.5 inch on the outside margin, but wider margin on top and bottom (not much, admittedly, but enough).
4) 0.2 inch paragraph indent.
5) Drop cap and first line small caps. It’s nice. It means you notice details. Neither of these is necessary, but it polishes without going overboard.
6) Nice line spacing = plenty of white space, or at least, as much line space as I could afford, given the length of the book and Lightning Source’s printing limitations.
So what’s my point?
If you are going to try to do these things yourself, learn what makes human eyeballs happy. Read the books. The one I lived and breathed by was this one: 
Practice. Experiment. Study the way other books are designed (especially the high-end ones). Notice details. Take notes. Don’t be afraid to throw out your pet specs (the same way you shouldn’t be afraid to throw out your words that don’t work).
Independent publishing is a business just like any other business that sells goods to merchants, which makes it difficult enough for us in an industry that doesn’t do business that way and has a vested interest in keeping the status quo. But you know what? If the last week of handselling has taught me anything, it’s that the readers don’t care who published your book–unless it looks like an unprofessional job.
If they take one look at the book and ask to see it, read the back copy, then flip open the pages to read a little bit, and then whip out their checkbook (especially for a book this expensive), then you’ve done something right. If they aren’t intrigued enough to make it to the back copy, and then the first couple of pages, all the good writing in the world isn’t going to help you. They won’t know why they don’t like looking at it and they’ll care even less, but they will know they just don’t want to look at it.
Bottom line: Once you’re finished with the story inside, forget about it and concentrate on the visuals. The book is the art. It all works together in a symbiotic fashion. Don’t believe me? Ask all those authors whose publishers killed their sales straight out of the gate with a bad cover and bad back copy.
“We don’t know where to put it.”
I do. Right in the readers’ hands.
Wow. You are stellar.
““We don’t know where to put it.”
I do. Right in the readers’ hands.”
Exactly! I received a few rejections like that and that’s the best answer I’ve seen.
Your blog has officially become a new read for me! I’m adding you to my list. Keep up the great work and awesome posts. 🙂
Hey MoJo, your cover is beautiful! And the interior is too.
Kickass post. I got that typography book as well as Perfect Pages, which details how to layout in MS Word.
And it cracks me up when you speak in LOLcatz haha.
Thank you very kindly, ladies! Rae, thanks for the link and I’ll be reciprocating.
I’ll also comment on your blog as soon as I remember my OpenID password…
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I just finished a really bad selfpubbed book (or practically selfpubbed) which was a setback, but I’m slowly coming around to your way of thinking. To have editorial departments repeatedly accept Byuck only to have their marketers toss it out raises some questions of course.
But I can’t believe you just yanked the rug out on Garamond. I checked my email to see what you considered a nice text font to be so that’s what the cd’ll be in. Of course, it’s just a placeholder, but sheesh. Couldn’t you have waited a couple weeks to knock it?
I’ve seen plenty of ugly books crash and burn because what have we got to judge a book on other than it’s cover? Which is a big part of why, yes, I agree with you.
That and I sleep with a designer. So obviously denigrating design is bad policy.
Garamond never did anything to me personally, so I don’t know why I’m holding a grudge. Overexposure, I guess.
And I’m still suffering from years of Ensign set in Palatino. I will never NOT associate Palatino with Ensign.
So I’m curious. What does “practically selfpubbed” mean?
You will also note that LDS Publisher did not list my title in this week’s LDS fiction releases even though I made a point to email her and let her know (as she requests). I suppose, by my own definition of LDS fiction, that that’s fitting.
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Maybe if you sent her a fuzzier copy of your cover?
“Practically” refers to the fact that it was a bitty publisher who mostly does design for self-publishers. They’ve published two books — one a public-domain reprint, the other the short story collection I read which included stories from the house owner. They do take submissions, but at present, they haven’t proven to be a [nonself-]publisher.
Which is fine, but this book was rather awful.
It seems to me that given their druthers, professional novel typesetters will always opt for more leading and more pages. I think they’re right.
Several years of experimentation led me to Book Antiqua 10/14. My paperback copy of Montmorency is 9/15 or 10/16 (I’ve rarely seen that much leading, but it works in this case). The web edition of Angel Falling Softly uses Georgia 11/17.
Feel free to download the PDF of The Path of Dreams to see what the final results look like.
I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with a minimalistic approach. Many of the books I look to as models of “transparent” typsetting don’t use headers or footers or even descending caps.
Oh, and I used to think that chapters had to start on an odd-numbered page too, but none of my “reference” books do it, and it obviously never made that big of an impression on me.
Actually, Eugene, I was wondering what yours was set in, because I was staring at it going, that’s familiar but…not. And I love the chapter heading font, but I’m starting to see it everywhere.
ETA: Okay, I need to read better. You said WEB edition. I’m going to go upstairs and look at the book again.
Another issue I see bandied about as “unprofessional” is widows and orphans. That Type & Layout book that I mentioned did actual scientific studies of people reading and found that readers don’t notice widows and orphans.
Honestly, I would’ve liked to have gone 11/15, but I didn’t have the room. Three full-length romances in one novel run you out of your page limit PDQ.
I was choosing between Jenson, Caslon, Minion, and Galliard. I may change for the next book.
And no, Th., I did NOT get a paper ARC for Angel Falling Softly. 😀
I got the hard sell for a professional using InDesign today. Because if you use Word, “readers can tell.”
I don’t deny that professional looking interior layout is important, but I think that when you’re operating with limited start up funds, and you have no idea how much you an sell of a book, a thousand bucks or more for interior layout is a tad bit pricey.
I do think there are some things that will feel “off” to readers, but I also believe that there is enough variation in page layout of traditionally published books, as long as you follow the “don’t do anything to annoy the reader” rule, and you follow all the important design basics, you should be cool.
Or am I just naive?
Your book layout looks fantastic to me. And I’m Joe Q. Reader, but with a slightly better “eye” for this stuff since I’ve been obsessing over it.
So what are the odds that readers will look at your book and go: “No, the horrors! InDesign wasn’t used by a professional with 20 years in the business!”
Bad design can screw up book sales. But, will an indie sell enough books, to really make that thousand dollar price tag (or more) worth it?
For a first book or two, I’m not sure it’s worth the risk to find out.
Chris used Book Antiqua 10/12 for Angel Falling Softly. I would have preferred 14, but 12 squeaks by with a 8.5 X 5.5 page size. The chapter heading font is Bleeding Cowboys, a public domain font.
Looking at Montmorency or the trade paperback edition of All She was Worth or even my hardbound edition of The Amber Spyglass, there’s no way you could tell if they were typeset using Word.
As Mojo mentioned, what I think “experts” are referring to are dumb mistakes like first-line indent and leading and font choice. Now, when it comes to designing covers, I plead utter incompetence.
::roll eyes::
Readers don’t care unless you make their eyeballs tired. What tires mine (in print) really quick is a ragged right margin and not enough spacing between lines (and I don’t care how big the font is).
Thank you!
I read Angel Falling Softly off the manuscript, so I couldn’t say as to its readability in print. As for your cover, it’s brilliant, so whoever did that…kudos.
Zoe, you might like Eugene’s vamp tale, Angel Falling Softly. It’s the one that blew up LDS publishing a while back. Scandalous, is what.
Indeed. What I MEANT to say (I’m having issues with not being clear today) is:
When interior design is done mediocrely or badly, I can tell if the designer was using InDesign/PageMaker or Word. Bad Word typesetting can be mildly annoying. Bad InDesign/PageMaker typesetting is criminal.
I didn’t send her a cover. Would have been polite if she’d just sent an email back and said, “Sorry, don’t feel comfortable telling my audience about your book.”
That book sounds awesome! And I LOVE the cover.
And thank you for that clarification MoJo: “Bad Word typesetting can be mildly annoying. Bad InDesign/Pagemaker typesetting is criminal.”
Question: What makes bad InDesign/Pagemaker design SO bad, over bad Word design?
It’s hard to explain without an example and the most egregious example was a book I got in the library (ironically, touting the use of InDesign/PageMaker over Word).
The most obvious way you can tell is in the spacing between the words and letters in a paragraph–especially if there are tables and pictures that the text flows around.
Technically, InDesign/PageMaker does a better job than Word of shifting the words in a paragraph to the margins and spacing them out in a visually appealing way. But sometimes it doesn’t do that very well because of a combination of the parameters the designer set for the page AND the number of words/letters/length of words in the paragraph. It can’t reconcile the two in a pleasing way. So what you end up with is a paragraph or two of really weirdly spaced out words and gutters.
(In the specific example I’m thinking of, that problem occurred elsewhere, too.)
You can manipulate that more easily by hand in Word (i.e., camouflage it). The problem with doing it in Word is that you have to go through the document manually to get the effect you want and kill the effects you don’t want (and I seriously flubbed up on one page which will get corrected in the next print run), whereas in InDesign/PageMaker, you really don’t have to do that. It does a decent job if you’ve got your settings right.
Don’t get me wrong ID/PM is the superior choice for some things, which I wouldn’t use Word for at all. But for me, typesetting a novel isn’t one of them. K.I.S.S.
Oh I’ve SEEN that. With the letters too spaced out in a few lines. It DOES look very weird. I thought this was some kind of special design thing where they did it to make the right and left justified and avoid orphans and widows.
I agree that typesetting a novel shouldn’t be rocket science. I can see where you might need a more complex program for a nonfiction book with graphs and charts and weird bulleted text. But novels are pretty straight forward.
Says the complete page design neophyte hahaha.
I can hear my mother in the background: “You’ll find out!”
Of course she said this when she thought I was going to procreate, but yeah. haha.
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What are you, a cyborg?
Believe me, if I could get out of that damned chore called “sleep,” I’d submit to any electronic implantation.