{"id":169,"date":"2008-11-13T12:36:27","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T17:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=169"},"modified":"2025-07-28T21:27:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T02:27:11","slug":"book-design-ur-doin-it-rong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/book-design-ur-doin-it-rong\/","title":{"rendered":"Book design: ur doin it rong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thank Mike Cane<\/a> for this rant.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve 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\u2019t an issue at all. But let me take the opportunity today to piss off everybody right up front and then we\u2019ll get to the good stuff.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. If I hear one more word out of self-pub haters that someone self-pubs because she sucks as a writer\u2014 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\u2019re doing, Mr.\/Ms. Author, because obviously it\u2019s working for you. (Note: I saw the writing on the wall for me when an editor said, \u201cWe love it and it\u2019s well written, but we don\u2019t know where to put it.\u201d)<\/li>\n
  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\u2019ll scream. Yeah, I have<\/em><\/strong> seen your books and yes, like you, I can tell who did and didn\u2019t use Word for typesetting. Yes, you proud InDesign\/PageMaker users, I can<\/em><\/strong> 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<\/em><\/strong> at InDesign\/PageMaker. I cut my teeth on PageMaker in J-school, so I know what it can and can\u2019t do and how well you have to know it to do it right. GIGO.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Design, people. Design is the first reason independent publishing gets no respect. If a reader can\u2019t get past the design, doesn\u2019t matter how good the writing is or isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019m not going to worry about discussing cover art today, because, well, I can\u2019t speak. I winged that and after about a year and sixteen different covers, I had enough skills to put this together:<\/p>\n

    \n
    <\/a>
    Teh Bewbies\u2122<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    So let\u2019s talk about interiors, shall we? In this I have a wee bit of knowledge, but mostly it comes from J-school.<\/p>\n

    In my opinion, there are a few basics that should be fairly commonsensical but I\u2019ve seen violated as of late:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Don\u2019t use Times New Roman 12 pt single spaced. Please. Pleasepleaseplease. Pwettypweeze with sugar on top. (And as a personal favor to me, don\u2019t use Garamond or Palatino Linotype, either. Ask Lulu to please add some more fonts to their repertoire you don\u2019t have to embed OR learn how to embed your fonts, but then you wouldn\u2019t need Lulu.) If you choose to use a sans-serif font, pick one that\u2019s easy on the eyeballs like Calibri or Candara.<\/li>\n
    2. Justify your margins.<\/li>\n
    3. Don\u2019t use 1\/2-inch paragraph indent. Use something a lot smaller.<\/li>\n
    4. White space!!! You can get away with using a smaller font size if you make sure your line spacing is adequate.<\/li>\n
    5. Don\u2019t put your headers on the chapter page break.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      In my case, I had a 283,000-word book. I wasn\u2019t 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\u2019t happy about, but won\u2019t do on books any shorter. One thing was having to make the font 11 pt. Because in Adobe Jenson, that\u2019s really really really small; on the other hand, the line spacing is 14 pt, which, according to some typography books I\u2019ve read, is a good ratio and I must say my eyeballs agree. The other thing was:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Start all chapters on the odd page, not the even. This isn\u2019t a \u201crule\u201d so much as simple polish. I couldn\u2019t do it because of my page count. On the other hand, I haven\u2019t read a book that stuck to this \u201crule\u201d in so long I\u2019m not even sure why I care.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Okay, so here\u2019s an example from The Proviso<\/em>:<\/p>\n

        \"\"
        Typesetting The Proviso<\/em> 1st Edition in MS Word (click to embiggen)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

        Let\u2019s break it down.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. No header on chapter page, and no page number, either.<\/li>\n
        2. Right margin justified.<\/li>\n
        3. 0.5 inch on the outside margin, but wider margin on top and bottom (not much, admittedly, but enough).<\/li>\n
        4. 0.2 inch paragraph indent.<\/li>\n
        5. Drop cap and first line small caps. It\u2019s nice. It means you notice details. Neither of these is necessary, but it polishes without going overboard.<\/li>\n
        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\u2019s printing limitations.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          So what\u2019s my point?<\/p>\n

          \"\"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<\/a>:<\/p>\n

          Practice. Experiment. Study the way other books are designed (especially the high-end ones). Notice details. Take notes. Don\u2019t be afraid to throw out your pet specs (the same way you shouldn\u2019t be afraid to throw out your words that don\u2019t work).<\/p>\n

          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\u2019t 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\u2019s that the readers<\/em><\/strong> don\u2019t care who published your book\u2014unless it looks like an unprofessional job.<\/p>\n

          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\u2019ve done something right. If they aren\u2019t intrigued enough to make it to the back copy, and then the first couple of pages, all the good writing in the world isn\u2019t going to help you. They won\u2019t know why<\/em><\/strong> they don\u2019t like looking at it and they\u2019ll care even less, but they will<\/em><\/strong> know they just don\u2019t want to look at it.<\/p>\n

          Bottom line: Once you\u2019re 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\u2019t believe me? Ask all those authors whose publishers killed their sales straight out of the gate with a bad cover and bad back copy.<\/p>\n

          \u201cWe don\u2019t know where to put it.\u201d<\/p>\n

          I do. Right in the readers\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Thank Mike Cane for this rant. I\u2019ve 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\u2019t an issue at all. But let […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[529],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-production"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16293,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions\/16293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}