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Charlie’s Choice
Weekly Tips to Help You Write,
Publish & Promote Your Work
HEADING INSIDE: A LOOK AT
HOW A BOOK IS FORMATTED
In last week’s column, we looked at the goals and the skills needed to create a quality book cover: front, spine and back. This week we’ll expand our understanding of book design by reaching inside to learn more about the goals of a good book designer and the techniques that he/she calls upon to make it happen.
Neither publishers nor authors need become experts in design. There are always skilled professionals to carry out these chores. The role of the publisher and/or author is to be able to evaluate skillfully whether the design, either cover or interior, will boost or deter sales. Believe me, design does maintain a powerful influence over sales, as you will realize after reading this short column.
The Designer’s Dictionary
One of the first requirements is to learn the jargon of the designer. As you know, many specialties have their own lexicon, and interior design does too, of course. Understanding these few key words and phrases will help you comprehend what the designer is saying as you discuss ways to improve your format.
BOOK BLOCK, also known as Text Block, is the inclusive term for all matter that appears between the front and back cover.
FRONT MATTER represents all of the material that is printed in the front of the book between the front cover and the body or main text of the book.
THE BODY This is the central and most important segment of the book. For fiction, it is the story; in the case of nonfiction, it is the narrative. Whether the book is a how-to, a history, a true crime or a scholarly work, the body carries all of the information the author seeks to pass on to the reader.
BACK OF THE BOOK Any material that is added after the main body of the book is considered part of this category. That includes things like an index, appendix, special notes, references, etc.
FONT This term refers to a complete set of type of a single size and face (style).
SERIF Serif fonts like Times Roman feature decorative enhancements on their vertical lines; sans serif fonts like Arial have none. It is generally thought that serif type is a bit easier to read, particularly because the little footers lead the eye from one word to the next.
MARGINS While I am sure you know this term from all the way back in your grammar school classes, I add it here because it takes on a special significance when used in a discussion of book design. Books usually present a great deal of type. That, of course, is what a book is all about…a document to be read. It is important to offer the reader the opportunity to take a quick break and rest his/her eyeballs. In addition, it opens up the page, lessening the overwhelming impact of a solid, heavy copy mass.
JUSTIFY This represents an action to adjust the spacing of a line of type so that all the lines end evenly forming a straight margin.
RAGGED RIGHT OR LEFT In these cases, no effort is made to justify the type. That is why you find in most cases, varying lengths of lines as the typographer attempts to end a line with a complete word. Many literary agents insist upon raged right composition, claiming it is far easier to read than justified copy. As a result, it has become the most common formatting in our industry.
LEADING This term refers to the vertical spacing between lines…the varying amount of white space the typographer may choose to use in his/her layout. Obviously, a greater amount of leading will help each line to stand out in a large block of type. But there are specific ratios that are the most effective based on type size and type design. There is often the concern that the “tail’” or type on a higher line might clash with the height of the type used on the succeeding line.
TRIM SIZE This is the finished size of the page. The most common trims are 5.5 X 8.5 and 6 X 9. I have used both sizes for my books, depending on which I felt was most appropriate. Wherever possible, it’s a good idea to keep your trim sizes uniform so that they will all fit well into a single size shipping carton. It is also important to remember that in the case of many book covers, the background color goes all the way to the edge of the page. Therefore you must allow in the neighborhood of ¼ inch for what we call Bleed. Your printer can give you exact specs for the bleed required.
SIGNATURES Multiple pages of a book are printed at the same time. I know this is a confusing concept, but you may grasp it if you take a piece of paper and fold it in half four times. That will give you 16 sections on each side. A standard sheet-fed press will print 32 pages at one time, 16 on the top of the sheet and 16 on the bottom. The backs and fronts must be carefully matched before running the press. On a web press, the number printed at one time is 48.
Additional Considerations
Here are a few thoughts that may help you in evaluating the format your designer presents.
Reading newspapers, as so many hundreds of thousands did regularly, accustomed our eyes to a very narrow column, much shorter than the average column of type in a book. Of course, that would mean a huge waste of space in a book, and force the price sky-high because of the large number of pages you would need.
So the gurus of the industry set parameters based on a great deal of “eye-to-page” study. These figures are affected by many variables such as the vocabulary the author uses and what he/she is writing about. The standard that is generally set is about 60-65 letters per line, so you can see how the subject matter (long scientific words, for example) and an erudite author’s mode of polysyllabic expression can affect that finding.
In contrast to the way potential readers see the cover copy, the interior of a book is generally studied from a distance of between one and two feet away. Bear this in mind when you analyze the type used by your designer, for sometimes designers can be carried away by an artistic consideration, and hand you a format that really isn’t ideal for reading.
I have searched Amazon for several decent books on interior formatting, but came up relatively empty handed. Most pertained to Kindle or were promos for individual designers. I was lucky enough to find The Non-Designer’s Design Book on B&N.com in an updated version released in February, 2008, and tracked it down on Amazon as well. The original edition has been around for years. These are both 5-star books by the highly respected Robin Williams.
At a recent meeting of a well known writers’ organization, I overheard a tense discussion of writer’s block that made me bristle. So next week, we’ll turn our attention to writer’s block and a number of other ridiculous myths that have been associated with our profession. See you then.
Keep Writing!
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