Thursday, June 27, 2013

Understanding How Your Font's Affect on the Number of Book Pages


Writers face a major decision when chosing fonts when publishing a book, not only because it affects profits but because their choice determines the book's looks and readability.

Award-winning author, Peter Bernhardt, shares his experience with  The Stasi File: Opera and Espionage, A Deadly Combination.
Font and Font Size, by Peter Bernhardt

"My novel's word count is 134,945. With Palatino 12 the page count increased to something between 520 to 540 (I trashed my notes so I don't recall exactly).


Times New Roman 12 results in 488 pages (that's what my first edition has). Garamond 12 resulted in 477 pages. Of course, it all
depends on the margins. My first proof made me shudder. The outside margin (.25 according to Create Space minimum requirement) was way to narrow.


So now I have used .875 gutter, .13 inside margin, 1 inch outside margin, and 1 inch for top and bottom margins.

I have used Garamond 11 for the header. I compared this with recently published books and it seems to mirror pretty close what the big-time publishers are using. And yes, Garamond is easier on the eye, probably because there seems to be more space between letters and lines."

Peterr Bernhardt 


The Stasi File: Opera and Espionage: A Deadly Combination is a Quarter Finalist 2011 for the
Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award; Amazon Kindle  and Kiss of the Shaman's Daughter is a sequel to it.
 

Bernhardt says, "Novel No. 3 is on its way."

1 comment:

Francene Stanley said...

Love the covers Peter, especially The Stasi File. I never realized how much difference the font could make to the size of the book.