This Thing Called Formatting
Early this year, I decided to go with a signature font for all of my books—not to create a cheesy brand look (“Oh look, it’s the Sarah-Scheele-Way!”)—but because it’s really, really practical. I can make every book by a formula, formatting-wise, which takes some of the work out of putting books into the world, especially if I have many of them at once. I use French Script MS at 20 pt for chapter headings, and at about 28 or 30 points for title pages. I often use Montype Corsiva for the chapter page in paperbacks because it looks curly, but is smoother. French Script can start to look illegible if you have a lot of it lined up in rows. Book interior fonts are Calibri 11 if the book has enough pages and Verdana 10 if I want to puff out a smaller book like a short story. And Courier New (that’s typewriter font!) for the copyright page.
For interior margins, I use .8” for top margin; .75 for bottom and left; .65 for right; plus a .13 gutter. (The gutter is that place where the paperback book opens in the middle. Adding a gutter helps keep the text from sliding into that crease. Page numbers are Roman numerals for the front matter, per tradition, and ordinary for the rest of the book, and I use a great little free PDF maker called PDF ReDirect to merge the two together and make good PDFs overall. It can also be used to make covers for KDP paperbacks, which require uploading a ready-made cover as a PDF.
Except for Bellevere House (which also had its own fonts, etc) and its wraparound cover, I have a front cover and use the design in CreateSpace to make a wraparound by merging a ready-made back onto the front and adding colors and text. The end results look fine and I don’t have to fuss with wraparounds. I don’t expect the back cover of a book to be much except tell me the description and since paperbacks sell less than ebooks it’s not necessary to slave over them. CreateSpace is very specific about image quality compared to Kindle, so doing a paperback gives me a great, high-quality image ready to be downloaded for Kindle.
And there will be more updates.
For interior margins, I use .8” for top margin; .75 for bottom and left; .65 for right; plus a .13 gutter. (The gutter is that place where the paperback book opens in the middle. Adding a gutter helps keep the text from sliding into that crease. Page numbers are Roman numerals for the front matter, per tradition, and ordinary for the rest of the book, and I use a great little free PDF maker called PDF ReDirect to merge the two together and make good PDFs overall. It can also be used to make covers for KDP paperbacks, which require uploading a ready-made cover as a PDF.
Except for Bellevere House (which also had its own fonts, etc) and its wraparound cover, I have a front cover and use the design in CreateSpace to make a wraparound by merging a ready-made back onto the front and adding colors and text. The end results look fine and I don’t have to fuss with wraparounds. I don’t expect the back cover of a book to be much except tell me the description and since paperbacks sell less than ebooks it’s not necessary to slave over them. CreateSpace is very specific about image quality compared to Kindle, so doing a paperback gives me a great, high-quality image ready to be downloaded for Kindle.
And there will be more updates.
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