Planning the Layout of Your Body Text

Posted on June 10, 2007
Filed Under Designing Novels, Page Layout, Self-Publishing with Lulu |

For novels, this is very simple and straightforward. You’ll want to justify the paragraphs with the last line aligned left. Set the first line indent a .3. In typing class and on the job, I was taught to set the indents at .5, but with novels that’s too wide of an indent.

Novel Body

For this main body of this chapter, I used the Adobe Garamond Pro font. Caslon and Palatino are also very good for the main body of your text. Avoid using Times or Times New Roman because they aren’t used in the book design industry. While you’re not out to impress the design elitists, your potential readers are used to certain visuals that are commonly found in trade paperbacks. So, save the Times font family for your business letters.

This concludes the book design segment for novels.

Comments

2 Responses to “Planning the Layout of Your Body Text”

  1. Karen Lee Field on June 17th, 2007 9:17 pm

    It’s the little details that help the most, Deborah. I would never have known that we shouldn’t use Times New Roman and that’s why I appreciate this website so much.

  2. Deborah Woehr on June 18th, 2007 6:18 pm

    I’m glad I set this blog up. I hope to make it a great reference.

Leave a Reply