How Do You Choose the Right Font for Your Book?

It’s no great revelation to say that printed words are the basis of books; the average novel contains around 80,000–100,000 of them. We commonly say we're “reading a book,” but we’re really reading thousands and thousands of words.

Despite their importance, I’m willing to bet you've never told someone “I loved this book! The characters were so real, and the font! The font was just incredible!”

Printing words on a page seems simple enough until you recognize the challenge publishers and printers face: the words should essentially be invisible.

There is a famous phrase in the design world that states “bad design is everywhere, good design is invisible.” This principle applies to the design of books too. If the printed words in your book are drawing attention to themselves, they’re detracting from the images and feelings they’re meant to convey.

Taking the time to choose the right font and properly layout your book is extremely important, but it’s also a thankless task; no one will write you love letters for your use of 12pt Garamond and proper leading, but you’ll definitely feel the backlash when your decision to use 8pt Brush Script gives everyone a headache.

Here are a few tips to determining which font or fonts could work for you book:

1. Test the Readability at Small Sizes

The first step to determining which font to use is how it stands up at smaller sizes. Most books fall into a range of 9–12 point type, so any font that you’re considering has to be legible at these sizes. Print out lines of text in a number of fonts to determine which look best and are easiest to read. If readers are straining to see every word, there’s no way they’ll ever make it through your book, no matter how amazing it is.

1.5 Know Your Audience

If your book is for young children or older adults, bigger is better. 11–12 point type is much easier for an older audience to read than 9 or 10pt, while type as large as 14pt is good for young and new readers. The content of your book is carefully catered to your audience, so why wouldn’t your font be, too?

2. Test the Readability in Blocks

Once you’ve determined a number of possible fonts that are legible at the right point size, there’s still work to be done. Your book is comprised of sentences, lines and paragraphs of text, so you need to test those too! The fact that a word is legible at 12pt does not guarantee readability for long blocks and pages of text.

Lay out blocks of your text in different fonts and read them to ensure it’s not tiring or difficult. Keep margins in mind: the longer a line of text is, the harder it becomes to read. You can easily sample and test fonts in a program like Microsoft Word, but unless your book will have 8.5 x 11 pages, the default doc is going to be too big to give you an accurate feel for readability.

3. Test the Readability on the Printed Page

Any regular reader can attest to the difference between reading on a screen and reading on paper. The issue has become so large with the proliferation of tablets and ebooks that e-readers like the Amazon Kindle are designed (and redesigned) to mimic the the appearance of ink on paper.

It may be extra work, but viewing fonts on the same type of paper, using the same margins and from the same printer can give you a peek at the end product and provide valuable insight to readability.

Where to Start

There are innumerable fonts available for purchase and download these days, but many publishers stick to a few tried and true fonts for book printing. Garamond, Caslon and Minion are three serif typefaces that you’ve likely read (unknowingly) many times throughout your life. All three are loved for their readability and clarity on the printed page.

Garamond

One of the most popular fonts for books, Garamond is based off the work of 16th century French publisher (and type designer) Claude Garamond. Often described as graceful, elegant, and fluid, it uses less ink than many comparable fonts due to shorter characters and narrower strokes.

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Caslon

William Caslon was one of the first printers in England, and the typeface he developed in the early 18th century has remained a popular choice since his time. Caslon’s typeface was arguably the most popular in Revolutionary America, even being used for the first official printing of the Declaration of Independence. Interestingly, it’s Caslon’s irregular letterforms that make it appealing to many printers and publishers.

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Minion

A modern font, Minion was developed for Adobe by Robert Slimbach in 1990. Modern tools allowed for a wide variety of weights and styles, which played a large role in the popularity of this font.

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As printers, we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. If you’re experimenting with your own fonts or simply looking for something standard, we’d be happy to share our preferences with you. Give us a call or send us an email with your questions!

Our goal is always the satisfaction of our customers. We understand that your satisfaction relies heavily on that of your readers. Because readability plays a big role, we want to make sure your book is the best it can be, down to the finest details. We may not be crossing t’s and dotting i’s ourselves, but we’ll make sure it’s done… and legible.