# What font, size, and line spacing do you use for Create Space print books?



## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

I have two friends who don't buy books if the font size is too small.

This question has probably been asked before, but I can't find the post.

What is the usual font type (I use Times new Roman 12, but it looks a bit small). Do you use single spacing or 1.5? Do you justify?

I'm using Word.

Thanks.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

The answer will vary.  Everyone uses what works best for them.

Me, I use Adobe Garamond Pro size 12, single spaced but usually with a before/after 1pt spacing for each line and full justification.


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

I use Garmond 14pt and space it 1.5 between lines.  I justify the margins.  And just because I'm a curmudgeon, I put two spaces after a period.  I KNOW!  I break all the rules (my background is in theater, and when you're doing a cold reading -where someone hands you a script and you have to make it brilliant the first go through- that extra white space is physical punctuation to breathe.  And even if it is subliminal, I want to remind my readers to breathe).  I have had several people with older eyes compliment my books on how easy they are to read, and it matters to me.  I worked for a board of trustees and found that increasing the font size increased the percentage of them who actually looked at the meeting materials, and I decided to bring that information into typesetting my books.  We sit in front of computers all day and our eyes are strained so much already.  I say err on the side of gentle!


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Thanks. 

I thought there might be some sort of universally preferred font type and size. I've read that Times New Roman is best for print and Arial for reading on the screen. Something to do with serif and sans serif.

The wider the spacing the more pages and the costlier the book, but I've also read the the biggest portion of the book-buying public is women in their 50s, so they might appreciate a decent sized font


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

Bookman Old Style, 1.2 line spacing, right justified (and I go through it and do what I have to in order to eliminate large spaces between words). I used 11 pt and 8.5 x 5.5 for my first book, the dog mystery, which is 70,000 words, and IMO it looks quite nice. I also used that size for the first romance but switched to 10 pt. because at 118,000 words, the page count would have made the price too high. For the second romance, I switched to 6 x 9 because of the word count (138,000) and found I liked that size better (CS says it's the most popular size). My romances after that are shorter again, 85,000 to 95,000 words. I stuck with the 6 x 9 size but went back to the 11 pt font.

It's true the font you choose will affect the font size you use as different fonts look different at a given size. It's my understanding Times New Roman is not considered a book font but was developed for business use.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Just found this after a Google search. It's on the Create Space forum - never thought to ask there - Duh.

Garamond, Minion, and Dante are probably three of the five or six most widely-used typefaces for trade paperback fiction published in the U.S. over the past several years.  Among those, Garamond is the one most likely to come already installed on a home/office system, and is one that behaves predictable if you're trying to do page layout with word processing software (e.g, Word) as opposed to page layout software (e.g., InDesign).

For U.S. hardcover and trade paperback fiction, most major publishers set line spacing at 120 to 125 percent of the font size.  So for Garamond 12 pt, 120 percent would be exactly 14.4 pt line spacing in Word. 125 percent would be exactly 15 pt line spacing.


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## Christopher Gray (Feb 27, 2013)

Here's what most of the big print houses do (and they do it for a reason, it makes the books easier to read):

- full justification, with hyphenation
- approximately .25" paragraph indentation (any more than .25" looks overdone)
- first paragraph of each chapter has no first-line indentation
- single space after a period (modern font's built-in kerning values are designed for single space)
- conservative serif fonts for body text (Goudy Old Style, Caslon, Minion, Stone, Garamond, etc., NEVER Times Roman)
- 10-12 words per line

Typeface size can be all over the map though, anything from 10-12.

Personally, I use 11.5 pt, with a fixed line space of 15 pt.

Generally, using MS Word to format a book for print use is not recommended. You don't have enough control, and Word sometimes does things you don't want it to. Better to use a page layout program. I use a freeware one called Scribus. There is a learning curve, but well worth it.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Christopher Gray said:


> Here's what most of the big print houses do (and they do it for a reason, it makes the books easier to read):
> 
> - full justification, with hyphenation
> - approximately .25" paragraph indentation (any more than .25" looks overdone)
> ...


Thanks. Have made a note.


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## Steve Vernon (Feb 18, 2011)

I've posted this a few times - and I apologize to those who have already seen it posted - but this Youtube video by India Drummond was SUPER helpful!


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## Bookside Manner (Aug 24, 2013)

I've always used Times New Roman at 11 points with a 1.5 spacing. I sell very few print copies - they're mostly for friends and reviewers who don't use e-readers, and no one's complained yet.


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## nobody_important (Jul 9, 2010)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> I have two friends who don't buy books if the font size is too small.
> 
> This question has probably been asked before, but I can't find the post.
> 
> ...


Nothing says homemade like Times New Roman. If you can, reformat it using Garamond Pro, Caslon, Jenson, Janson, Minion Pro, or Bembo, which are very popular. Adobe Arno is also very pretty and beautiful (designed by the same guy who created Minion Pro), but much more suited for historical novels, I think. Sabon is also very nice too.

Also there are tens of different Garamond. I'm not sure how MS default Garamond looks.

I'm in the middle of formatting mine, and I use Minion Pro, 11.5pt. I format using InDesign, so I can't remember exact setting, but I aim to have about 31-32 lines per page.


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## SBJones (Jun 13, 2011)

Font is Garamond size 12
Half inch margins on all sides but only 1/4 on the bottom.
0.2 inch gutter with mirror margins
Half inch line indent for new paragraphs.
I put page number, author name, and title/chapter title in the top header and grey-scale it down 50%
Full justification
1.15 line spacing

I use MSWord to do all my print formatting for Lightning Source.  Once it is how I want it, I simply  save it as a pdf 2001/whatever X that LSI requires.  I have yet to have a problem doing it this way and it was far far easier than using Indesign or Adobe to format the manuscript.


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## Nancy Beck (Jul 1, 2011)

Since I have absolutely zippo background in printing DTBs, I was tearing my hair out to try to decide what to use on the interior (I also use Word).

So I bought a couple of templates from thebookdesigner.com at bookdesigntemplates.com. They're a tad expensive, but I thought the price was worth it, especially the first one I bought (you can get for both ebook and print, ebook only, or print only - and the license for each font is included in the price). I bought the second template for print only, as I already had the template for ebooks (which is going to be the same anyway).

This takes care of a lot of the interior stuff that makes no sense to me, like the math involved in formatting DTBs (sorry, but I'm utterly math challenged when it comes to measurements to format the book. ).

Then, like SBJones, I'll save it to PDF once I like what I see (going thru CS, BTW). There's a program that was recc'd in an ebook I picked up off of SW (probably on Amazon too, tho I haven't looked) that does the PDF thing if you don't want to do it in Word.

I suggest the OP take a gander at thebookdesigner.com and see Joel's take on typography and other things related to print books. It was quite an eye opener for me.


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## Christopher Gray (Feb 27, 2013)

SBJones said:


> Font is Garamond size 12
> Half inch margins on all sides but only 1/4 on the bottom.
> 0.2 inch gutter with mirror margins
> Half inch line indent for new paragraphs.
> ...


I checked out your book GUARDIAN. It looks good, I like your chapter header graphics.

Your paragraph indent looks to be .25", not the .5 inch you mention above. Maybe that's the default Kindle imposes, but it's the correct way. The 0.5" paragraph indentation is designed, I think, for 8.5"x11" letter sheet, where there are more words per line. Most books don't require that much.

Also, I noticed that in addition to the indentation you have spacing between paragraphs was that intentional?


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

Times was designed for newspaper use, which combines density to cut down on the amount of paper required with readability in narrow columns. Not a great font for a book. Garamond is a good one that is available on pretty much any PC. The other great sin I've seen in print indies is indents that are too large. 

Sans serif is for headings and titles, not for text. 

For a narrative book, I don't think Word is that terrible. Make sure to go into the font properties and turn on kerning for your base size though, it's off by default for what reason I can't imagine. It won't be as good as page layout program, but it will get the job done. If you have any kind of graphics though, other than maybe a single map in the front or something, you really want to go with something like InDesign.


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

NadiaLee said:


> Nothing says homemade like Times New Roman.


Umm. Courier? I actually bought a paperback once done in Courier (dog mystery, I love them and couldn't resist, although I should have). If you want something that shouts _don't know what I'm doing_ with every word, that will do it. The story wasn't half bad; maybe it would have seemed better if the book had been presented worth a darn.


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## Ryan Sullivan (Jul 9, 2011)

I used Garamond for my last book and thought it looked nice, except for the italics.

I've now downloaded Cardo (I believe it's based off Bembo), and am _in love_ with it! It's mature, sleek and serious, and the italics looks great as well. I'm going to format my next book with it, and update my last one to Cardo instead of Garamond.

I might interchange them, using Garamond for contemporary novels, and Cardo for fantasy and historical.


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## David Alastair Hayden (Mar 19, 2011)

A resource you may find immensely helpful:

http://practicaltypography.com/typography-in-ten-minutes.html


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## cwashburn (May 20, 2013)

One of the benefits of being Indie is you can suit yourself.  I agree with the point about small fonts.  Some of the old pocket books were a trial to read.  I use Garamond 12 point.  One and a half spaces between lines on my middle grade novels otherwise single space.  I use a line between paragraphs and indent the first word of the paragraphs.  I justify the margins.  Basically I try to have my books the way I like to read them.  I dislike typos and spelling errors more than I care about the fonts, etc.in the books I read as the former are a distraction to a teacher like myself.  I notice nobody mentioned Comic Sans, something that has received a lot of ridicule!


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## H. S. St. Ours (Mar 24, 2012)

In Scrivener, I use 11 point Century Schoolbook (a serif font that "hugs" your eyeballs) with 1.2 linespacing, which works out to 15 point leading. "Use hyphenation" is selected in the Compile>Layout dialog, and .75 left, .5 right margins with facing pages enabled in the Compile>Page Settings dialog.

This is just for my CS print books. eBooks are different.


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## SBJones (Jun 13, 2011)

Christopher Gray said:


> I checked out your book GUARDIAN. It looks good, I like your chapter header graphics.
> 
> Your paragraph indent looks to be .25", not the .5 inch you mention above. Maybe that's the default Kindle imposes, but it's the correct way. The 0.5" paragraph indentation is designed, I think, for 8.5"x11" letter sheet, where there are more words per line. Most books don't require that much.
> 
> Also, I noticed that in addition to the indentation you have spacing between paragraphs was that intentional?


My ebook layout is completely different than that of my physical books. I do add custom graphics as chapter titles. It's a custom font and a clock hand saved as a .jpg and inserted into the document. I do a first line indent of only 1/4 inch. It looks better than a half inch on test devices in my opinion. Single line spacing and a special 6pt spacing after paragraphs to put just a tiny bit of separation that makes it easier to read on digital devices. It prevents the book from becoming a huge wall of text.

The thing to remember with ebooks is that they are basically one long page of text. Margins don't exist, neither do page numbers. Customers can control the font how they wish etc.


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## Christopher Gray (Feb 27, 2013)

cwashburn said:


> I use a line between paragraphs and indent the first word of the paragraphs.


...but both serve the same purpose:

"How can you trust a man that wears both a belt and suspenders? The man can't even trust his own pants."
- Frank, played by Henry Fonda, _Once Upon A Time In The West_ (just before he shoots the guy in question)


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## Sebastiene (Dec 15, 2011)

Fonts like Garamond, and other fonts that come with the average Windows computer aren't technically licensed for commercial use, unless you go and buy one. Showing my usual over-abundance of caution (because I never want to be contacted by an Adobe lawyer), I use Gentium Book Basic.

To set up my print book, I realized the pages print out much like they will in the final product. So, I grabbed some books off my shelves that were the exact size of the book I was trying to create. I laid a folded printer page against the published books until I had something I believe looked professional.

That turned out to be:
Font: Gentium Book Basic.
Size: 10
Line Space: 15 pt.

Since my first novel is 344 pages long, I thought I'd save larger type for a Large Print edition.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Came here to say I just decided to use Gentium Book Classic, actually. Best selling point: it costs zero dollars.


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## nobody_important (Jul 9, 2010)

ellenoc said:


> Umm. Courier? I actually bought a paperback once done in Courier (dog mystery, I love them and couldn't resist, although I should have). If you want something that shouts _don't know what I'm doing_ with every word, that will do it. The story wasn't half bad; maybe it would have seemed better if the book had been presented worth a darn.


I stand corrected. I had no idea people actually used Courier to format their print books.


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## Kevin B. Leigh (Oct 1, 2013)

I used 12pt 1.6 and .75 border with .50 gutter, but enlarged the gutter at page 200 to .60 so it be easier to read.


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## Bookside Manner (Aug 24, 2013)

What would be your choice for worst possible font to use? I vote for one called Arnold Bocklin. It looks like the typeface they used for some Yes albums (at the agency I worked at, we called it "the 'Fragile' font").

On a serious note, my thanks to everyone for the information in this thread. I'm spiffing up my new book and will probably go back and redo the others at some point.


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## Kevin B. Leigh (Oct 1, 2013)

Kelly Cozy said:


> What would be your choice for worst possible font to use?


I think ComicSans should be banned as a gift to future generations


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Kevin B. Leigh said:


> I think ComicSans should be banned as a gift to future generations


I like ComicSans, but am now afraid to use it for anything


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