📖 Inside the book

How to format a book interior

What separates a typeset book from a Word file printed to PDF — mirrored margins, real hyphenation, chapters that open on the right, running heads that know when to vanish, and a page count the printer will accept.

Margins and gutters

The margin is not decoration. It is what keeps your text out of the binding and what makes a page comfortable to read. The four margins are not equal, and the inside one grows with page count.

Choosing a typeface for the body of a book

A body face has one job — to disappear. What actually matters in type set at 11 points across four hundred pages, why display faces and screen faces fail at it, and the two mistakes that cost real money.

Type size, leading and the line that reads well

Three measurements decide whether a page is comfortable — the size of the type, the distance between baselines, and the length of the line. They pull against each other, and every one of them changes your page count.

What goes in the front of a book, and in what order

The pages before chapter one follow a settled order, and readers notice when it is wrong even if they can't say why. What each page is for, why the blanks are deliberate, and what a copyright page has to carry.

The large print edition most authors never make

A large print edition is a separate product with its own ISBN, cover and listing, sold to an audience that is real, underserved, and includes libraries. What actually makes a book large print, and what it costs you.

The back of the book is where your next sale is

The pages after "The End" are the most valuable unused space in a book. A reader who just finished is the most likely buyer you will ever have. What belongs back there, and why an ebook differs.

Does your book need a table of contents?

In print, most nonfiction needs one and most novels do not. In an ebook, every book needs one, because it is the navigation. The same book can correctly ship with a contents page in one format and none in the other.

Running heads and page numbers

The small furniture at the top and bottom of a book page: the running head and the folio. Readers never consciously read either one, but they notice immediately when the rules about where these vanish are broken.

Indents, spacing, and how paragraphs should start

A blank line between paragraphs is the single most reliable sign that a book was typeset in a word processor. What a real indent is, how deep it should be, and why your manuscript should not contain a single one.

Footnotes, endnotes and the reader's patience

Every note is an interruption you are asking the reader to accept. The choice between the foot of the page, the back of the book, and cutting the material entirely is a choice about how often you interrupt.

Does your nonfiction book need an index?

Some nonfiction is used as well as read, and an index is how a reader gets back to something. Which books need one, what an index actually is, and why it has to be the last thing you make.

Setting poetry without wrecking it

Poetry breaks nearly every default a typesetting program has, because the line is the unit and the shape on the page is part of the poem. What changes, what never changes, and why the ebook is the hard part.

Cookbooks: the hardest easy book to make

A recipe is a structured document pretending to be prose, and it is read standing up with wet hands. What a recipe page needs, why cookbook pages are designed one at a time, and the honest cost of the photographs.

Workbooks, journals and books people write in

A workbook is not read, it is used, and every design decision changes because of it. Room to write, lines light enough to ignore, paper that survives a pen, and a binding that stays open.

Tables, charts and data in a printed book

Tables and charts are the material most likely to arrive straight from a spreadsheet and look it. How to typeset a table, redraw a chart for black ink at small size, and number and place both.

Parts, sections and the pages between chapters

Long books are divided, and the divisions need pages of their own. What a part title is, what each one costs in paper and spine width, and why the loudest page in your interior should be quieter than you think.

Quoting other people's work in your book

Authors drop a lyric, a stanza or a favorite paragraph into a manuscript without a second thought, and some of them hear about it later. Which quotations carry real risk, which are generally safe, and how permission actually works.

Justification, hyphenation, and the gaps between words

Justified text in a word processor and justified text in a book are made by two different methods, and that is why one has even color and the other has loose lines. What decides the gaps, and what you actually control.

Drop caps and ornamental chapter openings

A drop cap is easy to switch on and easy to get wrong. What the letter is doing mechanically, the three failures that give an amateur one away, and the quieter alternatives that suit most books better.

Blank pages, recto and verso, and why the count is even

Your proof arrives with pages you did not write. They are correct. What recto and verso mean, why a bound book always has an even page count, and the one lever that decides how many blanks you get.

Ligatures, kerning and small caps

Three details that separate a typeset page from a printed document, what each one actually is, and the one trap that turns a handsome PDF into a file nobody can search.

Children's book interiors

A picture book, a chapter book and a middle grade novel are three different products sharing one shelf. The reader's age decides the format, the page count, the type size and what each copy costs to print.

Bilingual books and facing-page layout

A translation never runs to the same length as its source, so a strict facing-page layout drifts out of alignment within a few pages. The three honest ways to put two languages in one book, and which to pick.

Photo inserts and plate sections

How memoirs, histories and biographies carry photographs without printing the whole book in color. Why the plate section exists, when to gather images and when to scatter them, and the numbers to check before you place a single one.

Changing your page count on purpose

Page count is not a fact about your manuscript. It is an outcome of settings, and sometimes you need it to land somewhere specific. Here are the levers that move it, ranked by how much they cost the reader.

Glossaries, appendices and other back matter

The material that belongs after the story or the argument, and how to set it so a reader can actually use it. Order, type size, hanging indents, and the fantasy glossary that gives the ending away.

Epigraphs and dedications

The two shortest pages in a book take longer to settle than a chapter does. Where each one sits, how it is set, why a dedication should stay to a line, and the permissions question an epigraph raises.

Citations and bibliographies in a printed book

Scholarly apparatus behaves differently on paper than it does in a word processor. The three citation systems in plain terms, how a reference list is set in type, and the cross-references that break in an ebook.

Setting a play or a screenplay

A script submitted to the industry and a script published as a book are two different objects with two different formats. What a reading edition needs, and the one layout decision that settles everything else.

Numbered verses and structured texts

Some books are cited by number rather than by page, which makes the numbering part of the content and not part of the design. The two ways to set numbered text, and the traps that ruin a reference edition.

Field guides and reference layout

A field guide is opened in the middle, not started at the beginning. What that one fact does to running heads, to the entry template, to where the pictures sit, and to the trim you can carry.

Letters, texts and documents inside a novel

A letter, a diary page, a clipping, an email, a text exchange, a prophecy on a scrap of vellum. How to set an inserted document so the reader registers the change of voice before reading a word, and what survives a page break.

Sidebars, boxes and pull quotes

The devices that break up a nonfiction page, and the discipline that stops them wrecking it. What a sidebar is for, what a pull quote is for, why the two rules are opposites, and how many a page holds.

Chapter titles and headings in nonfiction

In a novel a chapter can be a number. In nonfiction the headings are a navigation system and a sales tool at once, and the hierarchy is where most books go wrong. How to name, level and set them.

Printing music and notation

Songbooks, hymnals, method books and novels with four bars in them are three different production problems. Why you engrave elsewhere and place the result, what resolution and trim size that forces, and the page turn that governs the layout.

Puzzle and activity books

Crosswords, sudoku, word searches, mazes and activity pages have production rules of their own, because the reader writes in the book. What that does to grid size, trim, paper, the solutions section and the binding.

Coloring books

A coloring book is the only kind of book where the reader puts wet or waxy media on the page. That one fact sets the page count, the line weight, the resolution, the margins and the binding.

Splitting a book into volumes

Two volumes only work if each one is a book. Where to cut, what each volume carries of its own, which front matter repeats, and why page numbers should start at one every time.

Maps and diagrams inside a book

A map is the illustration fantasy, history and technical readers actually want, and the one most often ruined in production. Where it goes, why the gutter eats a spread, and how to size labels for a printed page.

Timelines, family trees and other structured diagrams

Sagas, histories and biographies need reference diagrams, and every one of them is wide while a book page is tall. The four honest ways to fit one, the type rule that decides which you pick, and the spoiler trap.

Margin notes and annotated editions

A note in the margin needs a margin wide enough to hold it, which is a page decision made before a word is set. What the wide outside margin costs in pages and spine, and how to set the notes themselves.

Using color inside the pages

The design half of the color question. What color can do on a printed page that it cannot do on a screen, where it genuinely carries meaning, and why a figure that works in gray works for more readers.