When it comes to publishing a book, the editing process is often the most intensive, and the cover design is extra exciting because it’s so visual and colorful. But don’t overlook the interior layout and design process! It may not be the most glamorous aspect of bringing your book to life, but it is critical to create a cohesive and compelling reading experience for your target audience. So, let’s chat about what it takes to lay out the interior of your book!
In the publishing world, there’s a particular order to follow, starting with what’s called the front matter. This includes the title page, copyright page, dedication, and table of contents. After that, you dive into the meat of the book—the chapters (and, if applicable, the foreword, introduction, epilogue, etc.). Finally, as you may have guessed, the last chunk of content is called the back matter, and it often comprises acknowledgments, appendices (if applicable), and the author bio. Following this basic structure will align your book with industry standards!
This will determine the size of each page. If you’ve already completed cover design, you should know the dimensions of the book already! When it comes to trade books—those geared toward adult readers—standard trim sizes are between 5x8 inches and 6x9 inches. If your book has a higher word count, opt for 6x9. If it’s on the short end, 5x8 or 5.5x8.5 may work better.
Did you know that the margins on odd-numbered pages are different from the margins on even-numbered pages? As a general rule, the top,bottom, and outside margins should be somewhere between 0.5 and 0.75 inches. The inside gutter—the space between two facing pages where they’re bound together at the spine—should be 0.75 to 1 inch to accommodate the crease.
It’s recommended to select a serif font to facilitate readability. Classics like Garamond, Palatino, Baskerville, and Minion Pro are always nice choices, but feel free to play around with different options to determine the font that best matches the style and tone of your book. As far as size, aim for 11 point or 12 point (definitely no less than 10 point).
Tip: To contrast with the body font, headings are typically in a sans serif font, such as Helvetica, Trade Gothic, Avenir, or Futura.
As you likely learned in English class, you should start each new paragraph with an indent, usually 0.2 to 0.5 inches. However, there is an exception! Each new chapter—and even new section, depending on your preferences—should not have an indent in the first paragraph. If you don’t love the look of indented paragraphs, you do have the option of using block formatting with no indentations and extra space between paragraphs. (Note: This can ultimately lengthen the total page count.)
To ensure legibility, a rule of thumb is to set line spacing at 1.15 to 1.5. As you can likely imagine, single spacing can be more difficult to read!
If you’ve ever read a book before, you know that new chapters always start on a new page! It’s common to start them on right-hand, odd-numbered pages, but you don’t have to do that, especially if you have along manuscript and don’t want the page count to get out of hand. Be sure to put the chapter title about a third of the way down the page. If it strikes your fancy, you might even use a drop cap—a large, decorative capital letters panning two or three lines of text—at the very beginning of each chapter.
The lines at the top of each spread are called running headers. It’s common to put the author’s name on one side and the book title on the other. If you want to be more specific, instead of putting the book title, you can put the chapter title. But don’t include headers at the top of new chapters! The only content at the bottom of pages is usually the page numbers. Traditionally, those go in the bottom outside corner or bottom center of each page.
There’s your quick crash course in interior formatting for trade books! If this seems like a lot of work—and, truthfully, it is—keep in mind that you don’t have to tackle this alone. At Ballast Books, we are interior layout experts! If you’d like to leave it to the professionals to translate your Word document into a beautifully designed book interior ready for publishing, contact us here.