Typesetting - The Art Of Arranging the Interior of A Book

Typesetting is simply the art of arranging text in a book page and laying out the margins, which in turn, influences the book's height, width, and spine. Typesetting is literally the precursor to the design of the book cover. The book cover is dependent on the height, width, and margins so that specs for publishing can then be given to the printers.

Design of Page Margins, Fonts and Spacing

The design of a book is primarily relies on the literary genre. The layout of a fiction book is different from that of a science book, a cookery manual, a children's book and an instruction manual amongst others. Other factors that influence the interior design of a book include the length of the book (number of words and pages) and the desired print format. All the above factors lead to the following design considerations:

• Book trim size - whether a book print size should be for example 5" x 8" or 6" x 9".
• Margins - How much white space should surround the text. The norm is usually the thicker the book, the bigger the margin. Margins affect the book cutting and pasting before binding with cover.
• Typefaces and sizes - what fonts to use, the type and size. What font family to use for the body text versus headlines and captions.

Design Considerations for the Reader

Ultimately, typesetting addresses the user experience of the targeted reader of your book. How the pages are arranged can make a reader plough through your book or ditch it from page one due to readability issues, congested text, extra tiny print that a person has to squint etc. As such, typesetters also consider the following user-centered design aspects,

• Kerning: adjusting the spacing between characters. So the book is easy to read.
• Word spacing: adjusting the spacing between words. Most readers prefer double spacing and actually, a lot of publishers will demand double-spaced word documents so they can later test different variations of spacing.
• Word stacks: preventing consecutive rows of text from starting or ending with the same word.
• Drop caps: stylising the first character of the first paragraph in a chapter and or subchapters.
• Book blocks: ensuring that the block of text on each facing page ends on the same row.
• Orphans and widows: preventing the last (or first) row of a paragraph from ending isolated on the top (or bottom) of a page;
• Illustrations, graphs, and tables: how to feature illustrations and graphs throughout the text.?Graphics are generally discouraged for fiction books because of the effort and cost in layout and printing. For other genres like science, children's book etc the graphics and illustrations and used. The books for universities will cost more than a fictional book, sometimes 6 or 10 times the price due to the graphics and illustrations.

Galley Proofs for the Author

Publishing companies will then send you a sample book (sometimes referred to as Galley Proof) to have a final read and spot any errors before the books are printed en masse. Unfortunately, in most cases, maybe due to cost implications, you may end up with the sample copies and final copies on the same day and therefore unable to correct any errors that may have been missed during the interior design of a book.

Software Tools for Typesetting

The Adobe suite remains one of the most powerful tools for typesetting and executing other publishing tasks. If interested in learning or executing typesetting and other design works on your own, you can consider investing in Adobe Indesign (includes generative AI and eBook creator tools). Adobe InDesign creates stunning book layouts, precise typesetting, and vibrant covers, making it a preferred choice in the publishing industry. It’s accessible and mostly affordable for self-published authors, though mastering its features can be challenging for those not conversant with software designs. Others might find the cost of Adobe high. Its competitor is Vellum, but Vellum is pro-Macbook/apple and therefore limiting. Adobe InDesign will cost you about $300 per year while Vellum would cost about 250 for print and eBook features and about 200 for eBook only. Vellum costs are non-recurrent while Adobe is renewed on a monthly or annual basis. Adobe has a series of software that enable photo editing, illustrations, desktop publishing etc but each comes with a price tag and it depends on the nature of the work you want to do/and or your budget.

In Conclusion - Should I or Shouldn't I invest in a Typesetter?

If working with a publishing firm, the billing will include typesetting services and book cover design. For authors who don't want to be bothered with the details, they opt for a publishing firm to manage the entire process and pay for it. For authors who are self-publishing; some decide to pay a consultant for typesetting works; others decide to invest in the software that enables them to typeset and create the eBook version alongside print while others rely on the services that are already embedded in self-publishing platforms like Amazon's Kindle. The decision is driven by budget, time, skills, the effort required, and whether or not publishers are willing to work with a first-time author.