Professional book layout design and typesetting
Did you know that even before a reader starts to read your writing, they’ll judge your book? This happens more often than not on an unconscious level. If your book has inconsistent design and elements and unprofessional typesetting it will turn your readers off before they even begin to read your content. It’s a problem many self-publishing authors have experienced and part of the reason why self-published books have a bad reputation. On the other hand, professional book layout design and typesetting helps draw readers in without any unconscious distractions.
Book layout design
A professionally designed book appeals to readers because it’s easy on the eye and a pleasure to read, whereas a book that uses fonts that clash, or too many different fonts, with very little white space, and inconsistent formatting has the opposite result – a book that stays on the shelf because readers find it difficult to follow.
Taking all of the above into account still won’t achieve a book that looks professionally designed. There’s much more to the interior layout of a book than the correct amount of white space, proper font usage and well formatted text. Using professional design principles learned over many years in the industry, a knowledgeable book designer who has experience with typesetting will design visually balanced pages, hierarchical headings, page numbers and running heads that are consistent and pleasing to the eye.
Including images in your book can add context and enhace your information, but if the images are not set up properly, with the correct resolution for print, they can end up a disaster. Low resolution images affect the quality of your publication so much that you’ll wish you’d never included them, but by that time, it’ll be too late. We check all of your images to make sure they are the correct resolution for print, with a file size that’s not so large that you end up with a clunky mess that slows everything down and makes your printer hate you. You can leave your images to us and we’ll make sure they are reproduced to the best possible quality,
Book typesetting
Good typesetting is a craft. With more than 35 years in the industry, Sonya Murphy follows the guidelines around composition of text which work in with the design principles mentioned earlier. Expert book typesetting (often known as formatting) includes keeping facing pages balanced and no widows or orphans. Hyphenation is another important consideration, not too few so the words are spaced out or squished together.
There’s many other aspects to expert typesetting. Want to know more? I’ve written an extensive blog on the topic. Take a look here.
Sonya will supply you with a printed proof for checking and when your book is ready for the printer, a print-ready PDF with no errors that will cause your printer to reject the files, or worse, they don’t reject your file, but you end up with a book you’re not proud of.
Contact us by using the contact button below to find out about our author services and how we can design and typeset your book to industry-best standards.