When putting the final touches on your story, most people focus on the font for the cover–which is really important! But what about the internal book font?

Now, to be clear, you can just pick a basic font and move on if you’d like.

But I know we’re all too Type A to let a detail like that slide on something as important as your book. So for those of you that want to dive into that level of detail, let’s discuss and go through some examples!

Why font matters

Book font is one of those thankless details – it is something that readers most likely won’t notice or care about – unless it is a problem (something distracting, weird, or out of the norm).

Think about if you picked up a book and the font was in comic sans. Your eyes would probably cross! I can almost bet you wouldn’t buy it, even if you knew you liked the author. There’s something about font – it is sort of like using the word “said” in dialogue. It is almost invisible…. Until it isn’t.

So what should you consider?

Legibility

You want to make sure the book is able to be read easily, something that’s “easy on the eyes” for lack of a better term. But you also want to think about the format of your book. Is it mass market trade paperback? Hardcover? How long is it? What size are the pages going to be?

The length and size of the pages determines how much white space will be around the text, so you want to pick a font that is going to make it easy and accessible to the reader. More white space = easier to read.

Oftentimes, legibility is lost when book formats are changed and the font doesn’t translate well from one to the other.

A great example of this is really long books, like Way of Kings or Outlander, which are great stories. But when they came out in mass market, they were very long books that had to be condensed, so the text is super tiny to accommodate binding constraints. As a reader, you’re looking at this wall of text that is very hard to read at times, and it can be overwhelming.

Feel

I like to think of this as the coloration to your movie. Something the reader doesn’t notice, but can add to the atmosphere of your story.

When they remastered the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, they took the blue tint out of several shots which made the scenes much brighter and got rid of the overarching dark, gloomy, grittiness out of the story. And fans went crazy because even something as subtle as coloration can have a huge effect on how you interact with the media.

The feel of the font is a similar thing that readers don’t really consciously notice when they are reading but can add to the atmosphere and feel. The main choice for feel is serif versus sans serif font.

Market

Is there a norm for your genre? It seems silly, but if you start paying attention, you can tell.

You guys know I preach about market and knowing what’s out there. Is there a usual type of font or spacing for the genre? The way something looks might appeal to the specific readers that you are trying to catch for your story.

Personal Preference

Like I said before, font is kind of a thankless detail, so it isn’t something that readers are probably going to notice or comment on unless it’s really bad. The most important thing is that you’re happy with it and excited about how it looks.

Let’s Compare!

So, these aren’t the greatest photos but I wanted to show the physical copies since font can be changed and altered online. Here are two examples of different books in different genres and how the font affects the legibility and feel of the story.

This first book is an example of a very basic, but still intentional, font choice. Girl in Pieces is a YA novel, so the font needs to be legible and clear for younger readers. The serif font is a larger size with wide spacing between words and letters. Serif font is generally considered to be easier to read visually, the hooks acting as “cues” for your eyes.

This book has a wildly different feel. You can see on the top of the page that this is 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. This font is also serif, but the feel is completely different. It mimics more of a typewriter style, with heavier hooks and more style. The letters are also much smaller in size and closer together, though there is much more white space on the sides of the text in this book. All of these things work together with the content of the story to help place it historically.

Now, like I said before, you can just pick a basic, neutral font and it’ll work fine. In fact, most books have fonts that aren’t really noticeable.

BUT choosing the right font can really add to your story – from the text look, to the white space, the chapter openers, etc….

Check out the books on your shelfs – especially comparable titles. Do you see a pattern? Do you have a preferred style/font?

Choosing Book Fonts