How to choose fonts for your book interior
Good book typography is invisible: readers just find the book easy and pleasant to read. Bad typography is the quickest way to make a self-published book look home-made. Luckily, the rules are short.
Step by step
- Use a serif for the body text. Garamond, Baskerville, Crimson, Palatino-style and Georgia-style faces are all proven choices for long reading.
- Pick a heading style that suits the genre. Elegant caps for literary and fantasy, a strong condensed face for thrillers, a script for romance.
- Keep it to two fonts. One for the body, one for headings, at most.
- Preview a full chapter. Check a whole page of body text, not just the title page.
Ready-made designs
Postscript's Book Formatter has complete designs that set the body font, headings and chapter decoration together. Free designs include Classic Serif, Modern Sans, Literary, Elegant, Garamond, Baskerville, Crimson Novel and Clean Non-fiction. Pro adds genre designs such as Epic Fantasy, Thriller Edge, Romance Elegant, Picture Book, Poetry, Vintage Print and more.
Fonts to avoid for body text
Sans-serifs like Arial are tiring over hundreds of printed pages. Decorative and script fonts belong in chapter titles only. And avoid Comic Sans unless your book is genuinely for young children.
Size and spacing matter as much as the font
Most printed novels use 10 to 12 pt body text with line spacing around 1.3 to 1.5. Too tight looks cramped; too loose looks like a school essay. Justified text with indented paragraphs is the traditional novel look, while non-fiction often uses spaced paragraphs. Adjust these in the Book Formatter and check a full page in the preview.
Questions
What size should body text be?
Usually 10 to 12 pt in print, depending on the font and trim size.
Can I use any font I like?
Check its licence allows commercial use. Google Fonts, which most of the Postscript designs use, are free to use in a book you sell.
Do the designs work for EPUB too?
The EPUB keeps your chapter headings and structure, but e-readers let readers choose their own font, so the print PDF is where the design shows most.
More guides
How to format a book for print and ebook (free for short books)
Format your manuscript into a print-ready PDF in KDP trim sizes plus an EPUB. Free for books up to 10,000 words; Pro for full-length novels.
How to format a paperback for Amazon KDP
Step by step: lay out a KDP-ready paperback interior in the right trim size, check it, and fix common KDP upload errors.
How to turn a Word manuscript into an EPUB ebook
Create an EPUB with chapters, a title page and a contents list from your Word or text manuscript, free in your browser.