INTERIOR BOOK DESIGN
The design of your book encompasses more than just the front and back cover. How your words are presented on the page adds to the reader experience and, depending on the genre and style of your book, can have a powerful influence on the final result.
The interior design of your book is the glue that binds your storytelling to your reader’s imagination. It helps to maintain the theme by offering the opportunity for visual cues throughout the book. Contrary to the belief that “the layout of the words isn’t that important,” interior book design is a sleeping beast that is often overlooked.
Your vision crafted into an impressive interior book design
Here at CoverKitchen, we can help you visually tell your story on the front and back covers, and every page in between.
The first step starts with understanding the vision you have for your book. Our easy sign-up process will guide you through the information we need to start understanding where you want to go with your design. From there, our team can get started on both the technical and artistic aspects of your interior book design.
Get your book edited and designed at the same time
To ease the pressures of managing your deadlines and budgets, we take some additional steps to simplify the process.
For example, book editing and interior design don’t have to be separate stages of your process. We can import your manuscript directly into our interior design layout as linked text. That way, whenever you or your editor make changes on your original manuscript, it automatically updates in our design layout too!
This helps you achieve three things at once:
Allows both interior book design and editing to happen simultaneously
Reduces time and costs by reducing the manual work involved if further edits occur
Removes human error and miscommunication between editor and designer. We don’t have to rely on someone telling us text was changed, it updates automatically.
Finding typos or wanting to further edit your manuscript after delivery of an upload-ready PDF is a common experience for both first time and seasoned authors. These last minute changes shouldn’t mean added costs when working with us!
Professional interior book design makes for easier publishing
The interior of your book isn’t just for your reader’s eyes, but for your publisher’s as well. Different publishers will often have different requirements and limitations, meaning your book can actually get rejected if it's not designed within certain specifications.
By working with our team of professional book designers, we can take care of all these design technicalities and guide you through the best options available.
If you’re a self-publishing author who decided to publish with KDP or IngramSpark, working with one of our professional interior book designers who’s experienced with print-on-demand publishing can help save you time and hassle. Since we’re familiar with the requirements of self-publishing platforms, we can help you with problems you may face during the uploading process.
The elements that go into your professional interior book design
Unbeknownst to most, interior book design requires more than just putting words to page. There are quite a few distinctive elements that curate a reading experience that’s expected by both your readers and prospective publishers.
Book interior design can be divided into stages: layout design and typesetting.
LAYOUT DESIGN
Trim size
Trim size is all about the height and width of your book pages. It may not seem important, but there are artistic and genre specific styles that appeal better to a particular targeted audience.
In the YA genre, for example, teen readers are generally disinterested in 400 page novels, so a larger trim size can help reduce the amount of pages to meet the audience’s preferences.
The type of book you’re writing also changes the expectations for trim size:
For paperback, the trim size is the same for the interior pages and book cover.
For hardcover jackets, the trim size for the jacket is slightly larger than the interior pages.
For eBooks, trim size isn’t required for book design
Trim size has the greatest impact on the layout design because it determines the proportions and placement of a text block in harmony on the page spread.
You can get guidance by working with a professional book designer who will take all elements including publishing platform, book genre and word count into consideration when choosing the right trim size for your book.
Margins
The margins are the space on the sides of the pages that surround your text and serve to improve the readability of your book. There are four margins in every book:
The top — generally where the name of the chapter, book or author is listed.
Bottom — generally where the page number is listed.
Outside — the space where you can hold the book without covering any words.
Inside, or “gutter” — the space in the middle that keeps pages separate and words from overlapping.
The bottom margin is usually larger than the top to avoid the text block appearing to fall down towards the bottom edge. The gutter is just a fraction larger than the outside margin to keep the text from disappearing into the binding as books don’t lay completely flat—particularly perfect binding paperbacks where pages and cover are bound together using glue.
The outside margin should leave enough room for the reader’s thumbs. To achieve a balance of aesthetics and readability, a good general guideline is to keep it under 35 lines per page. You should also aim for an average of 60 characters per line, including letters and spaces. This guides you toward the right margin size.
White space
White space is generally used to signal something to the reader. The blank page between a preface and the beginning of the story, the space between chapters or before and after headings or the paragraph spacing that indicates a change of scene.
Blank pages may seem like a waste, but they’re necessary breathing spaces during the reading experience. It’s mainly used to emphasize a professional and clean design, and should be used wisely to avoid adding unnecessary pages.
Chapter Openings
Chapter openings are key to your interior book design and overall aesthetic. The chapter opening serves as a place to pause and reflect while also giving clues to what’s next.
Each chapter opening should be placed on its own page and include the chapter title at the bare minimum. Chapter openings serve as an opportunity to cultivate your own style by including subheadings, quotes, or a chapter synopsis.
The sky's the limit; however—like always—there’s a few rules to follow:
The first chapter starts on the recto, aka the right page.
For non-fiction, all following chapters start on the right.
For fiction, all following chapters start either on the left or right depending on the number of chapters, the budget for space, and the avoidance of blank verso pages, aka when there’s a double spread of blank pages.
At Coverkitchen, we favor consistency by placing chapter openings on the right page.
Running heads and feet
The header and footer describe the running text that lives in the top and bottom margins. These serve as navigation and a reference point for the reader. Kind of like their north star in the journey of your story—it tells the reader where they are at all times.
The running head and feet generally include:
Book name
Author name
Chapter name
Page number
However, you don’t have to include all of these elements. You can choose your own style and design your running head and feet any way you’d like. Page numbers (aka folios) should be on every page but never on blank pages, front and back matter pages (title, copyright, dedication…) or part-openers.
Imagery
If you’re using imagery, make sure that it compliments your story and furthers the experience for your reader. Every element of your interior book design should be intentional, including the imagery you choose to include or exclude.
Regarding fiction, it’s standard practice to use one or two images in the beginning of the book, like a map for instance, rather than sprinkling images throughout your pages. Sometimes part openers may have an illustration on the left page.
TYPESETTING
Typography
The importance of a typeface (aka font) you choose cannot be stressed enough. Your font is what your readers will be interacting with most—it's the messenger of your words.
Choose a font that’s easy to read and whose distinctive character is sympathetic with the theme in your book. You may be tempted to try something new and entertaining, but generally the opposite happens and causes distraction. Serif fonts let the gaze move easily over a body of text because their features help differentiate between letterforms.
Sans serif fonts are more commonly used on headings (you may also use serif for both body and headings though). Pairing serif and sans serif fonts may help to enrich your design.
Here are some of the best fonts for body text:
Garamond
Caslon
Bakerville
Sabon
Bembo
Line spacing
Have you ever had to squint at the words on a page to read them because they were so close together? You can save your reader from having sore eyes by adjusting the line spacing (aka leading) with better readability in mind.
Your line spacing will heavily rely on the font and size you choose. Fonts have different line spacing by nature, so the industry standard ranges between 120 and 150 percent of the type size.
Line width
There is a balancing act when it comes to line width—you don’t want too much or too little, too wide or too narrow.
If the line is too wide, it can be hard to focus. If the line is too narrow, it can cause the reader’s eyes to move too quickly through the page causing exertion. A good rule of thumb is to have 50-70 characters per line.
Orphans, and widows and runts
Orphans and widows refer to the last lines of a paragraph that linger lonesomely at the beginning or end of a page. They make the hairs on the back of every interior book designer’s neck stand up because they create unnecessary negative space and disturb clean design.
Orphan: the first line of a paragraph standing isolated at the bottom of a page.
Widow: the last line of a paragraph standing isolated at the top of a page.
Runt: A single word dangling on the last line of a paragraph.
They are unavoidable but a qualified designer/typesetter can fix them at the end of the typesetting process.
Our professional 3 stage interior book design process
Interior book design takes quite a bit of work, especially if you have to meet a specific page limit, genre style, or design preference for a publisher.
Regardless of your situation, interior book design should not be overlooked. It’s the silver platter to which you carry your story to your reader. You’ve already put countless hours into crafting your book—leave it up to our team of passionate creatives to give it the final polish it deserves.
Layout Design & Typesetting of 2 Chapters
We will show you the first proposal of your book layout design, heading styles (chapter headings and subheadings), font selections, running heads and page numbers. — It takes around 5 working days.
You’ll be guided through proper formatting of your Microsoft Word document which will allow us to start right away.
Typesetting the Entire Book
After receiving your approval for the layout design and typesetting, we’ll apply them to the entire book. — It takes around 5 working days for a basic interior and 10 working days for a complex interior.
Until this stage, you can still be editing and proofreading your book since we are using the tool that synchronizes your Microsoft Word document with our design file.
File delivery
When your book is completely edited and proofread, we will polish final typesetting which includes fixing orphans, widows and runts before delivering you a print ready PDF file. — It takes around 3 working days.
After delivering the files, our team will help you with any questions or problems you face during the production process.