Designing book interiors and typesetting

The basic process of typesetting involves setting up a book’s interior exactly as it will look when printed.

Some of the choices involved are:

• selecting fonts
• deciding what size the book should be
• considering what front matter should be included
• considering what back matter should be included

Fonts

You will need a font for the body text, the headers and/or footers, the title page, chapter titles, special areas of body text, and possibly more. There are lots of fonts available. It’s best to stick with Open Type fonts, as they seem to work best with various POD printers.

Size

Not every printer can print every possible size book. The most common sizes of perfect bound books are 5.5" x 8.5" and 6" x 9". Lightning Source offers 11 sizes for perfect bound books.

Front matter

is all the stuff in the first part of the book. The front matter should include a title page and a copyright page. It can also include a Table of Contents, Foreword, Preface, Acknowledgements, Introduction, Dedication, and/or Prologue.

Back matter

is all the stuff at the end of the book, including an Epilogue, Afterword, Conclusion, Postscript, Appendix, Glossary, Bibliography, and/or Index.

What we do...

raqoon design uses a typesetting program, not a word processing program, to set up the interior of your book. We will provide you with whatever electronic files you need (.indd, doc, pdf, txt, html), including a properly prepared file to upload to the printer of your choice.

What you do...

You provide us with your word processing file in a file type we can open (.doc or .docx, rtf, txt, pages). You tell us what front and back matter will be included. You specify as much or as little of the design choices as you want, including book size and fonts. Or you can leave those choices to us.

What it will cost...

Once we know more about your project we can give you an accurate estimate of cost, but we do have a few basic rates that will give you an idea of where to start.

Most typesetters charge per page for formatting. We have a base charge of $3 per page, but that may be higher if your design is very complicated or if a page includes graphics.

What makes book design expensive is that there has to be a lot of "back and forth" between the designer and the author/publisher, and that takes time. If you already have a good idea of how you want your book to look, we offer a bargain basement typesetting package at $1 per page. You make the majority of the design decisions yourself and fill out a form telling us what they are. Then we implement them.