• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Self-Publishing
  • Author Blogging
  • Sitemap
  • Fonts/Typography

The Book Designer

Practical advice to help build better books

by selfpublishing.com

COACHING


PUBLISHING


WRITING


PRODUCTION


FREELANCE


WRITING JOBS

  • Home
  • About
  • Articles
  • Contact
  • Shop
You are here: Home / Book Design / 21 Top Links to Book Fonts for Self-Publishing

21 Top Links to Book Fonts for Self-Publishing

by Joel Friedlander on July 18, 2012 31 Comments

One of the most often-asked questions on the blog is: “What text font should I use for my book?”

In fact, this question comes up so often I’ve written quite a few articles on the subject. But like most blogs, these posts can be hard to find in the dark reaches of the archives.

After writing earlier this week about the posts with the most blog comments, I realized that I had never brought all these articles together in one place.

To make up for that, and as a resource I can point to when people ask the question again about the best book font—certain to happen in the very near future—I’ve brought them all together here.

If you’re working on your book design, or if you design books for other people, help yourself to some font goodness. And if you’re not ready yet, bookmark this so you can find it when you’re ready.

Articles on Fonts for Book and Cover Design

Articles About Fonts

Picking Fonts for Your Self-Published Book
“Picking Fonts for Your Self-Published Book discusses how to choose fonts and suggests Garamond, Caslon, Minion, Janson and Palatino.”

5 Favorite Fonts for Interior Book Design
“5 classic type fonts for book design, a helpful listing for book designers and self-publishers, with illustrations of each font.”

5 Great Fonts for Book Covers
“5 Great Fonts for Book Covers including ChunkFive, League Gothic, Baskerville, Franchise and Trajan three of which are free for book cover design.”

Square-Serif Fonts Pack a Typographic Punch
“Square-Serif Fonts Pack a Typographic Punch including Rockwell, Serifa, Memphis, American Typewriter and many others including Chunk Five.”

5 Favorite Fonts with Hidden Type Ornaments
“5 Favorite Fonts with Hidden Type Ornaments shows samples from Minion Pro, Adobe Caslon Pro, Chaparral Pro, Zapfino and Warnock Pro.”

Specific Typefaces

The Century Typeface: An American Original
“The Century Typeface: An American Original. Available from many type foundries in many variations, Century is one of the most readable typefaces available.”

Typefaces I Can’t Live Without: Adobe Myriad Pro
“Typefaces I Can’t Live Without: Adobe Myriad Pro, a versatile sans serif font that can be used in almost endless ways in typographic designs like book design.”

Typefaces of 1932: Weiss Roman Specimens
“Typefaces of 1932: Weiss Roman Specimens shows pages from a booklet issued by Bauer Type Foundry for the printers of the time.”

Typeface Combinations

3 Great Typeface Combinations You Can Use in Your Book
“Deciding which typefaces to use can be a challenge for new self-publishers. Three great combinations of text and display typefaces are suggested, with illustrations of each.”

7 New Typeface Combinations for Book Design
“7 New Typeface Combinations for Book Design including typefaces for seven different genres of books, including Garamond, Janson, Helvetica and many other typefaces.”

Typographic Chapter Openings

8 Drop Caps For Chapter Openings in Adobe InDesign
“8 Drop Caps For Chapter Openings in Adobe InDesign with variations you can use in your own books to lend a decorative air to the beginning of your chapters.”

Book Design: 6 Variations on Drop-Cap Typography
“Book Design: 6 Variations on Drop-Cap Typography describes different methods to add decoration to book chapter openings.”

Fonts on the Book Page

3 Keys to Beautiful Book Pages
“3 Keys to Setting Up Successful Book Pages for self-publishers. Defining the typeface, line length and leading help determine the overall look of the book.”

Book Design to Sell: Fonts for Books
“Book Design to Sell: Fonts for Books with Laura Cross. In an interview Joel Friedlander talks about how to choose fonts for self-published books.”

7 Things You Can Do Today to Improve Your Book Design
“7 Things You Can Do Today to Improve Your Book Design including picking the right fonts and setting up your book pages.”

History of Typefaces

Beautiful Details, Beautiful Books: How to Recognize Oldstyle Typefaces
“Beautiful Details, Beautiful Books: How to Recognize Oldstyle Typefaces including Bembo, a classic book typeface from fifteenth century Venice.”

Typefaces as History: Aldus Manutius and The Noble Bembo
“Typefaces as History: Aldus Manutius and The Noble Bembo, showing how characters straight out of renaissance Italy influence the typefaces we use today.”

Old John Baskerville and the Birth of Modern Printing Paper
“Old John Baskerville and the Birth of Modern Printing Paper, where we see that the influence of technology can work to advance arts or retard them.”

General Articles on Fonts

Fun With Fonts—Identifont
“Fun With Fonts–Identifont typeface identification and search functions for book designers and typographers.”

These 3 Typography Websites Will Change How You Look at Type
“These 3 Typography Websites Will Change How You Took at Type including LetterheadFonts.com , ILoveTypography.com and WeLoveTypography.com.”

Understanding Fonts & Typography
“Understanding Fonts & Typography for self-publishers who want to design their own books.”

Photo by visual_dichotomy

Filed Under: Book Design, Self-Publishing Tagged With: book design, fonts, publish a book, self publishing, typefaces, typography

journal marketing

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Michele says

    August 2, 2016 at 4:13 pm

    Joel, thank you for the resources! What do you think about the Dyslexie font? I’ve heard it’s designed to make it easier for people with dyslexia to read. https://www.dyslexiefont.com/en/dyslexie-font/
    I’m thinking I would like to use it when my manuscript is ready.

    Reply
    • Joel Friedlander says

      August 2, 2016 at 4:19 pm

      Michele, you should check out this article: A Typeface Just for Dyslexics?.

      Reply
      • Michele says

        August 2, 2016 at 5:31 pm

        Very helpful! Thanks again Joel. I like your idea about readers being able to choose the fonts they like best in ebooks. The Dyslexie font is visually appealing to me, but of course different readers have different preferences.

        Reply
  2. Julia says

    October 10, 2014 at 8:28 am

    Joel,
    Thanks for great article and forum for responses. I have one question. What is ‘humanistic elegance’ from your discussion on Garamond?
    Julia

    Reply
    • Joel Friedlander says

      October 10, 2014 at 11:40 am

      Julia,
      Humanistic typefaces are derived from calligraphic models, and Garamond is a particularly elegant one IMO.

      Reply
  3. Sasha says

    August 15, 2014 at 5:02 pm

    Hi! Does anyone know what type of license one would need to use a font that is not free, like Calisto? On their webpage it says a Desktop and a Web licenses, as the two available options. Any information would be appreciated.

    Reply
  4. Thais says

    August 5, 2014 at 5:44 am

    Hello Joel,
    May I ask you what is the font on the image on the beggining of the page?

    Thank you so much,
    Thais

    Reply
  5. Lilly says

    December 13, 2013 at 10:00 am

    What is the font on the photo??

    Reply
  6. Keith Tankard says

    September 6, 2013 at 1:17 am

    May I ask a related question on fonts? I’ve been producing an ezine for people with a passion for history (also one for English teachers and learners). They’re free and are meant to add something to my country’s social well being. But here is my problem.

    Initially I went for a font which I thought looked nice (I think it was Century or Century Gothic but with heading in Kaufmann BD BT). And to me it looked good when converted to PDF. But one day I saw the document on my wife’s computer and it looked truly dreadful because her computer was unable to read that font and therefore converted to what it decided was the next best thing, and it was nowhere near the next best. Later I bought an iPad and saw the same problem. It was a shock and my reaction was to convert to Arial.

    I read in two of your articles the suggestion that one should use something like League Gothic for the front page and Garamond for the general text. OK, but how does one know that all computers, iPads, etc, are going to read this text and not convert it to something else, especially since I had to download both fonts from Font Squirrel because neither were on my computer?

    Reply
  7. Maggie Dana says

    July 19, 2012 at 9:27 pm

    Fonts are like lipstick and nail polish. Too many to choose from.

    Reply
  8. Evelyn Puerto says

    July 19, 2012 at 6:22 am

    Thanks so much for putting all of this in one place. What a fabulous resource!

    Reply
  9. Katie McAleece says

    July 19, 2012 at 5:42 am

    Bookmarking this.

    Thank you!

    Reply
  10. Maggie Dana says

    July 18, 2012 at 9:13 pm

    Chris

    Lovely combination you’be chosen. I use Goudy a lot; also Sabon, another elegant old style typeface.

    Reply
    • Joel Friedlander says

      July 19, 2012 at 9:19 am

      I think Sabon was 6th on my list when I created the “Top 5” post. It’s an elegant and useful faces that’s been used in many many books, so thanks for the suggestion Maggie.

      Reply
  11. Tracy says

    July 18, 2012 at 1:32 pm

    Sometimes I think too much choice is a bad thing. There are so many fonts and sub-variations on those fonts that it makes my head spin. Perhaps I can’t process more than 3-5 choices for a given item effectively. It’s a shame there isn’t a simple table to select appropriate fonts that is infallible. Or an “infallible five for free” that will work for any print or e-book.

    Reply
    • Tracy says

      July 18, 2012 at 1:34 pm

      HA!, Guess i missed the link to “5 Favorite Fonts for Interior Book Design”…. Long.. Long.. Long Day…

      Reply
      • Joel Friedlander says

        July 19, 2012 at 9:18 am

        Tracy, yes, that was exactly the idea behind suggesting just a few classic typefaces because the sheer number of fonts available can be daunting to the uninitiated. Hope that helps.

        Reply
  12. chris says

    July 18, 2012 at 6:52 am

    Thanks for this all-in-one list.

    I think I’ve finally settled for a font pairing for the interior of my non-fiction book: Gill Sans for headings and Goudy Old Style for the normal text. I’ve printed out a couple of pages and it looks nice.

    Reply
    • Joel Friedlander says

      July 19, 2012 at 9:16 am

      Chris, those fonts can work well together, especially if you use one of the bolder versions of Gill Sans to give some contrast and color to the pages. Goudy Old Style is an old favorite of mine and makes beautiful book pages.

      Reply
  13. Colin Dunbar says

    July 18, 2012 at 4:16 am

    This awesome, thanks Joel.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Fonts | Pearltrees says:
    April 9, 2015 at 3:46 pm

    […] [according to whom?] Many of the symbols are drawn from existing character sets or ISO or other national and international standards. The Unicode Standard states that “The universe of symbols is rich and open-ended.”[1] This makes the issue of what symbols to encode and how symbols should be encoded more complicated than the issues surrounding writing systems. Convertisseur de caractères et de codages Unicode. Flip (pour retourner un texte) Dafont.com. WhatTheFont! What Font is- Font Detection. Font Squirrel – free fonts. Fonts. Top Links to Fonts for Your Self-Published Book. […]

    Reply
  2. Creating an ARC in CreateSpace | Capitol Crime Writers says:
    February 14, 2014 at 10:26 am

    […] There are many discussions of book fonts out there. You might try this one from book designer Joel Friedlander. […]

    Reply
  3. Blue Publishing | Remaking The Publishing World » Choosing Fonts For Your Book says:
    September 4, 2013 at 4:07 pm

    […] Internets and the Blogs and other peculiar places where information resides nowadays, including marvelous posts on fonts by marvelous Joel Friedlander who knows much more than me and whose site I suggest you to read […]

    Reply
  4. News You Can Use – July 31, 2012 | The Steve Laube Agency says:
    July 31, 2012 at 8:26 am

    […] 21 Links to Fonts for Self-Publishing – One of the biggest mistakes I see in self published books is the use of the wrong font. This incredible resource from The Book Designer blog will give you a crash course on what works and what doesn’t if you are attempting to create your own print book. Even if you aren’t self-publishing this type of “course” will give you a greater appreciation for the “art of book-making.” […]

    Reply
  5. This week’s journey through the blogosphere | The Many Worlds of Char…. says:
    July 26, 2012 at 7:24 am

    […] 21 Top Links to Fonts for Self-Publishing by Joel Friedlander. Font choice is extremely important for e-books. I’ll be looking to find something that is easy on your eyes so Joel’s article is already bookmarked on my computer. Joel also has a monthly cover design award series that I love to peruse. He often includes his own critique of many of the designs and I’ve been paying attention! I’m working with Travis at ProBookCovers on the design for Family Peace. It is going to be so cool! […]

    Reply
  6. Top Links to Fonts for Your Self-Published Book | The Writer's Resource Cupboard | Scoop.it says:
    July 22, 2012 at 7:11 pm

    […] http://www.thebookdesigner.com – Today, 3:11 AM Rescoop […]

    Reply
  7. Writing Blog Treasures 7~21 | Gene Lempp ~ Writer says:
    July 21, 2012 at 9:44 am

    […] 21 Top Links to Book Fonts for Self-Publishing by Joel Friedlander. […]

    Reply
  8. Designing Your Book: Which Font to Use? | Making Life Easier says:
    July 21, 2012 at 9:01 am

    […] to my great delight, through the wonders of Twitter I stumbled on this great post. Included in it are links to 17 articles that give all the information you’d need to know to […]

    Reply
  9. Friday Features #14 | Yesenia Vargas says:
    July 20, 2012 at 1:38 pm

    […] 21 Top Links to Book Fonts for Self-Publishing by Joel Friedlander at The Book Designer […]

    Reply
  10. 21 Top Links to Book Fonts for Self-Publishing | The Passive Voice says:
    July 19, 2012 at 6:04 am

    […] I realized that I had never brought all these articles together in one place.Link to the rest at The Book DesignerJoel includes posts on interior fonts, cover fonts, drop caps and every other font question you […]

    Reply
  11. Top Links to Fonts for Your Self-Published Book — The Book Designer says:
    July 18, 2012 at 12:05 am

    […] 21 Top Links to Book Fonts for Self-Publishing […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Get the Advanced Publishing Kit

Topics

  • Audiobooks
  • Author Blogging 101
  • Book Construction Blueprint
  • Book Design
  • Book Printing
  • Book Production
  • Book Reviews
  • Cameras
  • Contributing Writers
  • Cover Design
  • E-Books & Readers
  • Editorial
  • Guest Posts
  • Interior Design
  • Interviews
  • Journey of a Book
  • Legal Issues
  • Marketing
  • Podcasts
  • Project Focus
  • Reports
  • Reviews
  • Samples
  • Self Publishing Basics
  • Self-Publishing
  • Social Media
  • Training
  • Video
  • Webinars
  • Writing
Self Publishing Platform
Self Publishing School

COACHING

Self Publishing

PUBLISHING

The Write Life

WRITING

The Book Designer

PRODUCTION

Make a Living Writing

FREELANCE

Freelance Writers Den

WRITING JOBS

Footer

  • Home
  • About
  • Articles
  • Contact
  • Shop
  • Self-Publishing
  • Author Blogging
  • Sitemap
  • Fonts/Typography
Terms of Service
Privacy Policy
Comment Policy
Guest Author Guidelines
Why?
"Writers change the world one reader at a time. But you can't change the world with a book that's still on your hard drive or in a box under your bed. This blog exists to help you get that book into people's hands."
—Joel Friedlander

Copyright Self Publishing School All Rights Reserved. © 2022