Book Design Made Simple

You can do it yourself.

  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • BOOK
  • VIDEOS
  • BLOG
  • READERS’ BOOKS
  • MEDIA
    • About the book
    • Resources
  • SHOP
You are here: Home / Archives for typesetting

Typesetting


Book typesetting sample photo.Below you'll find links to all the information about typesetting that’s available on our website, book, videos, and blog.

Get started with Part I of Book Design Made Simple, where you’ll learn how to lease and install Adobe InDesign, create a document, and import your manuscript from Word. Download Part I for free by subscribing to our blog—simply use the form below.

 

Excerpts from Book Design Made Simple

  • Running heads — what to include in your novel or nonfiction book
  • Typeface vs font: what’s the difference?
  • Hyphenation and justification settings: make your text look fabulous
  • Baseline grid: aligns the text on all pages throughout your book
  • Unequal column widths: how to set up a page layout with unequal column widths

 

Video tutorials

  • Typesetting a poetry book
  • Centering poems in text
  • Using columns to change your layout

 

Blog posts

Below are all the blog posts in the Typesetting tag, starting with the most recent post.

Advanced live index features in InDesign

November 7, 2022 By Fiona Raven Leave a Comment

Live index showing advanced features.InDesign’s live index includes some great advanced features: you can add italics to the index, add bold page numbers for illustrations, and even create a live index across several documents using InDesign’s Book feature.

Be sure to first read our earlier blog post, Create a live index in InDesign, to learn the basics of creating a live index. [Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: Book feature, index, paragraph styles, typesetting

Create a live index in InDesign

September 12, 2022 By Fiona Raven 3 Comments

Start a live index in InDesignIt’s easy to create a live index for your book in InDesign, and there’s a major benefit to doing so: If you move any of your text, the index markers stay with the text and the index automatically updates!

In Book Design Made Simple, we explain how to create paragraph styles for indexes, how to import an index from Word, and how to typeset an index. Here, we’ll explain the simplest way to create a live index in InDesign.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: index, typesetting

What type size should I use?

January 10, 2022 By Glenna Collett 2 Comments

Graphic showing type sizes for book genres.In Book Design Made Simple, we suggest type sizes that should work in most situations for adult readers. But there are so many other situations! What about children’s books? What about large type books? Reference books? In this article we’ll suggest solutions for these kinds of books. And we’ll only discuss printed books; with ebooks, the reader can enlarge or reduce the type size to whatever works for them. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: children's books, paragraph styles, typesetting

How to fix book typesetting and layout issues in InDesign

January 11, 2021 By Fiona Raven 10 Comments

Book typesetting sample photo.Book typesetting and layout tips are usually about the small stuff—fixing awkward hyphenation, using special characters for symbols, and so on—but most of the questions we get are about the BIG issues. How can I balance the number of text lines on facing pages? What if the last page of my chapter only has two lines? If my chapter has to end on a right-hand page, can I leave it blank? These issues arise all the time during book typesetting. We’ll explain the best ways to resolve them. [Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: text frames, typesetting

Design a workbook

September 7, 2020 By Glenna Collett Leave a Comment

Design a workbook, five sample front covers shown.Want to design a workbook? Who uses those any more?

Lots of folks, actually. Even though there are apps for practically everything these days, children still enjoy workbooks for mazes or drawing or learning practically anything. Adults can use them for recording their latest bird find or geocaching location, or for word or number puzzles, for instance. A coloring book can be considered a workbook, too.

We’ll help you design a workbook that will work well for your audience.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Design Tagged With: Amazon, book printing, copyright, typesetting

Combining serif and sans serif fonts

July 12, 2020 By Fiona Raven 5 Comments

Combining serif and sans serif fontsCombining serif and sans serif fonts successfully can be a challenge, but it’s much easier once you know a few simple rules. It’s worth learning, as combining two fonts can really make your book design look professional. So don’t be daunted by the thousands of fonts available! The font-combining basics explained here will help to get you going quickly and easily. [Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: typesetting

A review of Affinity Publisher

May 11, 2020 By Glenna Collett 51 Comments

Affinity Publisher logoWhy, you might ask, is the coauthor of a book about InDesign reviewing a direct competitor, Affinity Publisher?

Because it’s new and I wanted to check it out.

And because it’s so much more affordable than Adobe’s Creative Cloud: $600 a year for the Adobe suite vs. a one-time total of $150 for the full line of Serif’s products: Publisher, Photo, and Designer (all at half price until May 20). We both bought the Affinity software for desktop, and I must say that for the most part, we love it.

The Affinity Publisher app is for desktop use on PCs and Macs. Photo and Designer can also now be used on iPads, so check back on Publisher to see when the iPad version becomes available.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Design Tagged With: typesetting

Design a children’s picture book

March 9, 2020 By Fiona Raven 77 Comments

Group of children's picture books.Children’s picture books are fun to design! They’re colorful, full of images, and everything is packed into a small number of words and pages.

To design a children’s picture book, you’ll need to consider lots of factors: book size, page count, quality of images, flow of text, color, and more. Let’s take a look at those factors. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Design Tagged With: Amazon, children's books, color, images, typesetting

Using InDesign keyboard shortcuts

January 26, 2020 By Glenna Collett 14 Comments

numeric keypad used for InDesign keyboard shortcutsYou can save a lot of time using InDesign keyboard shortcuts. Many users find that they work faster on their keyboard than with their mouse or trackpad. Does that sound like you? Read on to learn how to use this very handy function for applying styles in InDesign. [Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: typesetting

Error importing Word index into InDesign

May 13, 2019 By Fiona Raven 2 Comments

Import Word index to InDesign errorIf you’re importing a Word index into InDesign, chances are good that the index will import just fine. But what if you get the dreaded “index entries contain invalid characters” error? This happened to one of our readers recently. It’s a tricky issue to resolve since InDesign doesn’t specify which characters are invalid. With a Word index containing hundreds (or thousands!) of entries, how can you find the specific characters causing the issue?  [Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: index, typesetting

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page »

Categories

  • Book Design (25)
    • Book Cover Design (8)
    • Book Page Design (11)
  • InDesign (18)
  • Publishing (24)

Tags

Amazon book binding Book feature book marketing book printing children's books color contents copyright ebooks editing footnotes/endnotes images InDesign updates index ISBN paragraph styles Photoshop tables text frames typesetting

Connect with us online

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Recent Posts

  • Crop marks and other printer’s marks January 8, 2023
  • Advanced live index features in InDesign November 7, 2022
  • Create a live index in InDesign September 12, 2022
  • Book endpapers: A gallery of ideas July 11, 2022
  • Writing in InDesign: Why and how May 9, 2022
  • Designing a book spine March 7, 2022
  • What type size should I use? January 10, 2022

Join our book design community! Download chapters 1 to 9 of the book for free and receive book design updates via email.

Buy the book

Book Design Made Simple
Paperback: Amazon
Ebook: Kindle, Apple Books

Blog awards

Copyright © 2022 - Fiona Raven and Glenna Collett

Read our privacy policy here.