Reading a Print Book

11 Comments / Print Workshop!, Ramblings / By

Print Interior

As y’all may or may not remember, I’m offering a brand new print interiors workshop starting in January. (http://www.KRPWorkshops.com)

To create the interiors for your print books, I recommend using the InDesign software. That’s what I use for the workshop. Yes, there’s a learning curve for InDesign. But if you use some other program, like Word, you are braver than I am.

However, that part of the workshop is merely technical. It’s a lot of instruction about how to do things, select Edit, Find, Change all, etc.

I personally believe the most important lesson of the workshop is lesson one, where I try to teach you how to look at a print book, what the pieces are, and what these pieces do.

That way, as print styles change (and they will!) you’ll be able to stay current, and your books won’t look dated.

For example:

For all print books, one of your main concerns is readability. How easy is it for a reader to read your book? Or how difficult?

Think about how you read a book. You start in the upper left hand corner and end in the lower right hand corner of every page.

Is there a page number at the top of the page? Is it distracting? Is it going to bump the reader every time they turn the page? Do you want to bump your reader? Is that bump deliberate? Do you have a very disturbing or difficult subject manner, and do you want the reader unconsciously unsettled?

There are some literary books that deliberately make it more difficult for the reader to get through the book. They do this on purpose, so that the reader feels a greater sense of accomplishment for having gotten through the book.

Genre books tend to be easy to read and get through.

Young adult books are even easier. The print is generally large and friendly. The space between the lines is wider. Etc. (This may be one of the reasons why young adult books are so popular with older adults.)

There are other tricks that book designers use to make books more or less readable. This is, in my opinion, some of the art of creating a print interior, and why I continue to enjoy it so much.

Yes, there are are technical, craft aspects. And those need to be mastered.

But learning the art can go on forever.

So if you’re interested in learning more, consider signing up for my workshop!

http://www.KRPWorkshops.com

11 thoughts on “Reading a Print Book”

Comments are closed.