It's All About Style

Having decided on the image for my cover (and spent the week looking at more images for the Writers Abroad Anthology) I've been doing some editing and deciding on the form of presentation for 'Reflections'.
Now, I'm sure you will agree, my granddaughter here has plenty of style... well, at this age who doesn't? Style is just as important for a book, self published or otherwise. There are a number of decisions to be made and as I'm the writer and publisher, I have to make them! I have concentrated on four specific issues.

• Font - Style and size. We all have our favourite fonts and some work better on the printed page than others. One of my reading 'bugs' is a book with a font that is too small. Often it means I won't persevere. I just hate seeing all that text crammed onto a page. So Garamond 12, maybe 14 is the choice made.
• Headings - as this is a book of short stories, the all have a title and I've spent some time looking at the different heading styles in words. I've veering towards something that is a bit more flouncy than the text but readable. As it's a black and white production, colour is a no-no so the font might be something more fancy like Bradley Hand
• Spacing - Double spacing is fine for editing but a little too much white space for a publication. Equally single spacing seems a little cramped at times. So 1.15 seems a good middle ground which won't waste paper but will make the reading experience a little more pleasurable
• Page Numbers - I like them, so they are going in. And there will be a contents page with the titles of the stories which will be linked to the page numbers, so not an option really.

Other than that the old adage KISS comes to mind... more on the cover next week.

Until Later...