Creating a novel: how I formatted my book’s print interior for free with LaTeX
Good formatting should be invisible.
When a reader picks up a new novel, they’re not checking for proper font size, paper type, pagination, or margin depths. They want to find out if the words on the page will draw them in. Yet, if any of these nuances are off, that reader will notice, even subconsciously—and it can be enough to ruin their immersion in the story’s world.
As a writer, this is why professional interior formatting is a non-negotiable. There are so many elements that must be nailed down to ensure that a book’s physical presentation doesn’t come off as amateur. Luckily, formatting conventions and techniques can be learned with a little patience up front, and once acquired, these skills can be applied to any and all future manuscripts.
In today’s article, I’ll be reflecting on the process of designing the print interior for my debut novel. Admittedly, the tool that I used to generate my files has a steeper learning curve than most commercial software packages, and it’s rather obscure in creative writing contexts. That being said, plenty of the decision points I’ll go over here are applicable to whichever software you choose to utilize. And if you decide to follow in my footsteps and try your hand at LaTeX, I’ll show you the basics of using this powerful typesetting language to create a professional final product without spending a dime.
To jump straight to my example .tex file, just click here.
Design considerations for print formatting
First, let’s talk about how I chose the specifications for my book’s interior. I decided upon each of the following elements after conducting a decent amount of research, and I’m happy with my final result. However, I should emphasize that my conclusions are specific to my own understanding of industry standards for my genre at the time of this writing.
Trim size
I chose my book’s dimensions with consideration for genre expectations and my total word count. For a starting point, I grabbed a tape measure and recorded the sizes of popular Romantasy titles. While the most common trim size in the United States is 6” × 9”, I found that recent books most similar to my own were usually smaller than this, ranging between 5” × 8” and 5.5” × 8.5”.
From there, I considered how the dimensions would affect my final page count and the feel of holding the book. I wanted to optimize the spine's thickness so that my novel felt substantial, but not so thick as to be cumbersome to hold open. At the same time, I wanted to err on the side of fewer pages, because more pages increases the price to print.
The final page count is a function of not only trim size, but also fonts, margins, and spacing. I considered each of these elements in tandem, and I landed on a trim size of 5.5” × 8.5” for my 75,000-word, 272-page novel.
Ink and paper type
Printing services generally offer paper in several weights, with options for either white or cream color. White paper is standard for nonfiction and image-heavy titles; cream is standard for fiction. For ink type, the consideration is color versus black and white printing, with color being significantly more expensive and usually reserved for white paper only. Ingram in particular also offers a paper type called “groundwood,” which has a similar texture to the paper used in mass-market paperbacks.
This combination of parameters was an easy choice for me—a novel should be in black and white anyhow, and adding color to my decorative elements would not be worth the added cost. And although I did use Ingram, I used it only for my hardcover with dust jacket variant. Hence, I chose black and white printing, with standard cream colored paper for both of the printing services I used.
As an aside, the combination of paper type and final page count directly determines the thickness of the book’s spine. This information, along with the trim size, is necessary for generating the appropriate templates for cover design (which will differ slightly between printing services, even with similar paper choices). This is why it can be helpful to have these parameters at hand before either approaching cover design on one’s own or hiring a cover artist.
Margins and spacing
With trim size set, the next considerations are margin depths, followed by line spacing and font size. I didn’t follow rigid rules for this sequence of elements. Instead, I started with margin sizes comparable to ones I measured on novels in my genre, and adjusted based on feel.
Margin specifications are complicated by the presence of header and footer text, as well as the requirement that the innermost ones must be wider to accommodate the binding. How much extra space is needed is a function of the page count. For characters per line, recommendations range between 50 and 70, including spaces and punctuation.
After playing around with all of my spacings, I ended up with 29 lines per page, and approximately 65 characters per line. My inside margins were 0.75”, while the outer ones were 0.5”. Looking back, if I were to change anything, I would have made my outer margins a touch wider.
Font choices
There are two caveats to keep in mind when choosing fonts for print formatting. The first is suitability, and the second is licensing.
As for suitability: a font that strays from standard conventions will appear out of place in a fiction novel. Do not fall into the trap of defaulting to Times New Roman, which was designed for newspapers, not books! Instead, choose a readable serif. Common choices include Garamond, Cambria, and Baskerville.
The second pitfall to watch out for is licensing. If the book is to be sold, any fonts used for printing must be licensed for commercial use, not personal use—and just because the font comes installed with your word processor does not mean it is safe to use for this purpose! Commercial licenses can usually be purchased; otherwise, there are plenty of free fonts that carry this type of license, including those carrying the SIL Open Font License. The key is to read the license that comes with each font to ensure that it can be safely used.
For my novel, I used Libertinus Serif for the main text and chapter headers, My Soul for the decorative first letters of each chapter, and Novel Deco for page numbers and the decorative glyph in my scene breaks. All of these had a free commercial license.
Miscellaneous formatting conventions
There are a few conventions for professional typesetting which can be difficult to accomplish in a text editor like Word. First, the front matter of the book (half title page, title page, copyright page, dedication, table of contents) follows a particular order and should have either no pagination or Roman numerals instead of Arabic. Second, headers should alternate between the book title and author’s name, with the former on verso (left side) pages, and the latter on recto (right side) pages. The first page of each chapter has modified formatting as well, often with headers and page numbers removed.
The next figure shows a section of one of my recto pages which includes some of the elements I’ve described so far. Here you can see how I designed the spacing of my headers, margins, lines, and gutter, and you can judge the appeal of my chosen typefaces. I tried to grab a section that showcases the normal type, italics, and the decorative element I chose for my scene breaks.
Strategic formatting
As a closer to this section, I want to go on a tiny tangent about an often overlooked benefit of controlling one’s own formatting. About fifteen years ago, I read a blog suggesting a tactic that stuck with me: purposefully ending the first paragraph, the first page, and the first chapter of a novel with sentences that would hook the reader into continuing on. It turns out that employing this idea in full requires the control I describe!
I’ve reworked the first page of Flight of Souls probably over 100 times, in part to perfect the placement of the words at the end of the first page. How that page ends inevitably depends on particulars of the formatting! But because I controlled that aspect myself, I was able to strategically place a sequence of words that (in my opinion) would help entice my readers to turn that page. Voilà!
LaTeX for typesetting
Now that I’ve touched upon all of these design elements, it’s time to go over how I implemented them. Print on demand services require a single, print ready .pdf file containing the entire book’s interior. There are several software options capable of preparing such a file. Some of the ones I’m aware of include:
- Atticus (One-time fee of $147 at the time of this writing)
- Vellum (Mac only, one-time fee of $250 at the time of this writing)
- Adobe InDesign (requires a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud)
- Microsoft Word (most common text editor, but difficult to configure for professional print).
I’ve heard particularly good things about Vellum, for those with a Mac and the willingness to front the fee. For my book, though, I was determined to put in hours instead of cash wherever possible.
LaTeX is a bit different from the options above. It’s a typesetting language, so it doesn’t come with a GUI. Given the correct inputs, it enables excellent control of a book’s final layout, but it won’t hold your hand in the process.
With my goals in mind, I found that it produced excellent results. With a little initial setup, I was able to implement everything I wanted to do with my formatting, all for free. Admittedly, the ease with which I compiled my manuscript was enabled by the most important factor in my choice of software: I could skip the learning curve, because I already knew how to use it.
That’s right—in this one, beautiful instance, being a physicist actually helped me on my journey to publish smutty romance. I have used LaTeX for years to format scientific publications. But even if you’ve never heard of this language before, I don’t think it’s too difficult to pick it up as a skill. Though it takes some time to learn, that cost is balanced by the fact that it’s both free to use and capable of producing a result comparable to a traditionally published book.
The Novel class in LaTeX
The first line of code in the preamble of a LaTeX file specifies the class of the document to be created. Options abound, ranging from the standard article to classes specially designed for specific academic journals. Unsurprisingly, the class needed for our purposes is novel. My thanks go to the creators and contributors to the code.
Here’s the documentation. It’s extensive. It’s detailed. If you decide to go this route, this page will be your best friend, particularly the example sections. The documentation also includes a hefty section on book design, with which I broadly agree.
My implementation for Flight of Souls
In my experience, a great way to learn is to follow along with real examples and then work through related problems on one’s own. In that spirit, here’s another example to follow along with: the script that creates my own front matter and first page.
In LaTeX, comments, or sections of text that will not affect the typesetting in any way, are prefaced by percentage symbols (%). In my example file, I’ve set all the comments to be blue for better visibility, and I’ve tried to use them to describe what particular sections of the code are doing. Everything I’ve done here is thoroughly described in various sections of the novel class documentation as well.
I hope this blog post and typesetting example have provided some useful tidbits and inspiration for your formatting journey. Happy writing!
Appendix: Getting started with LaTeX
If you’re still reading, thanks for making it to the end! Are you interested in trying this formatting method? There are a few steps you’ll need to take to start your journey.
You’ll need a TeX distribution, a corresponding text editor, and a method of transcribing your manuscript from whatever format you’ve written it in into the formalism of the novel class. If you’re not tech savvy, this setup process can be a bit of a pain—but it only needs to be done once, and then you’re good to go.
I recommend the MiKTeX distribution with either TeXWorks (included with MiKTeX installation on Windows) or VS Code as a text editor. Before compiling, you will need to set your typesetting engine to LuaLaTeX, which can be accomplished using a dropdown menu in TeXWorks.
Pandoc is a good option to convert your .docx or .odt files into LaTeX format. A note of caution, though: such conversions rarely go perfectly seamlessly, so I recommend setting aside some time to comb through the resulting document and ensure that everything has ended up where it needs to go. As noted in the novel class documentation, some of its formalisms are different from standard TeX, such as ending paragraphs with the “\par” tag. You will likely need to make some use of “find and replace” to get things in order. I don’t mind these post-formatting readthroughs too much, and like to think of them as a bonus editing step.