Font on your face ...

Recently I was part of a brief discussion on Twitter, the social networking site, about the right types of fonts to use in books.

Fonts are important. They influence how easy your book is to read, but they also influence the mood of your book. For example, if your book is a drag-out bloodbath of a book that includes murder and, well blood baths, and maybe snarling dog teeth, you probably don't want to use a frilly cursive font for your chapter title or dropcap fonts.

Fonts are so important that one of our book editors included in her profile bio on Twitter: "Ask me why you shouldn't use Times New Roman."

Fonts can do a lot for a book.

If you are looking to keep your book as short as possible, let your book designer know. There are beautiful body fonts available that have just a slightly more narrow kerning (the space between the characters) that can save you pages in a really long book.

If you want your book to be padded just a wee bit, there are fonts that can add some pages by just having a more open p or o!

We have, in the past, been asked to create books that have very, very fancy and overused cough cough papyrus cough cough fonts as the body font. We strongly urge our authors to rethink this.

Cool fonts that stand out from the pack are super for drawing the eye on the book page to a chapter title or header. We don't recommend them for the main font throughout though as these fancy "display" fonts are hard on the reader eyes and patience.

As you look around you, every sign -- big or small -- has used a font. Even if the signmaker chose a piece of notebook paper and a marker, that was a design choice that was born from the need to communicate quickly.

Talk with your book designer about what you'd like to see and they will often offer you samples of pages in different fonts to help you decide what will work the best for your book!