node 20098

Hi, I’m relatively new to publishing and not as expert in typography as I’d like.

I’m attaching a few pages from a forthcoming book, which I would love to have critiqued — please tell me how bad it looks, and what would make it better :)

The book is currently set in 10.5pt Adobe Garamond (AGaramond), with initial letters of chapters in 20pt Christensen Caps.

The book is an epic fantasy novel originally published in 1825. It currently runs about 450 pages. I’d like a font that’s easy on the eyes over a span of 450 pages, but not one that ends up swelling the book to 500+ pages.

Any help is much appreciated!

— Jay

Attachment	Size
magic.pdf	70.41 KB

unknown

You did not say anything about the format, you probably want to publish with a better tool, use ligatures, small caps, hanging punctuaction, ‘Wa’, ‘We’, ‘Tr’ with kerning, &c.

unknown

hmm.. i’m not sure about this but is that the original proportionate size of the book? i have issues with the grid & paper size. eg. maybe a little too much white space, if both left and right sides of the book are placed together, it looks akward.

typewise, adding ligatures would help. For the initials, try enlarging them, maybe up to 27.5pt, 34pt or maybe even 72 pt.

my little two cents.. hope it helps and good luck.

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