Let's look at margin sizes. They're hardly the most glamorous part of a book, but if they're wrong, people will notice. Take a look at this example. It is an edition of The Red Dahlia by Lynda La Plante published by Simon & Schuster.

One of the first things you notice is all that white space. All four sides have margins over an inch and a bit wide. This is not normal - and what is surprising is it was done by a major publisher. It used to be that a hallmark of a self-published work was margins too big or too small for the format. I guess we all make mistakes sometimes.

So how do you avoid this? What is 'normal'?
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To find out we did another one of our experiments. We randomly collected 20 fiction books sized 6 inches by 9 inches, and 20 fiction books sized 5.06 inches by 7.81 inches. These are two common sizes in bookstores. We realize there are lots of others sizes, but we'll stick to these two for now. We then looked at four key measurements. These were the top (distance from top of the page to the top of the main body of text), the bottom (the distance from the bottom of the page to the bottom of the main body of text), the outside (the distance from the outside of the page to the main body of text) and the gutter (the distance from the paper inside the spine to the beginning of the main body of text).

Lost already? Here's a diagram.

Now for the number dump. 

For the 6 inch by 9 inch trade paperback books, the median margins were:

Gutter: 0.85 inches.
Outside: 0.8 inches.
Bottom: 1 inch.
Top: 0.9 inches.

For the 5.06 inch by 7.81 inch trade paperback books, the median margins were:

Gutter: 0.65 inches
Outside: 0.55 inches.
Bottom: 0.9 inches.
Top: 0.6 inches.

There was a lot of variability it is fair to say there is no 'one size fits all'. One key variable for the top and bottom was placement of header or page numbers, as these required extra room. Also, the thicker the book the larger the potentially required gutter. 

What are your default margin sizes? 

As always, if you like this be sure to 'like' it and share it with your network. Let us know if you have any other areas of formatting you would like us to delve into. Next week we'll be back to looking at formatting with individual genres.

A week ago we looked at formatting for general fiction. Now we're going to look specifically at fantasy. We followed the same methodology and used the same questions. These were:
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• Did the books have headers?
• Were the headers in the same font and style as the text?
• Did they indent the first line after spaces?
• Were the chapters titled (as well as or in place of a number)?
• Was there artwork with chapter headings? 

Once again we also looked at line spacing, at least to the naked eye, and found all books were essentially single space.

This was basically the same as last week's study. 52% of fantasy books in the sample did not have a header at the top of the page. 48% did. It seems to be a fairly even split down the middle. There was no great difference between the formats either. 

When books had headers, were they the same font and style as the rest of the text? Last week we found 94.5% of books sampled had headers with a distinct font and/or style. This weak it was a bit less with only 68%. But still, this seems to be a general preference. 

In general fiction we found no books indented after a space. We said at the time to watch out for this week. There is no obvious reason for it, but in the fantasy section 16% of books indented after a space, though somewhat haphazardly. The example above is taken from Raymond E. Feist. There was a bit of a mix in the one book. It seems there is a bit more artistic leeway when formatting fantasy.

No surprises here, at least for us. Whereas 95.5% of general fiction sampled last week just numbered their chapters (ie. Chapter 31, 31, #31, Chapter Thirty-One etc…), 53% of fantasy used titles as well (ie. “Deception”, “Turning Point” etc…).

Another one that is perhaps not a surprise - fantasy books were more likely than general fiction to have art work with their chapter headings. 31% of books sampled had artwork, compared to 3% of last weeks sample.

So what can authors take from this?
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• Headers are optional.
• When you use them, make them distinct from the text.
• If you break up your text with spaces, don't indent after the space.
• Fantasy books have more leeway with chapters and artwork.

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When it comes to formatting there is a lot of advice out there already. Rather than rehash the same things, we wanted to look at what the big publishers do. After all, when most authors ask for a good, professional job, they generally mean they want to look like a book in their genre sitting on the shelf in a bookshop or library.

For this experiment we looked at ‘General Fiction’ in a bookstore. This category excluded romance, sci-fi, fantasy, young adult and westerns. We were not too concerned about breaking this down further as the sort of things we were looking at were not too specific, with the possible exception of artwork.

So what did we look for?

• Did the books have headers?
• Were the headers in the same font and style as the text?
• Did they indent the first line after spaces?
• Were the chapters titled (as well as or in place of a number)?
• Was there artwork with chapter headings? 

​We also looked at line spacing, at least to the naked eye, and found 100% of books surveyed were single spaced. There was therefore, we thought, no need to go deeper into that.

Pretty much an even split down the middle. 50.5% of books sampled had no headers. 49.5% had headers. 

This seemed to follow more of a standard. 94.5% of books with headers used a different font or style for the header text. Only 5.5% appeared to use the same font as the rest of the page. 

This was 100% - no books in our sample indented after a space. The reason we still report this though will be clear in a later post we plan to make about another genre.

In the vast majority of general fiction - 95.5% of sample - chapters were numbered (ie. Chapter 31, 31, #31, Chapter Thirty-One etc…) without a title (ie. “Deception”, “Turning Point” etc…). While we didn't record which books had titled chapters, it did appear to be more the military and historical fiction side of things. (If the title above interested you it is from A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami)

Not surprisingly, for adult fiction the vast majority of books - 97% - did not have artwork with their chapter headings. However, most the 3% that did were trade paperbacks, perhaps reflecting the space available for such enhancements. It was more common in historical fiction, such as The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory pictured above.

So what can authors take from this?

Well, there are limitations. The sample size was large, but it covered a few different genres. The general message stayed true throughout - headers are optional, don't indent after a space, and numbered chapters are safe. Beyond this it would be a good idea for an author to look at just the books in their area. For example, artwork and titled chapter headings were more popular in historical fiction. Thrillers, on the other hand, tended to be very minimalist with just numbered chapters and no art. 

Liked this? Make sure you like and share on social media. We also don't mind if you put this on your own blog or website, just be sure to acknowledge us.

​We'll also take special requests for other topics.