📖 Inside the book

What separates a typeset book from a Word file printed to PDF — mirrored margins, real hyphenation, chapters that open on the right, running heads that know when to vanish, and a page count the printer will accept.

The margin is not decoration. It is what keeps your text out of the binding and what makes a page comfortable to read. The four margins are not equal, and the inside one grows with page count.

A body face has one job — to disappear. What actually matters in type set at 11 points across four hundred pages, why display faces and screen faces fail at it, and the two mistakes that cost real money.

Three measurements decide whether a page is comfortable — the size of the type, the distance between baselines, and the length of the line. They pull against each other, and every one of them changes your page count.

The pages before chapter one follow a settled order, and readers notice when it is wrong even if they can't say why. What each page is for, why the blanks are deliberate, and what a copyright page has to carry.

A large print edition is a separate product with its own ISBN, cover and listing, sold to an audience that is real, underserved, and includes libraries. What actually makes a book large print, and what it costs you.

The pages after "The End" are the most valuable unused space in a book. A reader who just finished is the most likely buyer you will ever have. What belongs back there, and why an ebook differs.

In print, most nonfiction needs one and most novels do not. In an ebook, every book needs one, because it is the navigation. The same book can correctly ship with a contents page in one format and none in the other.