The 12 Best Fonts to Use for a Book

Women are reading books By Mary Long

Creative Market August 16, 2024 · 11 min read

Beautiful fonts help set the scene for any topic you may be exploring. Different fonts tend to evoke different feelings in the reader, such as cursive fonts evoking elegance.

Alternatively, clean fonts make for excellent technical reading. Alternatively, fonts with flourishes and curlicues can do well for casual reading.

However, choosing the right font for your book makes reading a more pleasurable and immersive experience.

Why Does a Good Book Font Matter?

The way a book is formatted and its accompanying font can affect the reader’s experience. It can be difficult to read a book with a difficult-to-read font and format, resulting in lost readers. Here are three ways that a good book font matters:

Enhance The Content’s Casual or Formal Appeal

Typography can make a book appear more casual by using a serif, a type of font that has small lines on the ends of its letters. Serif fonts are often used in less formal books, such as children’s books. A sans-serif font is often used for more formal books since they are cleaner looking and have no embellishments.

On the other hand, weighted sans serif fonts, combined with bold or thicker variations of the fonts, can create a much more formal appeal for content that’s perfect for headers and other uses.

Spacing Affects Reading Speed

Good spacing between each character, sentence, and paragraph makes content readable depending on how they’re used. For example, a semi-narrow space between each character improves readability for some people. A narrow space typical for books and novels is effective for casual reading, but it may slow down readers who find narrow spaces straining for their eyes.

Font Style Affects Reading Comprehension

Font style is a visual cue for the reader to interpret and understand text. The font you use can enhance or detract from a novel’s mood, theme, and readability. For example, fonts such as Courier automatically give off a more formal and traditional feel.

Text fonts add to the overall feel of a novel, while reading fonts allow for easier reading. Readability is crucial in fantasy novels where there may be lots of descriptions or exposition that can easily overwhelm the reader. Font style should never detract from the overall feel of the novel or make it difficult to read.

12 Best Fonts for Books

With all these ideas in mind, here are 12 fonts that make books much more readable and engaging.

1. NN1890 Vintage Font: The Best Font For Novels

The fonts for print materials such as posters and flyers should lead the reader naturally from word to word and line to line, making it easy on the eyes. This can be achieved by using fonts that are well spaced and have clean lines without too many loops and flourishes. This is what Nick Novell’s NN1890 Vintage Font achieves – the true faithfulness of a clean font that looks traditional, minimal flourishes, and attractive to the eyes.

2. Apothecary Serif: The Best Out of The Best Fonts For Book Text

Serif fonts are generally easier to read than sans-serif fonts because the serifs help guide the reader’s eye along the letterforms. In addition, fonts with thicker strokes are easier to read than thin fonts. Plus, fonts with more contrast between the letters and the background are easier to read than fonts with low contrast. This is what makes Apothecary an excellent font for reading, especially if you want that washed-out ink aesthetic.

3. Barnaby: The Best for Basic Yet Effective Book Text Fonts

Fonts with minimal embellishments, non-italicized sans serif style typefaces, zero thin strokes but not too thick to become perfect for banners, and a regular stroke thickness weight make for readable fonts that are perfect for books. Surely, Barnaby can fulfill what you need for body text fonts instantly. It’s also a fine choice for headers, like chapter titles and chapter headings.

4. Athena Typeface: The Best for Combined Elegance and Readability

Some fonts are more readable than others because of their unique letterforms. Larger fonts tend to be easier to read than smaller fonts. In general, it’s best to choose a beautifully designed font and highly legible. With these ideas in mind, Athena Typeface is the undeniable candidate that fits the description of an elegant and clean sans serif font. It’s especially good for non-fiction books, thanks to its highly readable and minimalistic feel.

5. MADE Mirage: The Best for Sustained Readability

Fonts with high contrast between the letterforms and the background make it easy for a reader’s eyes to stay focused. Fonts with smooth curves instead of harsh angles are less tiring for the eyes to look at for extended periods. Now, picture Mirage as your font. Surely, you’d say that you’re all set to print your book with this font choice!

6. HK Guise: Another Excellent Choice for Visual Font Efficiency

Fonts are an important part of typesetting and can greatly affect the readability of a text. Script fonts, often used for decorative purposes, are hard to read because they are not as familiar to the reader as sans serif fonts. On the other hand, Sans serif fonts are more common and easier to read, so they are generally used more often in printed materials. HK Guise Typeface by Hanken Design Co is one of the biggest proofs why it’s always great to use sans serif for books and printed documents.

7. Tangerine: The Best for Children’s Book Designs

Fonts are important in children’s books because they can make the book more fun and appealing to look at. This makes it more likely that kids will want to read it, which is important because it encourages them to keep reading. Fun and appealing fonts can also help kids learn to read better because they are more engaged in the process. Tangerine is the perfect book font just for that! It’s got the cute, curvy nature of Comic Sans, with a little more fun and playfulness.

8. Farmhouse: The Best For Retro-Style Book Prints

There are a few fonts that work especially well for printing books. Retro-style fonts have all the characteristics that make them perfect for this job. They are easy to read, and they look good on the page. This makes them a great choice for any book project. Farmhouse is a retro-style serif that fits the bill. It’s a popular font for book covers or the title page of a fiction novel.

9. Mansory: The Best For Simply Elegant Appeals

People use simple fonts when they want to write books that are easy to read. Big and clear fonts that are few and far between improve readability and make it less difficult for people to focus on the words and understand what they are reading with better comprehension. That’s what Mansory achieves with its simple sans serif typeface. Even its bold font makes it easy to achieve the best content readability possible.

10. Quiche Sans Font Family: The Best for Easy Reading

Serif fonts are more fashionable because they enhance the content’s readability and make the text look nicer. The serifs are the small strokes at the end of the main strokes in a letter. Many people feel that they make reading easier because they guide your eyes along the lines. They also add character and weight to the text, making it more visually pleasing. These great qualities can be found in Quiche Sans, making it an excellent choice for printed books.

11. Strima Book: The Best For Long Essays

Geometric sans is a type of font that is different than the normal sans font and is far more readable because they are clearer and easier to see. This is because geometric fonts have sharper edges and are more geometric in shape. You can never find a great example that works well in application in the form of the Strima Book font. It’s one of the best book fonts to use for the main body text of your book, thanks to its legibility.

12. Winslow Book Hairline: The Best Font For Spines

For example, a red font on a black background grabs your attention the most quickly. Other people prefer a yellow font on a brown background, making their book spines more visible against any other color backdrop. Whichever you choose, Winslow Book Hairline is an excellent font that has the right thickness, serif typeface, and charisma to attract new readers from your target audience.

How the Best Fonts for Books Impact Book Design

Book fonts have a big part to play in the overall look and feel of a book. They can impact how pleasant it is to read and, therefore, how well it sells. In short, fonts matter, which is why so many authors, book designers, and publishers put so much time and effort into selecting the best fonts for books.

Think, for instance, about a book cover design. That’s usually the first thing anyone sees of a book, before opening up and discovering the story or text inside. Every book cover typically features the name of the book (and author) written in a particular font size and style.

That font selection immediately establishes the first impression of the book in the prospective reader’s mind. A person can build up a mental picture of how a book might be in terms of tone and content, based purely on the main font featured on its cover.

Then, there’s the body text on the inside. The words that the reader will encounter as they progress from page to page. This is where font arguably matters even more, as the text needs to be legible and enjoyable to look at, in order to hold the reader’s attention.

Not only do designers and authors have to pick the ideal font that reflects their book’s genre and mood, but they also need to take into account legibility. Additionally, they have to determine on what medium the book will be read (on an e-reader or as a browser e-book, for example, or in the hands as a traditional printed book). These will determine whether you need to use purely web fonts or ones that more closely match a printed book’s format.

Tips for Choosing Fonts for Books

We’ve seen some of the best fonts for books and explored how font selection is such a crucial piece of the book design puzzle. Let’s look at some tips that can help you hone in on the ideal typefaces for your own personal use or commercial use if you’re interested in writing, publishing, and selling books in the future.

Selecting the Best Fonts for Books of Different Genres

In some situations, it can make sense to match a book’s font to its genre, especially for book titles and cover designs. Romance novels, for example, often have flowing, curvy, decorative fonts, while true crime stories may have more serious, scary-looking fonts on the front page. Look at existing print books from the genre to see if the same fonts or similar styles tend to appear often.

Sans Serif Fonts or Serif Fonts?

The two main types of typefaces are serif (with little lines and decorative flicks on the letters) or sans serif fonts (simpler designs without any flairs or flourishes). For body text in printed books, surveys and studies suggest that serifs like Times New Roman are a little easier to read. Meanwhile, if you’re planning on self-publishing e-books, sans serifs work best on digital displays.

The Best Font Size for a Book

Most of the time, the body content of a book will be printed in a point size of 10 to 12. However, font sizes can vary depending on the book layout. For children’s books, the font size tends to be larger, on average, to improve legibility for little ones who are still learning how to read. Larger sizes may also be used for chapter titles and headings, while smaller book fonts commonly feature in technical or non-fiction books.

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