OT: Font suggestions for book?

[Fred Ridder]

Besides being a matter of taste (which really cannot be argued), font choice cannot be done intelligently without knowing  *lot* of other information, such as:
- medium of the deliverable (printed, PDF, HTML, eBook, etc.)
- page size (if fixed, or range of page size if variable)
- column width and point size (which together determine the point size range)
- leading
- nature of content (fiction, general non-fiction, scholarly writing, technical documentation, etc.)
- natural organization of content (all text in long paragraphs vs. text blocks broken up by shorter paragraphs and/or lists vs. text with lots of tables and figures, etc.)

What works well for the kind of technical content I work with most of the time (long, complex sentences but often fairly short paragraphs, and lots of tables and bulleted lists) is very different from what I would use for some of the general non-fiction I edit on the side. And neither of those correspond to what I prefer to see when I read fiction.   

If you asked this question over on the Techwr-l list, I'm sure you'd get a flood of highly opinionated answers. If you asked it on the copyeditors list, I think you'd get a handful of "it depends" answers similar to mine since there are some actual book designers on that list. But over here in the world of FrameMaker, I'm not sure that we have a lot of people who fancy themselves font fondlers. 

-Fred Ridder

From: TechSubs at VibrantLivingMinistries.org
To: Framers at Lists.FrameUsers.com
Subject: OT:  Font suggestions for book?
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 08:42:48 -0700

Hi everyone, I’m not sure whether this post went through, so I’m trying again.  In the past, I’ve worked on writing, editing, and functional template design, but in general I’ve left “pretty stuff” such as font selection to others. So I really don’t know what fonts might be most readable, or most popular, or how to pair a body and a heading font, or the like. Of course, much is written all over the Internet, but I thought that here, there would be people with specific experience writing and publishing books. So that is why I have directed this inquiry here. I hope it’s okay. :) Thanks,ElchananFrom: VLM TechSubs [mailto:TechSubs at VibrantLivingMinistries.org] 
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2013 3:22 PM
To: Framers; Free Framers
Subject: OT: Font suggestions for book? Greetings everyone, I’m working in FM 8, Win 7 x64 on a book that will be published this Fall. I’ve now been asked to do the book design, in addition to most of the writing and basic template design. The subject matter is primarily financial … it’s a book about the history of taxation. It’s not a scholarly work at all, but rather one designed to “wake up” American teens and young adults to some of the issues involved. Footnotes are used here and there, but more for explanation of background/details than in a traditional sense as references. The book will be published in a standard 6x9 format, paperback.  All that having been said … What are people’s favorite or recommended fonts for such a project. And since this is being published on a shoestring budget with a nonprofit/educational bent, suggestions of free fonts would be most welcome.  Well, thanks in advance! Best regards,Elchanan
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