What is the ideal sizing for font and margins in a 5.5” / 8.5” novel in Word?

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It depends on where you intend to send the submission. Most places will be able to tell you what their preferred style is if you contact them. I will say though, Times is rarely accepted. Courier or Calibri is easier on the eye. Courier looks a little weird at first but you soon get used to it. Also NEVER use single line spacing unless specifically told to. At least, from my experience that’s what I have learned. 🙂

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Yea, I think I misunderstood the original query. Sorry. 🙁

I’d suggest try a few sample prints. Word has an option to print on different paper sizes so try a few and see what you like. Or find a similar sized novel and count how many lines are on the page and estimate the font size. If you use word enough you can probably guess fonts and line spacings just by looking.

Trade paperback (TPB) size is a nice size. Here is a guide.

A Format paperbacks are 110mm x 178mm (4.33" x 7.01")
B Format paperbacks are 130mm x 198mm (5.12" x 7.8")
C Format (TPB) are 135mm x 216mm (5.32" x 8.51")

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Most people don’t take the time to worry about such things so I applaud you. It really is important. I remember reading once that James Herbert (horror author) got his book back from the publishers and they had used the wrong font; he believed horror should be read at a certain pace in order to keep the tension level at a constant and the font used interrupted that flow, so he argued with his publisher and they ended up pulping the entire print run and doing it over in the right format. 🙂

Good luck with your work. Let me know how it goes, here or via pm. 🙂

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Another cool story for you. Stephen King was having trouble selling his first novel, Carrie, so he tossed the manuscript in the trash. His wife took it out and convinced him to give it another shot and he sold it for an amazing sum (can’t remember exactly) and the rest is history. Carrie is the tightest least waffly thing I’ve ever read by him. And then Brian de Palma came along and paid him more money to make a modern day Hitchcock movie out of it. Double win. 🙂

That’s actually not how King tells it. In its original conception, Carrie was a short story. He threw out the first pages of this short story version just after starting because he thought the writing was crap, not because the story had been rejected and he’d lost confidence. It wasn’t even a complete short story at that point. But his wife liked the idea, so he started again and turned it into a novel. That’s what he shopped around and what was published, with significant persistence by the publisher actually in this insistence to track King down and get him his money.

But the spirit of what you’re saying (persistence is important) is a good reminder.

So is the spirit of this version of the story (keeping a realistic perspective on the quality of your work–i.e., possess humility and work harder).

I read my version in a magazine many years ago and like you the say the idea that persistence is paramount is the reason the story stayed with me all these years. I think Carrie is King’s best novel. I’ve read a lot of his work and he never recaptured that sense of urgency his earliest works had.

I read ALL of the Dark Tower books. He should have stopped at three IMO. Lots of unnecesary exposition. Still, he’s the millionaire, and I’m not so what do I know?

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I’ve been doing layouts for this company (http://sybpress.com/) for several years now, and have been slowly adjusting the specs based on the final results. While my personal preference for body text is garamond, I’ve found the best trade off between volume and readability is 11pt. Most people don’t go with it because it’s harder to measure the margins.

As for publishing sites, I use createspace.com, but only if you can produce completely finished layouts. Otherwise, they charge you a butt load for design and layout services.

JonC