Thank you for your comment and your explanation. However, when it comes to self-publishing your book the most important concept most serious authors take into consideration is trying to make your book NOT look like it was self-published. Therefore, justification of the margin is crucial and a sure sign of amateurism if you don’t do it. I have never seen a traditionally published book with the jagged right margin and an announcement that said it was done that way to be more pleasing to the eye or for ease of readability. I know most self-pub’ed authors these days are using that excuse as to the reason why they didn’t justify the margin, but I think the true underlying notion is that they don’t know how to do it. So, it’s a good excuse, but not good enough if you want your book to be taken seriously by a grander audience outside the self-pub’ed market.

Regards,
Shannon
LLBR

This occurs because, from a typographical standpoint, justified margins create uneven word spacing throughout a line of text. I come from a design background, having worked in that field for almost thirty years, and have always found that rag-right text reads much easier, especially if the designer chooses the proper length of line based upon the character count. Studies have revealed that the eye has the ability to comprehend lines consisting of around 39 characters the best, so the chosen type point size is equally critical for readability, not just to pare down on the printed page numbers, which is more of an issue with publishing over the past few years as paper costs have gone up. The decision to justify book margins is one made with many production reasons other than legibility and readability in mind.

Hope this adds a bit of light on this design area. You, of course, may disagree, but readers should try the test themselves: read several pages of justified text, then try the same read with ragged right margins and see which reads easier.

Good research! I always say browsing books on the shelf at a store or from your own collection is the best bet when it comes to any type of formatting. Go see what everyone else is doing and compare.

I personally don’t like “by” on the cover and don’t use it. I don’t even like it in anthologies of short stories, but I think it’s more appropriate there than on the cover.

As for the size of the title and author name on the cover, I like them to be about the same size on my own books. However, I am going to make my name larger on my next book. I don’t really know if that has any effect on sales unless you are someone like James Patterson or Stephen King.

Thanks again for your input.

-Shannon
LLBR

It’s okay. We still see a ton a manuscripts that don’t justify their right margin. You can still post a query for a review.

Thanks,
Shannon
LLBR