by Barry Zee
How to Select Fonts for Your eBook Cover
Choosing the right fonts is an important decision you will have to make when designing a quality ebook cover. You will want to choose a font that is readable and appropriate for your audience.
The following general information about fonts will help you to make the right choice:
Size: An ebook cover image is usually a rather small image. Therefore, you have to be sure that the font you use will be readable on the small image. A lot of fonts just don’t work well at very small sizes.
Weight: The term “weight” refers to the thickness of the elements that make up each character in a font. Most fonts have a regular version and a bold version. The bold version has greater weight because the letters are thicker. A bolded font stands out more, even at smaller sizes. Some fonts also offer a “heavy” and a “black” version that is even thicker than the bold version. Arial black, Helvetica black, and Impact are just some examples of popular fonts that are used to create titles and headlines. These fonts also work well for ebook covers.
If you look at book or article titles, you will notice that they tend to be “heavier” and larger in size than any of the other text. This is because the author wants to emphasize the title/subtitle.
Serif vs. Sans Serif: Take a look at the letters in the Helvetica font and Times New Roman font. Helvetica is a sans serif font, while Times New Roman is a serif font. The difference is the extra flourish at the ends of each line in each character in a serif font. The term serif refers to these flourishes. Compare the letter “I” in both of the fonts mentioned above and you will easily see the difference.
Sans serif fonts tend to be more readable when used in titles,