Quote:
Originally Posted by Pulpmeister
Back to the first post, I can only think of Philip K Dick.
But if you do have a different font for every character, think of the fun you might have "casting" the character's font.
A German, a Fraktur font, perhaps?
An orotund politician, some fat font (Goudy Stout?)
A broad-shouldered hero, a font with muscles (?)
And if you really do try to match font to ethnic characters, imagine the outcry!
I tried it in Word on a sample of dialogue text. It looked ludicrous. Besides, if you have fifty or so characters, and it's an ebook, think how many embedded fonts you need. Fifty, maybe?
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And, on a technical front, back on this topic (God help us all for facilitating this...), I can promise you that after about 6 typefaces (NOT 6 fonts!), books start to fail at KDP. Just break. And then, when you look at them, all the fonts are GONE. MIA. Gone walkabout. Amazon routinely rips out fonts. Willy-nilly, as it were.
This is the reason that we do a test-upload on every single eBook we make that has embedded fonts, in any number or amount, for any reason. It's such a major hassle, I cannot tell you.
Lastly, I do feel compelled to mention that let's not forget, boys and girls, that adding fonts means adding KB and MB. And what does THAT do? It adds delivery fees, if you are opting for the 70% royalty rate (and c'mon, let's face it, who doesn't? Even the most strident asserters of "I write for the
ART of it!" want more, not less, money for their...
art.)
So, if you were to add, let's say, 40 fonts, on average...what, between 2.5 and 3.2 or 3.5mb? Which would be another half-a-dollar that wouldn't go into your pocket. Not to mention, it would drive your minimum price...and that assumes you subset them.
And if you have 20 characters, let's say, that means not less than 3 fonts for each face (so...for example, Garamond Regular, Garamond Bold, Garamond Italic) and oy, vey, as some of my friends would say, you have
major delivery fees and file management hassles.
Meh. And let's also not forget...many,
many devices have the ability to overrule and overwrite fonts. Some not even deliberately, like the Paperwhite family, which will routinely not display them unless you, the reader, know to check out "Publisher fonts" and
actively and deliberately choose to see them.
I mean, sure,
I do it, but how many normal readers would bother? As a professional, I'm curious. I'm sure some others,
here, would. But your typical reader, who buys, clicks and the file
magically shows up on their device, and they start reading? At most, knows how to set font size and maybe "themes," but couldn't download and side load the files to save their lives? Nyaaaah. Not a prayer.
Any author thinking this way should bite the bullet and assume that the entire book will be seen in Courier New Regular. Not even bold or italic; just typewriter, as it was back in the day when Raymond Chandler wrote books. Assume that; write your scenes, your dialogue, your beats, etc., under those circumstances and
use your writing talent to ensure that the reader knows who is talking, and to whom.
Hitch