[bkilian]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

(4) most people don't care, and I think I can prove it.

How would you rate the typesetting of Baen?

Over the summer I borrowed about 300 books from the library and scanned the cover, title page, chapter headings, scene breaks, etc. I was looking for examples on how to do typesetting.

One thing I noticed was that Baen was consistently the least sophisticated typesetter of all the SF publishers. They used almost no dingbats, the title pages were much simpler, the scene breaks were less interesting, and Baen would rarely change the font or formatting (to indicate a telepathic thought, for example). And this is in their hardbacks, not ebooks.

If typesetting were really that important, then why is Baen so successful? I would argue that it's because hardly anyone notices. I've even raised the topic a few times here on MR. No one seemed to care (not that I'm criticizing anyone).

Baen requires their manuscripts to be submitted as RTF without any advanced formatting. http://www.baen.com/FAQS.htm. But don't worry, Ahi would never be caught dead reading such unsophisticated drivel.