Guides and writing on book typography, typesetting and the parts of self-publishing nobody explains properly.https://nueel.com/en-gbhttps://nueel.com/guides/amazon-categories-and-keywords/https://nueel.com/guides/amazon-categories-and-keywords/Three categories and ten keyword phrases are the entire mechanism Amazon gives you for being found, and most books waste them. How the shelves work, what the rules actually say, and how to spend the slots.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideamazonkdpkeywordscategoriesmetadatadiscoverabilityThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/back-matter/https://nueel.com/guides/back-matter/Acknowledgements, about the author, the other books, a teaser chapter. What goes after the story ends, the order it goes in, and the two pages whose job is selling the next book.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideback matteracknowledgementsabout the authorself-publishingstructureThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/beyond-amazon/https://nueel.com/guides/beyond-amazon/Amazon is half the market; the other half lives on Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, and in libraries. How direct publishing compares to an aggregator, what each platform wants, and why the same EPUB serves them all.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideapple bookskobogoogle playdistributionaggregatorsebookThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/book-description/https://nueel.com/guides/book-description/The description is the book's only salesperson on the product page, and it has about three sentences to earn the click. How the structure works, what the length limits are, and where it differs from the back cover.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidebook descriptionblurbmetadataamazonmarketingThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/book-length/https://nueel.com/guides/book-length/Word counts by genre, where the expectations came from, and what a manuscript twenty thousand words over or under actually costs you.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideword countgenresself-publishingplanningThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/chapter-length/https://nueel.com/guides/chapter-length/Most novels run chapters of two to five thousand words, and nearly every rule about them is really a rule about where the reader puts the book down. What the conventions are, by genre, and what each choice costs.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidechaptersword countfictionpacingstructureThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/copyright-page/https://nueel.com/guides/copyright-page/The least-read page in the book carries the notices that make it real: who owns it, which edition it is, and who printed it. What belongs there, in order, and what the ebook changes.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidecopyrightfront matterisbnlegalself-publishingThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/ebook-accessibility/https://nueel.com/guides/ebook-accessibility/An accessible ebook is one a screen reader, a magnifier and a text-rewriting tool can all use, and the difference is mostly structure. What the requirements are, what they cost, and what they are increasingly required.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideaccessibilityebookepubalt textscreen readersThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/epigraphs-and-quotes/https://nueel.com/guides/epigraphs-and-quotes/Three borrowed-text elements that look alike and behave differently. Which one your quotation is, how each is set, and what each does in an ebook.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideepigraphsquotationstypographynonfictionpermissionsThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/epub-vs-mobi/https://nueel.com/guides/epub-vs-mobi/Three file extensions do most of the work in publishing, and one of them is dead. What each format is for, what Amazon takes now, and why a fixed-layout book is a different product.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideepubmobikindlepdffile formatsebookThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/footnotes-and-endnotes/https://nueel.com/guides/footnotes-and-endnotes/Fiction uses almost none, literary nonfiction hides them at the back, and academic books run them up the page. How notes are marked, numbered and placed, and what survives the trip into an ebook.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidefootnotesendnotesnonfictiontypographyebookThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/hardcover-publishing/https://nueel.com/guides/hardcover-publishing/A hardcover is not a paperback in better clothes: it has a different body, a different cover construction, a shorter page-count window and a market that buys it for durability. What KDP offers, what a dust jacket demands, and when the edition pays for itself.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidehardcoverprintkdpeditionsself-publishingThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/headers-and-folios/https://nueel.com/guides/headers-and-folios/The line at the top of the page and the number at the bottom follow conventions about sides, chapters and front matter that nobody states. What goes in a running head, where the folio sits, and the pages that carry neither.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguiderunning headspage numbersfoliostypographylayoutThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/kdp-vs-ingramspark/https://nueel.com/guides/kdp-vs-ingramspark/Two print-on-demand services, two different businesses. Amazon's printer pays you more on Amazon; the world's largest book distributor puts you in shops and libraries. Most books eventually want both — printed correctly, and for the right reasons.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidekdpingramsparkprint on demanddistributionhardcoverpaperbackThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/large-print/https://nueel.com/guides/large-print/Large print is a real market — older readers, low vision, libraries — and it is not the same book with a bigger font. What the format requires, what it costs in pages, and how it is published.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidelarge printprintaccessibilitykdpeditionsThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/margins-and-measure/https://nueel.com/guides/margins-and-measure/Margins are not padding: they set the measure, and the measure decides how the page reads. Where the numbers come from, and why one margin — the inside one — is never like the others.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidemarginsmeasuretypographylayoutprintThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/pairing-fonts/https://nueel.com/guides/pairing-fonts/One typeface for the text and one for the display, chosen so they agree without matching. How to build a pair, which combinations are proven, and what embedding a font legally requires.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidetypographyfontstypefacesdesignlicensingThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/prepare-word-manuscript/https://nueel.com/guides/prepare-word-manuscript/A formatter reads styles, not appearance. Here is how to get a Word file ready so that everything you meant survives the trip into a book — and the things you never decided stop costing you time.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidemanuscriptworddocxformattingpreparationThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/publish-on-amazon/https://nueel.com/guides/publish-on-amazon/From an Amazon account to a live book: the steps, the decisions that are hard to reverse, and the order to make them in. The paperback, the ebook and the hardcover are three products, and this is how they go up.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidekdpamazonself-publishingpublishingpaperbackebookThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/table-of-contents/https://nueel.com/guides/table-of-contents/A print contents page lists what a reader might look up. An ebook contents page is how the reader moves at all. They are different documents with different rules, built from the same chapters.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidetable of contentsfront matterebooknavigationnonfictionThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/test-your-ebook/https://nueel.com/guides/test-your-ebook/The file you preview and the file you upload are not always the same file, and reading systems are more different than they look. A testing pass that catches what the upload would have caught instead.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideebooktestingepubcheckkindle previewerqualityThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/word-count-to-pages/https://nueel.com/guides/word-count-to-pages/The manuscript page count and the book page count are different numbers, and the second one decides your spine width, your printing cost and your cover. How to estimate it before the book is typeset.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideword countpage countprinttrim sizeplanningThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/blog/book-typefaces/https://nueel.com/blog/book-typefaces/Nearly every novel you have read was set in one of about a dozen typefaces, and the reasons have little to do with beauty. What separates a text face from a display face is how it behaves at 11 point, 300 times a page.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTarticletypographytypefacesfictionbook designThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/blog/chapter-openings/https://nueel.com/blog/chapter-openings/The drop cap, the sunken title, the small capitals on the first three words, the paragraph that is not indented. Chapter openings follow a small set of conventions, and each one exists for a reason worth knowing before you break it.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTarticletypographytypesettingchapter openingsbook designThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/blog/hyphenation-and-justification/https://nueel.com/blog/hyphenation-and-justification/Turning off hyphenation does not remove the problem, it moves it into the spaces between words. Here is what justification actually does to a line, and why a book with rivers running down the page usually has hyphenation switched off.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTarticletypographyjustificationhyphenationtypesettingThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/book-interior-images/https://nueel.com/guides/book-interior-images/An image that looks sharp on screen is often too coarse to print, and the same picture behaves completely differently in a PDF and an EPUB. Here is how to work out whether yours is good enough, and where it will actually appear.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideimagesprintdpiepubaccessibilityThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/ebook-vs-print/https://nueel.com/guides/ebook-vs-print/The two formats are not the same book in different wrappers. One has pages and you control them; the other has none and the reader controls almost everything. Deciding which to publish changes what you have to do to the manuscript.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideebookprintself-publishingepubformatsThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/front-matter/https://nueel.com/guides/front-matter/Half title, title page, copyright, dedication, contents. The pages before chapter one have a conventional order, a page-numbering scheme of their own, and a rule about which side they open on.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidefront matterprinttypesettingbook designThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/isbn/https://nueel.com/guides/isbn/One book can need four ISBNs, or none at all, depending on where you publish and what formats you release. Here is what an ISBN identifies, when a free one costs you something, and how many you actually have to buy.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideisbnself-publishingkdpingramsparkmetadataThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/kdp-formatting/https://nueel.com/guides/kdp-formatting/KDP publishes its requirements across several help pages and enforces them at upload. Here they are in one place, with the numbers that change by page count, and the ones that get a file rejected.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidekdpprintformattingpaperbackebookThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/print-ready-pdf/https://nueel.com/guides/print-ready-pdf/What a printer means by print-ready, item by item: embedded fonts, single pages, bleed on the right edges, image resolution, and the colour and PDF standard your printer expects. Check these before you upload, not after the proof.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidepdfprintprepresskdpingramsparkThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/scene-breaks/https://nueel.com/guides/scene-breaks/The gap between two scenes is a piece of punctuation, and a blank line alone cannot carry it. Here is why an unmarked break disappears at the foot of a page, and which ornament to use instead.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidetypesettingscene breaksfictiontypographyThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/word-to-epub/https://nueel.com/guides/word-to-epub/The conversion is not the hard part. What decides whether the ebook works is whether your Word file says what its parts are, and most manuscripts say it with formatting instead of with styles.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideepubworddocxebookconversionThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/book-cover-file/https://nueel.com/guides/book-cover-file/A print cover is one flat sheet: back, spine and front together, with bleed around the lot. Here is how to work out its dimensions, what has to stay clear of the edges, and why it is the last thing you should make.Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideprintkdpcoverprint-on-demandThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/epub-rejected/https://nueel.com/guides/epub-rejected/Amazon, Apple and Kobo all run the same validator before they accept a file. Here is what epubcheck is actually complaining about, in the order the errors appear, and what each one means for the book a reader ends up holding.Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideepubvalidationepubcheckaccessibilityebookThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/blog/widows-and-orphans/https://nueel.com/blog/widows-and-orphans/The single line stranded at the top of a page is not a typo. It is a decision your software made for you, and it is the fastest way to tell a typeset book from a printed word processor file.Sat, 08 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTarticletypographyprinttypesettingThe Nueel teamhttps://nueel.com/guides/trim-sizes/https://nueel.com/guides/trim-sizes/The page dimensions decide how thick your book is, what it costs to print, and whether it looks like the books next to it on the shelf. Here is how to pick one, by genre and by page count.Sat, 08 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideprintkdptrim sizeThe Nueel team