Addressing the line-spacing question specifically - I think this is a fairly new trend, and I think it's an influence leaking through from web design. At least, when I think about reading books my parents had when I was a child, I remember a lot of them being much closer to the example you showed of French typesetting. It's only more recently that I can remember encountering that more spaced-out style. That said, my light reading is primarily via ebooks these days so maybe I'm drawing conclusions from too few examples.
I honestly don't mind it too much. I find it easier to read text with a little extra room to breathe. Not a ton, I wouldn't personally go above a line-height of 1.4 or so, but 1.2-1.3 is a nice balance IMO.
I would be surprised if it were an attempt to artificially juice some metric like page count. Anecdotally people don't care much about page count - occasionally you'll get people bragging about how they read a thousand-page book or whatever, but it isn't a major factor in my experience. And It must make the books more expensive to print, so I can't imagine that they'd do it if they didn't expect some benefit from it.
Someone else has pointed this out to me too. Interesting that it's a recent innovation! I was wondering if perhaps we're seeing *more* cultural diversity in publishing today compared to e.g. 100 years ago, because with better tech and more wealth generally there's more freedom to explore unusual designs, etc.
Although, "making books more expensive to print" may be a good thing if it positions the book as a luxury good, thereby allowing a price increase that is greater than the mere cost of paper and shipping.
Jan 12, 2023·edited Jan 12, 2023Liked by Étienne Fortier-Dubois
That's an odd, perverse possibility that I didn't consider, but you may be right. And that would fit with what looks like a sharp decline in the "mass market paperback" format. I grew up reading the old, floppy, roughly 5x7" books with thin pages and tiny print that my parents had lining the shelves, but just the other day I was in Barnes & Noble and there was practically not a one to be found. Even the paperback books they had were generally larger, often with nicer-quality paper and covers (e.g. sci-fi books with shiny, laminated covers with metallic text) than the classic "cheapest book we can possibly make" style that I remember.
The obvious explanation would be ebooks: the mass-market paperback was always the option you picked if you didn't care what the book looked or felt like, you just wanted it for the content. But these days, if that's your jam, you'll just go for the ebook. So why should there be a physical book at all unless it has some physical appeal to it? Thus the shift to a "upscale", "premium" looking/feeling books, even in cheaper formats.
EDIT: Some quick googling reveals that there does in fact seem to be a decline in sales of mass-market paperbacks:
Yup, that's totally plausible. I'm guessing it's similar to music, where the cheap and convenient option is now to stream, but you can get cumbersome and expensive vinyl records if you want the full aesthetic experience.
I would love to see something like this post but across other countries as well :)
Even though I don't speak Japanese well enough to read its books, there is something about Japanese graphic design which makes me aspire to read it better at some point in my life. Just going into the bookstores and flipping through books and magazines is satisfying... Obviously there is manga but there's also something special about plain non-fiction books in their density and sparseness (somewhat similar to the more classic French books). My favorite though are books with images and descriptions like Japanese math and science books... For instance, take a peek at this Japanese book on Sherlock Holmes (you can see a few pages on Amazon) đŸ˜»https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4767829771?tag=itmedia-nl-22&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1
Even Bryan Caplan - a prof. and author of several books felt the need for a blub for his new booklet: https://betonit.substack.com/p/coming-soon-dont-be-a-feminist - and with that title only Scott Alexander of ACX-fame dared to blurb it. - A US-bestseller may have a dozen pages of blurbs by a hundred reviews of even unknown papers. What for? - A German book might have one or two on the back - if it aims for big sales, Sometimes one on the front, but that then that person must be a real celebrity. If it made it to the Spiegel-Bestseller-List it may get a small orange sticker on front. A US book will inform in big capital letters that the author has done a bestseller before. On the front cover.
3. Books in Germany/Austria are fixed price by law. You can only offer discounts on "Mängelexemplare", i.e. "damaged books". The only "damage" is usu. a stamp on the side. The stamp says: Mängelexemplar. :D (Actually I feel hurt seeing those stamps.)
4. US/UK books seem often done on cheap, thick paper (with subpar binding), even in hardcover. Seen J. Peterson 12 rules for life? - Looks like war-time production.
Great article! Glad you addressed the spine title issue. There are also punctuation differences (guillemets in French vs quotes in English, and differences in double quotes in US vs single in UK). I assumed margins are for marginalia and spacing was for underlining, but perhaps this is generous and they're just to make books look longer! đŸ˜‰
Also, I believe British/American books are priced based on length, whereas French books usually have a fixed price on publication, which could explain wishing to make the latter more dense. This is an issue for Anglophone debut novelists, who have a fairly strict upper word limit to ensure the book is cheap, whereas I understand no such limit exists for Francophone writers. (Established Anglo writers are allowed more leeway.)
Oh typography differences are a whole other way to have fun! My favorite cultural difference is how the space before "?" "!" and ";" is handled. English doesn't have any. Proper French typography requires a thin non-breaking space, but that's hard to do except with professional publishing software, so in most cases (i.e. virtually all of the web) people have to fall back on either of two options. In France they tend to add a normal space, like this ; in Quebec we tend to copy English and add no space, like this; each has its own drawbacks and advantages.
As for the length aspect you mention, I had no idea! That's exactly the kind of subtle cross-cultural knowledge that I was looking for.
Addressing the line-spacing question specifically - I think this is a fairly new trend, and I think it's an influence leaking through from web design. At least, when I think about reading books my parents had when I was a child, I remember a lot of them being much closer to the example you showed of French typesetting. It's only more recently that I can remember encountering that more spaced-out style. That said, my light reading is primarily via ebooks these days so maybe I'm drawing conclusions from too few examples.
I honestly don't mind it too much. I find it easier to read text with a little extra room to breathe. Not a ton, I wouldn't personally go above a line-height of 1.4 or so, but 1.2-1.3 is a nice balance IMO.
I would be surprised if it were an attempt to artificially juice some metric like page count. Anecdotally people don't care much about page count - occasionally you'll get people bragging about how they read a thousand-page book or whatever, but it isn't a major factor in my experience. And It must make the books more expensive to print, so I can't imagine that they'd do it if they didn't expect some benefit from it.
Someone else has pointed this out to me too. Interesting that it's a recent innovation! I was wondering if perhaps we're seeing *more* cultural diversity in publishing today compared to e.g. 100 years ago, because with better tech and more wealth generally there's more freedom to explore unusual designs, etc.
Although, "making books more expensive to print" may be a good thing if it positions the book as a luxury good, thereby allowing a price increase that is greater than the mere cost of paper and shipping.
That's an odd, perverse possibility that I didn't consider, but you may be right. And that would fit with what looks like a sharp decline in the "mass market paperback" format. I grew up reading the old, floppy, roughly 5x7" books with thin pages and tiny print that my parents had lining the shelves, but just the other day I was in Barnes & Noble and there was practically not a one to be found. Even the paperback books they had were generally larger, often with nicer-quality paper and covers (e.g. sci-fi books with shiny, laminated covers with metallic text) than the classic "cheapest book we can possibly make" style that I remember.
The obvious explanation would be ebooks: the mass-market paperback was always the option you picked if you didn't care what the book looked or felt like, you just wanted it for the content. But these days, if that's your jam, you'll just go for the ebook. So why should there be a physical book at all unless it has some physical appeal to it? Thus the shift to a "upscale", "premium" looking/feeling books, even in cheaper formats.
EDIT: Some quick googling reveals that there does in fact seem to be a decline in sales of mass-market paperbacks:
https://thornfieldhall.blog/2019/03/13/whatever-happened-to-mass-market-paperbacks/
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/90039-mass-market-paperback-sales-whither.html
Yup, that's totally plausible. I'm guessing it's similar to music, where the cheap and convenient option is now to stream, but you can get cumbersome and expensive vinyl records if you want the full aesthetic experience.
Brings to mind an older post I wrote : https://etiennefd.substack.com/p/one-technology-to-rule-them-all
I would love to see something like this post but across other countries as well :)
Even though I don't speak Japanese well enough to read its books, there is something about Japanese graphic design which makes me aspire to read it better at some point in my life. Just going into the bookstores and flipping through books and magazines is satisfying... Obviously there is manga but there's also something special about plain non-fiction books in their density and sparseness (somewhat similar to the more classic French books). My favorite though are books with images and descriptions like Japanese math and science books... For instance, take a peek at this Japanese book on Sherlock Holmes (you can see a few pages on Amazon) đŸ˜»https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4767829771?tag=itmedia-nl-22&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1
Japanese graphic design just looks like a whole other world!
the edizione adelphi (italian) definitely bears mention here...i have ambitions to assemble a spread like the one in the picture (below)
https://medium.com/@ekbarbarossa/the-adelphi-project-reading-the-catalog-ff9baf491e76
Amazing
What a nice topic! Sadly, I can only do "small difference"-stuff, as I know German vs. US best.
1. "Blurbs" (what an awful word). US-books without at least one recommending quote on cover? Nope. Erik Hoel wrote his first novel only had a real chance as he already had two blurbs. https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/secrets-of-the-publishing-industry
Even Bryan Caplan - a prof. and author of several books felt the need for a blub for his new booklet: https://betonit.substack.com/p/coming-soon-dont-be-a-feminist - and with that title only Scott Alexander of ACX-fame dared to blurb it. - A US-bestseller may have a dozen pages of blurbs by a hundred reviews of even unknown papers. What for? - A German book might have one or two on the back - if it aims for big sales, Sometimes one on the front, but that then that person must be a real celebrity. If it made it to the Spiegel-Bestseller-List it may get a small orange sticker on front. A US book will inform in big capital letters that the author has done a bestseller before. On the front cover.
2. Really serious books in Germany will have none of that. If you want to look intellectual, your one "colorful" option is: Edition Suhrkamp https://media.suhrkamp.de/mediadelivery/rendition/bf629cea461d4e6bb74b1c1705e0b642/-S0x0/Reihen_es_Moodbar_desktop.jpg
3. Books in Germany/Austria are fixed price by law. You can only offer discounts on "Mängelexemplare", i.e. "damaged books". The only "damage" is usu. a stamp on the side. The stamp says: Mängelexemplar. :D (Actually I feel hurt seeing those stamps.)
4. US/UK books seem often done on cheap, thick paper (with subpar binding), even in hardcover. Seen J. Peterson 12 rules for life? - Looks like war-time production.
5. Unrelated: Russia's "time traveller" books. All a book should not be. https://cepa.org/article/comrade-hitler-and-other-russian-fantasies/
same expert, more pics: https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1535582101621420032
Great article! Glad you addressed the spine title issue. There are also punctuation differences (guillemets in French vs quotes in English, and differences in double quotes in US vs single in UK). I assumed margins are for marginalia and spacing was for underlining, but perhaps this is generous and they're just to make books look longer! đŸ˜‰
Also, I believe British/American books are priced based on length, whereas French books usually have a fixed price on publication, which could explain wishing to make the latter more dense. This is an issue for Anglophone debut novelists, who have a fairly strict upper word limit to ensure the book is cheap, whereas I understand no such limit exists for Francophone writers. (Established Anglo writers are allowed more leeway.)
Oh typography differences are a whole other way to have fun! My favorite cultural difference is how the space before "?" "!" and ";" is handled. English doesn't have any. Proper French typography requires a thin non-breaking space, but that's hard to do except with professional publishing software, so in most cases (i.e. virtually all of the web) people have to fall back on either of two options. In France they tend to add a normal space, like this ; in Quebec we tend to copy English and add no space, like this; each has its own drawbacks and advantages.
As for the length aspect you mention, I had no idea! That's exactly the kind of subtle cross-cultural knowledge that I was looking for.