Ever Wonder What the Mass Market Paperback Font Is?
Ever since I began to get serious about reading, which for me was at about ten years old, I’ve been reading paperback novels. I love a good read, but I love even more a cheap read, which has been made possible with Wal-Mart and Amazon (some books sell for one cent on Amazon! Can’t beat that). Also, ever since I began to get serious about design, I always wondered what fonts were being used. Looking at movie posters, logos, books, magazines, wherever, I’ve asked the question, “I wonder what that font is?” Little wonder, then, that I’ve asked that question of those paperback books.
With the advent of online self-publishing like Lulu.com, lots of people ask me how to make their books look identical to what you buy off the bookshelf. So I owe it to them, and to you, to pass along the info.
Online Font Identifier (or, Font Finder) Tools
The What The Font? tool is absolutely amazing. You upload an image (or reference the URL of an image already online) and it will analyze the characters for you and supply a list of possible candidates. I recommend this tool for most font finding needs. However, I found that it lacked seriously in finding the typeface of paperbacks. So I moved on to Linotype’s Font Identifier tool. This one asks you several questions about the qualities and characteristics of the typeface you’re trying to identify. These questions narrow down the pool of possible fonts, making it easier to identify the typeface. Well, this tool nailed it on the head.
And the font is…
Times Ten LT. There you go. Next time you want to print up your own paperback, use Times Ten (not Times New Roman or Times, but “Times Ten”; it’s available from Linotype) and folks will feel right at home when they read it with the rest of their NY Times bestsellers.
Tom
Apr 20th, 2008, 9:19 pm
Another font that's used a lot in American paperbacks, especially Signet Classics, is Nimbus Roman No 9, a wonderfully readable font.