Best Fonts For E-Books
The best font for an e-book can depend on what fonts your device provides; they are usually pre-configured by default. Most e-readers will usually have both sans-serif and serif fonts to select.
A sans-serif font is usually better for:
- Reading on digital screens
- Capturing a specific style (like modern and sleek)
- Informal and casual settings
Mimicking a physical book’s style or having continuity between reading can benefit a person’s ability to read comfortably or match the tone of the author’s writing accordingly.
If specified, an author or publisher can embed specific font files into certain book formats. In my experience, this is not common and does not affect much depending on the format of the document you are reading.
Best file formats for embedding fonts in digital books
PDF is the first thing that comes to mind for embedding fonts in digital books, because writers and editors expect this format to be reliable for replicating what they see on a screen (1:1) for printing. Any change in the font would ruin the resulting document’s proportions drastically, so this format can package all necessary resources like fonts for an approximate viewing experience.
The “EPub” file format is a very popular and flexible container for publishing e-books in and will also support embeddable fonts. The history of embedding EPub fonts is an unusual read but it shows us the resourcefulness, flexibility, and the personal touches that comes with a well-made digital e-book.
Both of the aforementioned formats are widely used and make use of “fallback fonts” — allowing a person reading to read in a chosen font or use the next or closest available one. The author (or publisher) does not have to think much about supporting specific e-book readers and can efficiently theme their books to their intended audience and genre.
What’s the difference between e-reader fonts?
E-readers give users some choice to select a different default styles in digital books, and each device is distinct due to the company trying to provide a unique and compelling reason to select them over competition, like how pages visually turn; to highlighting words. Fonts are also part of a brand’s personality and your experience — apparently.
Here are some famous examples of fonts being integral to a reading platform:
- Amazon gives you Bookerly font for Kindle
- Apple utilises their Athelas typeface in Apple’s Books application
- Google selected Literata for use in Google Play Books
Genuinely, these are great reading fonts and are all serif-based, so you will appreciate them when you are bored of Times New Roman.
Is it better to use serif fonts on E-readers?
I understand the common reasons of using sans-serif on digital screens, but e-readers are made to mimic qualities of printed paper, so are they then excluded from any of the conventional rules? I would say yes because of some particular reasons making e-readers more adapted for these serif fonts despite using digital screens.
The main reason is because E-readers often come with high pixel density screens (more detail about this in my previous medium article). An average computer monitor has a low density of pixels-per-inch compared to the standard e-reader which is 300 PPI — a very high density of pixels compared to most computer monitor screens, laptops, and even tablets.
Why is an e-reader’s display PPI important?
An e-reader’s PPI is important because it can allow the reader to display clearly a wider selection of fonts; particularly ones that have small, sharp details and taper — yes, serif fonts!
…serif fonts have those decorative lines or tapers (also commonly referred to as “tails” or “feet”) while sans serif fonts don’t — hence the “sanes” in their title.
In other matters; e-readers with 300 DPI, ink-mimicking displays resemble the minimum quality standards of industrial printing; 300 dots per inch on paper (some pedants online said they find books printed in 300 DPI too “grainy” but I digress).
The PPI and DPI measurements are excellent because it tells us a fixed density in a fixed space — a property that can align digital reading to physical books more precisely. For example — a run-of-the-mill pocket book format has an almost identical trim size (e-book would measure about 1:1 with a physical book) to an 8 inch e-reader (like a Kobo Sage), and the next size up — the digest translates to a 10 inch e-reader (BOOX Note Air3 or BOOX Note Air3 C — Product affiliate links).
It doesn’t really matter though, because you can change an e-reader’s effective PPI, so any size e-reader could theoretically resemble text readability of standard format books, just with more or fewer words displayed the screen at once — this is why I personally prefer reading on a phone if I am likely to lose my reading position often.
In conclusion
I think e-reader users can use sans fonts however they wish as they work well on high density digital displays and can allow the author’s intended formatting or style to be reproduced on multiple, different devices.
E-paper is a low-powered method for reading digital books, often requiring ambient light, so they reproduce qualities of real, printed paper conveniently well.
I “did the maths” on finding a matching e-reader to standard book “trims”, please tell me if I’m missing something in this sense.
I hope my research was correct as things became quite technical without me realising 😅. Thanks for reading.
