Book Reviews: Genre-specific Technical Communication

The Design of Books: An Explainer for Authors, Editors, Agents, and Other Curious Readers

Debbie Berne. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. 2024. 248 pages, including index.

Index Terms—book design, publishing, typography

Reviewed by Avon Murphy, Principal, Murphy Editing and Writing Services

Debbie Berne wants her readers to share her respect and even passion for the craft of book design: “You may not even be fully aware that books, aside from their covers, are designed” (p. 2). This book isn’t so much a Chicago Manual of Style for designers as it is a wake-up call to writers and editors to comprehend the significance of design in publishing, which Berne pulls off by sharing fine details of the craft.

You have two ways to read the book: You can methodically go through the text chapter after chapter, letting the details accumulate—this is what I did, and the journey was pleasurable. Or you can try using the book as a reference book. The thorough index makes it possible to find exactly where to go.

Berne frequently writes with a strong love for printed books, at times almost anthropomorphizing elements: “Lowercase letters are all arms and legs, not as tidy [as uppercase letters] but easier to pick out due to their more distinctive shapes. Small caps.…make their point without screaming in your ear” (p. 45).

Interesting and memorable are the author’s thoughts about cover design. She revels in enthusiastically delivered, in-depth descriptions of the myriad things to include on a cover, the impact of genre, the “cover brief” that will help the cover designer understand the book, and the craft of color, type, art, and printing effects such as embossed paper and spot colors that produce “a satisfying tactile quality” (p. 89). Berne is clearly enjoying herself.

I’m a veteran of the electronic publishing wars and a heavy reader of online technical books. So I was curious to see what Berne says in the chapter “Ebooks.” My verdict: This chapter is strange. Berne sounds ill at ease, denigrating the concept of ebooks and not supplying the close-up detail found in other chapters. For some reason she focuses on tools for reading ebooks but makes no mention of a tool such as Adobe InDesign, which many of us use to, well, design books. (She does mention InDesign in passing elsewhere.)

The most technical—and to me the most useful—details come in the chapter “Inside the Book.” We hear of “the seemingly small and mostly unrecognized acts of artistry that allow the type to fade away so the story can emerge” (p. 124). These acts include arrangement of the parts of a book, page design, and the setting of type, all handled with fine examples and passion. The accumulation of so many details reminds me of that old publishing standard, Words into Type (3rd ed., 1974). This chapter most definitely fits the book into the Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing series.

The Design of Books: An Explainer for Authors, Editors, Agents, and Other Curious Readers is a publishing insider’s love song to her craft worth relishing.