Amateur Mistakes

To make a self-published book look like an amateur book, you don't have to break all these guidelines, any one will do.

A book is composed of two files: the interior file (which includes the book itself) and the exterior file (which contains the front cover, spine and back cover)

Page Layout

image showing the gutter as the part of the page that disappeares into the middle of the book

Table of Contents (ToC)

Chapters

THE BLOCK

the block

block alignment

block misalign

...and you will see it if you hold the page up to the light.

It's a fine detail, but part of avoiding that amateur feel.

Page numbering

Content

The most widely used typefaces for book body text include Baskerville, Bembo, Garamond, Janson, Palatino, and Times Roman (although this more of a newspaper font). Sans serif fonts may be difficult to read for an entire book.

If using a serif font for body text (Berkeley, Palatino, Garamond, etc.), do not use smaller than 10pt. size

—Amit Agarwal: Which Fonts Should You Use for Writing a Book

Paragraphs

^ Worth mentioning because on the internet we tend to leave a line of space between paragraphs.

Separators

Images

Images shown on a Windows PC are traditionally 96 DPI -- dots per inch, and on an Apple Mac, 72 DPI. A newer "high DPI" screen on either system will be a higher DPI than this. Printed material is generally 300 DPI or higher. You need to look a lot closer at a printed page to see how it is put together, compared to a computer monitor.

Exterior (cover)

External sources