Either way, I have the same question for you. Here's the deal:
I'm nearing completion of a book. Me being me, I can't just sit down and write. To me, a book is no different than a building -- it's more than just words, it's a creation. So as I write, I get off on tangents, investigating how to improve the page layout, the formatting, the font selection . . . all that stuff. And the more I investigate those aspects, the more I realize that there isn't any good, single source for guiding people who are literally just starting out (as I was with the book I self-published in January) and trying to get their first book published.
A good example is font selection. Most people writing in Microsoft Word on a Windows machine have Times New Roman set as the default, and they probably just go with that. But the pros tell us that Times New Roman is a poor choice for books, because it's too compact -- it was designed and optimized for use in small type sizes and the narrow column widths of newspapers. Yet the experts generally agree that the body font for a book should be a serif typeface, and they usually then go on to list five or ten of their favorites.
The problem is that many of those are "professional" fonts. They don't come with Windows, and I don't think they come standard with iOS or whatever the operating system is for Macs. Some may come with Adobe InDesign ($$$$$), or you can buy them from type vendors like Adobe.
As usual, I'm interested in helping people get started without a big dollar investment, so a suggestion to use Sabon typeface is useless, because you have to buy it. There are suitable fonts included standard with Windows -- perhaps not THE best, but much better than Times New Roman, and that's good enough.
What I'm wondering, and that I hope you can help with, is (1) what fonts or typefaces come standard on iPads and Macs; and (2) how does an owner of an Apple device check to see what fonts he or she has installed? Where on the computer are fonts stored?
Where I'm going with this is that I'm thinking of writing a book to guide people through the process -- as inexpensively as possible, which means using what they have on their computers rather than buying fonts or new software.
Any help you can provide will be appreciated.
