Do you need a large print version of your book?

For people who are visually impaired but still prefer to read rather than listen to audiobooks, large print books are a great option. You may want to consider a large print version of your book if your audience includes:

• Low-vision readers
• Middle-aged and senior readers who are developing presbyopia
• Students of all ages who spend a lot of time reading
• People who spend a lot of time in front of computers
• People with physical dexterity problems, learning disabilities, brain injuries, or cognitive impairment

More than two billion people around the world have some type of vision impairment, which means the audience for large print books is significant. Top selling large print categories include fiction, religion, business, health, and self-help.

Large print is not just a publishing term for using a bigger font size. A large print book is going to be designed differently than your regular print edition.

To set up a large print book, you should:

• Use a font size of at least 14 points and no larger than 20 for the body text (16-18 is ideal in most cases; a common guideline is twice the minimum acuity size); titles and headings should be larger
• Choose an easy-to-read, sans serif font designed for legibility that makes it easy to distinguish one character from another
• Do not use any italics, bold, underlining, superscripts, or big blocks of capitalization
• Do not include any information that is conveyed solely through images or diagrams
• Create a clear, consistent layout with adequate line spacing and left-aligned text
• Avoid hyphenation between lines
• Provide adequate contrast between the paper and text (black and white is classic and always safe)
• Use non-glossy paper
• Add a large print badge to the spine or cover

With print-on-demand publishing, your primary cost in creating a large print edition is the interior design work. However, creating a large print book will add to your page count, which makes your large print edition more expensive to print. You may want to consider using a larger trim size than your regular print edition to keep the page count lower.

Having a large print edition is an important service to your readers and could significantly increase your sales.