Typeface selection conundrum

[Member Sap…]

As usual, I'm way ahead of myself, but I can't help it.

   I have an idea for a book. The outline of the plot is in my head but, so far, I'm not having much luck actually writing it down. Even so, I'm already thinking about what the book should look like, and I'm having difficulty choosing a display font for things like chapter headings. The book is about a young princess whose father is murdered by a noble, who positions himself as regent and who plans to kill off the princess before she reaches adulthood so he can claim the throne. The setting is an imaginary world (or maybe an imaginary country on this world -- doesn't matter), and the society is basically medieval/feudal. Sort of Robin Hood era -- horses, swords, castles, feudal landholders, etc. No "technology," and no firearms-type weapons.

   The body text will be a suitable serif font such as perhaps Palatino, or something like that. I need a typeface to contrast with that for the heading font, I don't want something boring like Arial, and I don't want something in a modern, computer script. One possibility would be something like Old English, a gothic black letter style font. But I don't think that's exactly what I want.

   I sort of think maybe something "calligraphic" (meaning something that will look like it was hand-drawn, either with a quill pen or perhaps with a brush, might be right, but ... what? I have a few "script" fonts installed, but they're too precise and they are also boring. Does anyone have any suggestions for what might be a suitable typeface? I have installed on my computer the fonts that came bundled with Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 10, Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office 2019, and LibreOffice. I also have the font collection Megafont NOW from SoftMaker, in Germany. Most of the SoftMaker fonts haven't been installed, but are obviously available to me should I choose to use them.

   This book If I ever finish it) will be self-published and probably won't sell many copies so, while I'm certainly open to downloading a font from one of the free font sites such as Font Squirrel, it won't be at all sensible to purchase a font from a commercial type house just for this one book.

Thank you.

[Ralf Herrmann]

So, it should be a free or system font or would you be willing to purchase a license?

And it is printed only or would you need an e-book license as well?

[Member Sap…]

I don't realistically expect to sell enough copies of this book (if I ever finish it) to justify purchasing a license for a font I will only use once, so ... free, please.

If I publish the book I will issue it in print, through Amazon KDP and Barnes & Noble, and I will also issue it as a Kindle e-book through Amazon and as an .epub through Draft2Digital. However, I don't understand HTML coding so I won't be embedding any fonts in the e-book files. I create e-books by saveing a separate copy of the manuscript file, removing all formatting other than the basic Normal and Heading1 styles, and then using Amazon's Kindle Previewer software to convert to the Kindle and EPUB formats. So I don't need web fonts.

[Ralf Herrmann]

Maybe check Fontsquirrel? The first two tags here (blackletter/calligraphic) seem to match what you were asking originally:

https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/list/tag

[Member Sap…]

Thank you. A few of those look interesting.