Maybe this isn't practical for you, and it's been a couple of decades since I read it, but I still have a fondness for Knuth's "The TeX Book". It's about TeX,

Maybe this isn't practical for you, and it's been a couple of decades since I read it, but I still have a fondness for Knuth's "The TeX Book". It's about TeX, but along the way, Knuth gives you a lot of background on publishing including typography. I also recall it as being one of those technical books that is fun to read -- truly engaging and interesting. http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/abcde.html http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/abcde.html