Setting Up Interior Pages

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The interior pages of your book should be designed at the size desired in final production. This means if you want a book that is 6″ wide by 9″ high, then you should start designing your pages at the size of 6″ wide by 9″ high.

 

A common mistake most first time authors make is designing or formatting their manuscript using the default size in their software (which is usually 8.5″ x 11″ for North American authors) and expecting the printer they use to print it at a different size.

 

While it is possible to scale pages to various sizes and change page sizes by adding or removing space, you need to consider what kind of impact the change in size will have to your artwork or text.

 

  • Scaling a book to a larger page size will usually result in image quality loss, as pixels are stretched out and effectively lose resolution

 

  • Scaling a book to a smaller page size will usually result in image quality improvement as pixels are compressed and gain more resolution, but fonts may become difficult to read (we don’t recommend font sizes less than 8 pt if you want people to be able to read it)

 

Efficient Page Sizes

 

The most efficient page sizes are listed below, as they are multiples of common press sheet sizes that we print on as a commercial printer. It’s important to keep in mind that as a commercial book printer, we have access to much larger press sheets than standard copier paper like 8.5″ x 11″. In fact, we rarely print on 8.5″ x 11″ as we can maximize efficiencies by printing on larger sheets and cutting out smaller sizes.

  • 5″ wide x 8″ high
  • 5.5″ wide x 8.5″ high (Half Letter)
  • 6″ wide x 9″ high (Trade Paperback)
  • 8.5″ wide x 11″ high (US Letter)

 

For a list of all the trim sizes we offer, click here.

How to Supply Interior Pages

 

We always recommend that customers submit their interior artwork as single pages assembled in order. This means that the pages are not joined to create spreads, but left as single pages instead. We will always handle the imposition of pages before bindery, and send you a PDF proof to approve before we print that will show how the book opens and reads when it is in printed form (known as a Reader Spread)

In the diagram above, each PDF page is one single printed page, and all pages are assembled in readable order. Do not supply spreads, we will handle the imposition into spreads when required.

 

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