Layout tips for Book Covers

Here are some tips when creating the cover art files for your book project.  Whether you are printing a hard cover book or soft cover book, you need to provide a printer with the correct dimensions and layout of the covers and interiors.

Creating your hard cover book, you will need the spine width,

note the cover is always larger than the interior book block.  Be sure the text on the spine is facing the standard direction as placed on a book shelf next to other books.  Standard the texts is printed from top to bottom, the text should face left.  What is usually placed on the spine of a book?  Standard information is title and author’s name.  You can put your logo which will spruce up the spine.   If you are applying a dust jacket to the book development, the spine differs from the hard cover.  The dust jacket is wrapped around the entire book which the spine will be larger.  You can create your dust jacket flap from 2” – 4”.  Standard flap size seen often is 3.5”.

Producing a perfect bound book the spine of the book is usually the same measurement as the book block thickness.  Same as the dust jacket you can add flaps to your perfect bound book project.  The flap size is the same as a dust jacket. Of course if you are producing a saddle stitched book you cannot print on the spine.

The interior book block for all style books, especially if your interior pages are bleeding off the page, is to leave .125”/3 mm around all four sides of the pages.  Example if the trim size is 8.5”w x 11” h, the page size will be 8.75” w x 11.25”.  Adding the trim marks will measure at 8.5” w x 11” h (this is a portrait finished size).

Your best bet is to work with your printer which whom should provide you accurate information or provide you with cover templates.

Here at PRC Book Printing we will provide you with cover and dust jacket templates, to ensure your book will size correctly at print and binding!  Please reach out to us for your next hard cover or soft cover book printing!  Please do not hesitate to email us: info@prcbookprinting.com or call us at:  888.659.8320!