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Publishing Learning Center
Book Layout, Margins, Images
Keep in mind the different treatment of various book sections outlined earlier. Different sections may be treated with different layouts, fonts, and font sizes, although it's best to have unified set of treatments so the book reads and flows well.The kinds of images you incorporate and the type of paper used for printing help define — or detract from — your book's "personality." Focus on the needs and expectations of your target audience when making these decisions.
Typefaces & font sizes
Typography convention holds that sans serif faces should be used for display headers and book covers while serif typefaces are used for body text to ease readability. You should use whatever faces or combinations of faces best express your book's "personality," but keep in mind that sans serif fonts may be difficult to read for an entire book.
The most widely used typefaces for book body text include Baskerville, Bembo, Garamond, Janson, Palatino, and Times Roman (although this more of a newspaper font).
- If using a sans serif font for body text (Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, etc.), do not use smaller than 8pt. size.
- If using a serif font for body text (Berkeley, Palatino, Garamond, etc.), do not use smaller than 10pt. size.
Of course, you will want to use larger point sizes for display headers, and much larger point sizes for your book's cover copy. Remember the small size of the covers shown in the browsable book directory!
Make sure your cover typography stands out sufficiently to be read; almost everyone really does judge a book by its cover. On the average, a bookstore browser spends eight seconds looking at the front cover and 15 seconds looking at the back cover. Not much time to make a sale, particularly if your cover can't be read or doesn't stand out.
Pagination, headers/footers
Page numbers are never displayed on the title, half title, blank, or promo pages.
By convention, lower case Roman numerals — ii, iv, x, etc. — are used throughout the front matter pages. Numbers for the body text of the work are displayed using Arabic numerals: 1, 2, 3, etc.
Generally, numbering of the body text begins at the end of the front matter. So, if the last page of the front matter is numbered x (10 in Roman numerals), the first page of the body text will be 1 in Arabic numerals. This will typically be, though not always, the first page of Chapter One. Numbering with Arabic numerals continues to the final page of the book
Odd-numbered pages always appear on the right. If you've decided to force all chapters to start on right pages they will all be odd-numbered and may follow blank pages. Feel free to disregard this rule, however, if you want to save pages. But remember that blank pages should never be numbered or display a header/footer.
Typically, L page headers contain the Title of the book and R pages display Chapter titles. Another format places the author's name in L page headers and book titles in R page headers. Neither headers nor page numbers should be displayed on beginning Chapter pages — whether L or R — or on blank pages.
Setting margins
The minimum page margin to use is .5 inches on all four sides, but feel free to use larger margins. We have Microsoft Word templates available for download below that sets margins for different-sized books of varying page lengths.
If your book has margins that are smaller than .5 inches, we cannot guarantee that it will be fully readable because the binding may obscure content in the inside "gutter" margin. Therefore, using already formatted Word templates is highly recommended.
| Standard Size Uses | Page Count 1-200 | Page Count 201-500 |
| Mass Market Paperback | 4.18 x 6.88 | 4.18 x 6.88 |
| Standard Paperback | 5 x 8 | 5 x 8 |
| Comic | 6.625 x 10.25 | 6.625 x 10.25 |
| Technical Manual | 7.5 x 9.25 | 7.5 x 9.25 |
| Letter Size | 8.5 x 11 | 8.5 x 11 |
Wire-O margins
For wire-o binding some people prefer to center their text within the white space of the book instead of within the entire page size.
Books with a page count between 1-200 pages will be punched with a 3 to 1 die. This means for every inch. there will be three holes punched in your book. Books with a page count between 201-500 pages will be punched with a 2 to 1 die. This means for every inch there will be two holes punched in your book.
If you are an advanced user and prefer to not use Word templates, please use the following margins to center your Wire-O book within the white space:
| Margin Location | Margin for Page count between 1-200 | Margin for Page count between 201-500 |
| Outside | .5" | .5" |
| Inside | .75" | .875" |
| Top | .5" | .5" |
| Bottom | .5" | .5" |
Outside & inside margins
In Microsoft Word, click on File and choose Page Setup. Check the Mirror Pages box. The areas for Left and Right margins now become Outside and Inside margins! This allows you to set the margins differently on even and odd page numbers. To skip all the hard work, simply download one of our handy Word templates above.
Inserted images
Currently, book contents are printed in black and white only. This means any color images inserted in your document will be converted to grayscale during printing. To see exactly how color images will print, we recommend you convert them to grayscale yourself.
Although color-to-grayscale conversion is not required for your PDF upload, you may hit the 100MB limit for uploading if your PDF contains numerous color images. See more about PDFs in Create PDF File.
Cover contents must be submitted in image format. We accept most popular image formats (JPG and PNG are recommended), with a minimum resolution of 150 DPI (300 DPI is preferred). See Cover checklist here.
