How to prepare artwork for your Perfect Bound (softback) books.

What's Included in the Price?

The prices you see on the web site are from your print ready PDF. We don't design your cover for you inclusive in that price, we don't add photographs or illustrations, we don't alter layout or correct any form of mistakes you may have made. If you need it, we're very happy to do additional work for you and you are very welcome to call the helpdesk on 01452 751900 to discuss.

Tips On Creating Your Cover.

Need some help?

Our experienced Graphic Designers can create a cover for your book at a very reasonable price. Please call the helpdesk to discuss this option.

Make the spine the right size.

When you use the price calculator to work out a price and order your books, it will also tell you the approximate thickness of the spine. Make sure you note this down and use it when creating your cover!

Make the cover the right size.

You must supply the cover to us as one PDF page (or two pages if you want printing on the inside of the covers). Imagine that you have pulled the cover off of a book. Now flatten it out and from left to right you have: rear cover, spine, front cover. That's how you should supply the cover artwork to us.

So for example, if you are ordering an A5 (A5 is 210x148mm) book with a 15mm spine, the cover dimensions are as follows:-

height - 2mm bleed at the top + 210mm + 2mm bleed at the bottom = 214mm
width - 2mm bleed on the left + 148mm + 15mm spine + 148mm + 2mm bleed on the right = 315mm

Not sure what a bleed is? A bleed is an "extra" bit of artwork that we trim off during the finishing process. It's primarily there so that you don't see tiny "white" areas at the edge of the printed item. There is more in-depth information about bleeds in the Help section.

Be realistic about printing on the spine.

Common sense rules apply.

• If you have a very thin spine, don't expect to print on it!
• Sometimes people like the spine to be a different colour to the front and back covers. This is not realistic with thin spines. With thicker spines, allow the spine colour to extend a fraction over onto the back cover. A more sensible option is to have the back cover and spine all one colour, with a different colour (or more commonly, artwork) on the front cover. You should choose whether you want the spine colour to extend a fraction onto the front cover, or the front cover artwork to extend fractionally onto the spine. If this is all double Dutch to you, go into your favourite bookshop and have a good look at the softback books and how the covers are designed and finished. You will have a "Oh that's what they are on about" moment!
• If we are printing 10,000 books for you then the bindery will have lots of "overs" to set up on. If we are printing one book for you, the bindery will have exactly one book to bind - the one that we are sending to you. So make the cover artwork forgiving and not dependent on alignments to within fractions of a millimetre (do you really want to pay for 20 more copies so that the bindery operator can get it "just right"?). Printing (especially digital) and finishing is not accurate to fractions of millimetres, so design your artwork accordingly.

Be careful about the "inside" of the spine.

If you are not going to print onto the inside of the cover, then you can safely ignore this advice. Otherwise, make absolutely sure that you have no artwork on the inside of the spine and for at least 6mm each side of the inside of the spine. This is to stop your book falling apart! Printing on the inside of the spine, or the side glued hinges of the front and back cover will very seriously compromise the glue adhesion. If you have chosen PUR binding, you will almost certainly get away with ignoring this advice, but it is essential to follow the advice if you have chosen EVA (Hot Melt) binding.

ISBN number?

If you need this, your artwork must incorporate it. Again, we can help with this, or even do it all for you, but that is not included in the basic printing price. Have a read of the "ISBN numbers demystified" section later on this page.

Tips On Laying Out Your Inner Pages.

Setting up margins.

We recommend that you use a minimum of 12mm margin on the top, bottom and outside edge of your page and 18mm on the inside (i.e. nearest the spine) of your page. You may find this difficult to lay out if you are not used to creating books, or you don't have DTP (Desk Top Publishing) software. In that case you should consider making all of the margins at least 18mm. Larger books should have larger margins. For example, a "C" sized book will look better and be easier to read with a minimum of 25mm margins.

What if your margins are a bit smaller, will you get told off? It's your book and the design is completely up to you. We often see books that require text much closer to the edge of the page, possibly a caption repeated on each page, or notes in the margin. Aesthetics aside, we recommend that you observe a "safe text zone" (i.e. no text in it) of approximately 3-4mm from each page edge.

Binding your book is a grind!

Pick up a piece of paper and look at the edge. Pretty narrow isn't it? If we had to rely on that edge alone to form the glue bond, you would have a lot of pages falling out. So, before glue is applied to your book, we mill (grind) and notch the inside edge of the page block to roughen it up and expose more fibres. This allows glue to be forced minutely into and around the side of the page, greatly increasing the strength of the bind. The bad news is that any ink present from digital printing will reduce the strength of the bind. If you have images running right to the inside edge of the page, we recommend that you play it safe and specify PUR binding. It's very slighly more expensive, but provides a much stronger bind compared to EVA (Hot Melt). Why doesn't every printer offer this option? Well, PUR binding equipment is much more expensive than EVA (Hot Melt), especially for short run books and the equipment requires a higher skill level from the operator.

What about the bit that we grind off? You don't need to worry about this, the extra is added to the page automatically by us before the book is printed.

Blank pages.

We do not second guess you and insert blank pages! You may think that it is just common sense that chapters should start on a right hand page and this will automagically happen, but it doesn't. If you want a blank page, insert a blank page. Blank pages count toward your page count.

Page numbering.

It may seem blindingly obvious, but always number your pages. There a few different ways to do this, i.e. numbering prefaces and appendices seperately and these are all fine, however it is generally accepted that with books, the covers are not counted as numbered pages.

Be consistent in where you put your numbers. If you want numbers on the outside of each page and your book is in a left to right written language, remember that on right hand ("front" or recto) pages the number should be on the right hand side. On left hand ("back" or verso) pages, the number should be on the left hand side. Desk Top Publishing software (DTP) normally has tools to help you with much of this, but word processing software may not. The easy alternative is just to put your numbers in the middle!

Typography.

Typography primarily covers the font type, style, size and position of the text used in your book. Consideration should also be given to the line spacing, margins, page numbering and more. This is really beyond the scope of this guide, but there are several good books on the subject and some useful information can be found by "googling" for it.

Here are a couple of general things that we often see and that are best avoided:-

• Text will generally look better if it is justified, i.e. with the words spaced so that lines have straight and even margins.
• Don't make the font sizes too small. It's difficult to give you a firm "use 12 point" rule, as each font will vary. In general, anything under 10pt in any font is may be too small. Print out a page in the font & size you are thinking of using, take a good look at it and then show it to other people. Take a trip to the bookshop and look at a few books; does your font look smaller than is generally used? Consider your target audience. If this is the instruction manual for the latest gadget, the font size will often be tiny. If this is beloved Grandmas memoirs given as gifts on her 85th then larger text will be appreciated.
• Use a small number of fonts and use them consistently. We've seen some very ugly books that have used a jumble of different fonts. Keep it simple and use fonts for specific purposes. For example; one font for your text, one font for headings, one font for illustration titles. Three fonts should be plenty for most books, but some reference books will need more.

In General

Unless you have made special arrangements, you should supply us with two PDF files. One for the cover and one for the inner pages.

For the cover we require one PDF page if your cover is printed on the outside and two PDF pages if your cover is printed on the outside and inside. See the detailed section: "Tips On Creating Your Cover" for specific information.

The inner pages ("Text Page Block") should contain seperate pages, NO SPREADS. Don't try to do any imposition: just the pages, in the right order, one at a time.

PDF

PDFs are best, you will get better and more consistent results by supplying PDFs. If you don't have a PDF creator, you can download a free one called CutePDF from the nice folks at Acro Software Inc.   Many of our customers use this and we use it ourselves on PCs without an Acrobat licence. There are clear instructions on their web site, please follow them! Here is a link to the web site for CutePDF:

http://www.cutepdf.com

Use the PDF/X-1a preset when using Adobe products to create a PDF. Cutepdf does not use presets, but the default setting will work OK.

Always take a good look at the PDF before you send it to us.

Make sure that you set the correct page size!

Hold on a second, I think you skimmed that a bit too fast, I'd better mention it again: Make sure that you set the correct page size!

If you are taking that good look at the PDF before you send it to us and are using Acrobat Reader (or any of the Pro versions), point your mouse cursor at the bottom left of the page. Your page size will be displayed. It is right isn't it?

Don't bother about turning on any "printers marks", we will just delete them anyway.

Some PDF generation tools will have an option to "embed fonts". If it's there, turn it on.

TIFFs or JPEG

These formats are not accepted for perfect bound books.

Publisher

Please create a PDF and send this to us.

We can convert Publisher files to PDF for you at an extra charge. Please contact the helpdesk to discuss this if you cannot supply your book as a PDF.

Some tips:-

You can create PDF files from Publisher in a couple of different ways: either download CutePDF (see above), or follow the instructions in this technical note:-
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F1FC413C-6D89-4F15-991B-63B07BA5F2E5&displaylang=en

Please note that Publisher does have a pretty big "issue" with transparencies (apparently this is not a bug!) that mainly affects GIF and PNGs. Basically Publisher will create PDFs with thousands of 1px by 1px images. This will make your computer run very slow and it causes major pre-press problems for us. The way to fix this is to delete the offending images, remove the transparency on the original image files (i.e. in an image editing application) and then import them again into Publisher.

InDesign

Please create a PDF and send this to us.

If you want us to print from your InDesign files then we can do this, but there will be an extra charge. Please contact the helpdesk to discuss this if you cannot supply your book as a PDF. If you send us InDesign files, we strongly recommend that you convert the text to outlines (use "create outlines") and you embed the graphics (links > embed file).

Microsoft Word (and other Word Processors)

Please create a PDF and send this to us. Word is not a stable format, so the entire layout, including fonts, can change from one computer to another. PDFs are pretty stable. The PDF that you create will look the same on your computer and everyone else's. Anyone can make PDFs, it's easy and free! If you don't have PDF creation software, please read the notes above regarding cutepdf. Please also read the section about PDFs. To repeat (again) one of the most important points made in the PDF section: make sure that you set the correct page size! This really is the most popular mistake people make.

If you want us to print from your Word files then we can do this, but there will be an extra charge, and you will need to send us the fonts that you use. Please contact the helpdesk to discuss this first before placing your order if you cannot supply your book as a PDF.

Everything Else

If you have your file in a different format and you cannot create a PDF, then please call the Help Desk for advice on how to proceed, we can help in nearly all cases!

Do I need one?

The first thing to note is that there is no legal requirement for you to have an ISBN number and it does not confer any form of copyright protection. It's simply a product number that will be useful if your book is to be sold in book shops. You should also be aware that when using ISBN numbering, there are strict rules on what changes are permitted to the book after publication that must be adhered to.

How do I get one?

The UK ISBN Agency is run by Neilson Book. If you want a UK ISBN number for your book, this is where they come from. The vast majority of people get their ISBN numbers from Neilson. It's a bit of a fiddle and you have to buy a minimum "block" of 10 numbers, but the end result is that YOU are the publisher of record. If you get your ISBN number elsewhere, for example from the service that prints your book, then THEY are the publisher.

You can visit the Neilson Book web site here:

http://www.isbn.nielsenbook.co.uk

Follow the link to the "services for new publishers". Neilson have some excellent information on their web site about how to use their service. When you complete the necessary form, they will also register your book details on the Publishers International ISBN Directory and the Nielsen Book’s Publisher Database. You should read up on this. These are used by booksellers and libraries to provide information for customers.

Can Inky sell me an ISBN number?

In theory we can, but as the Neilson route is relatively simple and low cost, it's very rare for us to do this. This is a more expensive than the Neilson route as we are essentially filling all the paperwork in for you!

Can Inky create me an ISBN bar code?

Yes, Inky has the software to create ISBN bar codes. We make a small charge for this and email you the bar code in EPS (vector) and TIFF (bitmap) formats ready for you to insert into your artwork. Speak to the helpdesk to arrange this. You must have the ISBN number first before we can generate a bar code for you.

What is "Legal Deposit"?

You should also remember your obligations under "Legal Deposit", if your book is to be published and distributed in the UK. If you have an ISBN number and intend to distribute your book for sale in the UK, you should ensure that one copy is deposited with the British Library. You also have an obligation to supply a copy to the 5 Legal Deposit libraries. This deposit is only legally required if a claim is made by the libraries within 12 months of publication, but in many cases publishers will make this deposit as a matter of course. If we are the publisher of record, then we can manage this process for you for an additional fee, but we will only make the 6 library deposit, i.e. we will not wait for and process claims.

Bluffer's guide

RGB (Red, Green, Blue) are the basic components of the colours emitted by your monitor. All the colours that you can see on your monitor are made up from RGB in different proportions. CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK) are the ink pigments used to reflect light back to you from the printed sheet. The full colour images that you see on a printed sheet are actually made up from complex patterns of CMYK. RGB colours must be converted to CMYK so that they can be printed. This conversion is usually hidden from you when you are using a desk top printer. Because RGB has a wider gamut (range of possible colours) compared to CMYK, not all RGB colours can be printed accurately in CMYK. For this reason, professional designers will usually design their artwork in CMYK and preview it on screen in simulated CMYK.

Don't

• Supply us with a jumble of different files and expect us to make sense of it.

Do

• Supply the cover page(s) as one PDF.
• Supply the inner pages as a seperate PDF.
• Supply each page as an individial page within a multi-page PDF.
• If any pages require bleeds, supply all pages with 2mm bleed all round.