How to prepare artwork for your Hardback books.

The TOC might help you navigate this guide, but please read the whole thing!

• General Information
• Creating Your Cover
• More Details About Spine Thickness
• Creating Your Inner Pages (Book Block)
• Which Electronic Formats are Supported?
• ISBN Numbers Demystified
• CMYK and RGB

Don't Panic!

We've tried to give helpful and complete information here. Sometimes that means there is quite a bit to read. Don't panic! Much of it boils down to a few key things to remember. Once you have read this guide, you can always call us to discuss anything you haven't quite understood. But, please read the guide first.

Is artwork 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. This is purely a printing service. We're very happy to do additional work for you. If this is of interest to you, please call to the helpdesk on 01452 751900 to discuss.

What electronic format do I supply my book in?

You need to supply us with 2 PDF files. One should have a single page that contains the artwork for the case. The second should contain artwork for the book block (inner pages). Read on for more detailed information!

Useful terms.

Understanding some of the lingo is useful as we'll use it when an exact meaning is required. Plus it may come up in Trivial Pursuit one day.

Recto pages

In languages written from left to right, a recto page is on the right hand side when a book is open. It is printed on the "front" of a leaf.

Verso pages

In languages written from left to right, a verso page is on the left hand side when a book is open. It is printed on the "back" of a leaf.

A Leaf and a Page

What is a page? This can cause some confusion! It's easiest to explain if you visualise picking up a book. Now open the book anywhere. Look at the recto page (the right hand page) now turn the page and look at the verso page (the left hand page). They are different pages on the same leaf of paper. To put it another way, a 100 page book block has 50 leaves and 100 pages. Another thing that sometimes confuses is blank pages. A blank page is still a page, it's just blank page.

The bluffer's guide to hardback books

The CASE

The case of a hardback book is the back cover, spine and front cover. This is manufactured all in one piece. Hence you might also hear hardback books referred to as "Case bound" books. Inky offers full colour printed cases or material covered cases. Think of cases as a sandwich. For the full colour printed cases, on the outside there is a hard wearing gloss or matt laminate, this is bonded onto full colour print in the middle, which is in turn bonded onto sections of rigid board. For material covered cases, your choice of material is bonded onto sections of rigid board. To clarify a little, there are a wide variety of "materials" that can be used to cover book cases, from book cloth and linen to fake lizard skin!

The BOOK BLOCK

The book block is made separately. Traditionally, it has been made of sewn sections (called signatures) that are glued together. This is an expensive process to set up and not well suited to digitally printed books. The alternative is to use a fully glued book block. Historically, the big disadvantage of this method is that the hotmelt (EVA) glue widely used for this purpose was not really suitable, being brittle and not strong enough for bigger book blocks or difficult papers like silk or gloss. The solution is to use a newer system called PUR binding. PUR is much stronger than standard hot melt, it's tolerant of higher and lower temperatures and as it is flexible, not brittle, your books open flatter and without cracking the spine. PUR binding has been extensively used for mass market hardback books for a number of years now, but the technology has only recently been perfected that allows us to use PUR for short to medium run digitally printed books. The PUR machinery is also very expensive, which is why only a small handful of printers like Inky are able to offer this secure and flexible binding method.

End Papers and Fly Leaves

During assembly, the inside of the front and rear covers are covered by pasted on end papers. This end paper carries on and forms the first (and of course last) leaf of the book. This unpasted part of the end paper is called the fly leaf or fly paper. As standard our end and fly papers are white uncoated paper and are unprinted.

We can do all sorts of wonderful things with the end papers, including printing on them and using coloured or special papers. Unfortunately this a fairly complex task that takes quite a lot more time and money so we don't offer this as a standard option through the web site. If this is what you want, pick up the phone and have a chat with the helpdesk, but please remember that it's unlikely to be cost effective for only a few books.

Assembly

Finally the case and book block are assembled together. The book block should float free of the spine, but is securely bonded to the front and back of the case with a hinge that is part of the spine liner. The hinge is hidden by the end papers, but you can feel them by running your finger along the edge of the cover nearest the spine of any commercially produced hardback book. Some short run hardback books have pages glued directly to the case. This is a very, very bad idea. It is unlikely to last very long and cannot lay flat.

Inky manufactures books with good quality cases and PUR bound book blocks; make sure that you don't settle for anything less!

Need some help?

We realise that creating an accurately sized and laid out cover can be the hardest part of printing your hardback book. Our artworkers are very experienced and what might take you ages, will only take them only around half an hour. So, it is often a time (and sanity) saving idea simply to ask us to create the cover for you. Please speak to the helpdesk about this. For a more complex or artistic cover design, we also have a very experienced Graphic Designer who can quote you for cover design from your brief. Again, please contact the helpdesk to discuss this option.

Getting the sizes right.

The spine.

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 (it's in the description, in the "notes"). Make sure you note this down and use it when creating your cover. Please remember that this is only approximate.

Be realistic about printing on the spine.

If you have a very thin spine, don't expect to be able to print on it!

Artwork for the case.

If you don't know what the case is, please read the Bluffer's Guide above.

For printed cases, you need to supply the artwork for the case as ONE complete PDF page. The cover is larger than the book block by about 4-5mm on all sides. So, if you've ordered an A4 book, the book block will be A4 sized, but the cover will overhang that by 4-5mm. Just take a look at any hardback book and this will be clear. The "bleed area" is a very different compared with other products. The full colour print wraps around the edge of the case. The insides of the front and back cover both have end papers glued to them. This will cover some, but not all of the full colour print (or material) that has been wrapped around. The point to remember from this is that approximately 2-3mm of the full colour print that wraps around to the inside of the case will be visible and another 2-3mm of artwork is hidden by the end papers. Finally, remember that the board itself is approximately 2mm thick (see the background information above to understand how a case is made).

That's the in-depth explanation, now for the easy rule-of-thumb!

• Height of your CASE ARTWORK: book block height PLUS 16mm.


• Width of your CASE ARTWORK: book block width TIMES 2, PLUS the width of the spine, PLUS 16mm.

for example, an A5 book with a 15mm spine. The CASE ARTWORK dimensions should be approximately as follows:

• Height: 210mm, PLUS 16mm, EQUALS 226mm.


• Width: 148mm TIMES 2, PLUS 15mm, PLUS 16mm, EQUALS 327mm.

A bit more detail

In the previous section, we explained that the "spine width is only approximate". That's sufficient information for most circumstances, but this section has more detail, in case that is useful to you.

How accurate is our spine thickness calculator?

It's reasonably accurate, but see the rest of this discussion for the degree to which it may vary. If it is vital to get the spine thickness accurate then you should order a single copy of your book on the exact same paper your main run will use and measure that.

How do we calculate spine thickness?

We use two of basic measurements: the paper thickness and the rigid board thickness. We have a process to add an "approved paper" (welcome to the world of manufacturing driven by ISO9001 processes!) and until we go through the process again to change the paper for whatever reason, we will always use that specific paper for that specific product. When we add an approved paper, the mill will tell us the "nominal thickness" for each weight. You can think of that as the "target" thickness that the mill aims for and the specification of the paper that we use generally has a plus or minus tolerance of no more than 8% of the weight and thickness. For instance, a 130gsm gloss paper may have a nominal thickness of 98 microns, but be delivered to us at 92 microns. That's well within specification and we must accept that consignment. Strangely, we never seem to see the weight or thickness ABOVE the nominal, but it is very often below. We measure the first batch of paper that we receive with a very precise micrometer and this is the thickness that we use in our spine width calculator. We have found that this is much more accurate than using the mill's own nominal values. So, you can see that from batch to batch of paper that the mill manufactures, the actual thickness of the paper can vary slightly. It is not a large variation and does not affect the quality of your product, but if you have a large number of pages, the overall thickness of your spine can be calculated slightly incorrectly. Much the same issues occur with the rigid board.

Page layout.

Page sizes.

The page size should be the size that you have chosen for your book, for example an A5 book will be 210mm x 148mm. If your pages are BLED, then you need to add 2mm bleeds all round. If you don't know what a bleed is, please read the explanation in the help area (help > artwork > bleeds).

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 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 may will look better and be easier to read with a minimum of 25mm margins.

Remember: these are general guidelines. Many designers completely ignore them because their specific requirements are different, for example printing notes in the margin area is often used with text books. A good common sense rule is: if in doubt, just print one and then make your necessary changes after examining that.

Page numbering.

It may seem obvious, but we recommend that you 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 hardback books that the covers and fly leaves 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!

Blank pages.

We do not insert blank pages! You may think that it is just common sense that chapters should start on a recto page and this will automagically happen, but it doesn't. If the previous chapter ends on a recto page and you want the next chapter to also start on a recto page, insert a blank verso page before the new chapter. We print exactly what you send us, so if you want a blank page, insert a blank page. Blank pages count toward your black and white page count.

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 pointers that may be of some help:

• 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 likely to 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?


• 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.

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 from called CutePDF from the nice folks at Acro Software Inc. Many of our customers use this and we use it ourselves on computers without an Acrobat licence. There are clear instructions on their web site, please follow them! Here is the link to web site for CutePDF:-
http://www.cutepdf.com

Clicking on the link above will take you away from inkylittlefingers.co.uk so if you want to open the link in a new window click on the following link
http://www.cutepdf.com

Always make sure that you select 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.

Make sure that you set the correct page size!

Please don't bother 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.

Always take a good look at the PDF before you send it to us and double check the page size.

TIFFs or JPEG

These formats are not accepted for hardback books.

Publisher

Please create a PDF and send this to us.

We may be able to 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

Clicking on the link above will take you away from inkylittlefingers.co.uk so if you want to open the link in a new window click on the following link
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

Please create a PDF and send this to us. If you don't have PDF creation software, please read the note above regarding cutepdf.

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 if you cannot supply your book as a PDF. Make sure that you set the correct page size!.

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". The minimum purchase is a block of 10 numbers. The advantage of obtaining your own ISBN number is that you are then the publisher of record. 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.

Do I have to supply my file in CMYK?

This is relevant for case artwork or inner pages printed in full colour.

No you don't have to supply your file in CMYK. If you supply your file in RGB we will convert it to CMYK as part of the proofing process.

Bluffer's guide to RGB and CMYK

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.