1) Use a pre-designed template from our catalogue for a small fee (coming soon)
2) Use our publisher services to engage a professional designer and create a custom cover of your choice.
3) Follow the tips and suggestions listed below to design your own cover.
Calculating Dimensions of the Cover
Covers are printed as one continuous sheet. Before you can create your cover, you must know the total number of interior pages in your book block interior (including Front Matter, Core Matter and Back Matter (See Interior Specifications)
- Maximum cover dimensions = 10.75 X 16.75
- Cover must be centered both vertically and horizontally on an 11 X 17 page
- No crop/registration marks
- Back + Spine + Front = one landscape-oriented rectangle that wraps around the interior of the book
- Use the number of pages in your book's interior to figure the width of the spine
- There should be no text on the spine if your book has fewer than 100 pages
- Typical spine widths are:
50 pages = .125"
100 pages = .25"
200 pages = .5"
400 pages = 1"
Trim and Bleed
- Cover background must extend 1/4 (.25)" beyond trim size on all four sides to allow for cutting/trimming tolerance. This is the "bleed."
- Be sure to adjust your bleed and trim lines in or out as necessary to allow for your spine width
- All books are trimmed and bound individually, and slight variations are not uncommon. It's better ot allow more cushion in your design that to crowd the margins
Text and Design Considerations
- Keep all text and graphic elements at least 1/4(.25)" within the trim margin
- Your background colour or graphic should extend all the way to the edge of the bleed area
- All images used in your design must be 300dpi or higher for best results
- Avoid hard vertical lines separating the front or back panel from the spine
- Allow at least 1/8" cushion on either side of the text on your spine. For example, the text should be no more than 3/4" high on a 1" spine
- To place text on the spine, rotate it so that the left type margin falls at the top of the book -- the type will then read correctly left to right when the book lies front cover up on a horizontal surface.
- Be consistent in your use of fonts
- Proofread your cover text as thoroughly as the rest of the book. An error on the cover is even more glaring and obvious (and regardless of the saying, people DO judge books by their covers)
ISBN and Bar Code
- If you require an ISBN, one will be assigned and we will provide an image file of the barcode to you
- If you have your own ISBN and barcode, then remember to put it on the back cover
Photos & Illustrations
You must own the rights to any photos or illustrations used in your book or on the cover. When scanning photographs or other illustrations for the interior, please scan as greyscale, 300 dpi and scale to the appropriate size you plan to use, then save as a TIFF file (best for Black & White print; JPG is more for TV or web viewing).
File Format
Covers can be designed in Word, InDesign and Illustrator (to name a few). All files must be converted to a PDF with the cover image centred horizontally and vertically on an 11" X 17" page.
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