Book Printing Tips: A Guide for Authors and Creators
Updated 12 June 2026.
Welcome to our reading page! We are constantly updating this page with truly helpful content.
Preparing a book for print can seem complex, but with the right advice you can ensure your project runs smoothly and the final book is something you are proud of. You already did the hardest part, which is writing the book.
This guide will walk you through the essential considerations for getting your book print-ready. And provide some tongue and cheek observations about the printing and publishing industry.
Table of Contents
Part 1 - Book Basics
Book Sizes - standard book sizes and our recommendations
Margins and Contents - word processors and how to layout text and images
Cover and Spine - design software, book cover specs, and templates
Part 2 - The Print Industry
Paper - In the end, we owe a lot to paper.
Printing - curious about the current state of printing.
Binding- perfect binding, saddle stitch, and signature sewn hardcovers
Embellishments - Coming soon
Sustainability - Coming soon
Part 3 - Publishing
The Imprint Page- placement within a book, copyright statements, Creative Commons
ISBN - do you need an ISBN and how do you get one
The use of AI - Coming soon
Bookshop Economics - Coming soon
Part 1 - Book Basics
Book Size
Choosing the right size for your book is a key decision that affects printing costs and reader experience.
When we talk about the book size we are referring to the final size of the book, as it is on your bookshelf.
The final size of the book is a decision you need to make before you begin the layout of your book. We often find that authors write the book in Microsoft Words with the default document size as A4, which then needs to be reformatted before printing. So that why this is first on our list.
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Common Sizes
At Aburra Press we make all our books in-house, so we can make it to any size and manage costs.
From pocket note books only 7 x 14 cms wide to massive A3 landscape books with full spreads, it is all possible.
Some common book sizes for novels are:
A5 Books [210 x 148mm] - This is a classic novel size comparable with the US 5x8 inch size.
Small USA Novels [5 x 8 inches or 127 x 203 mm]
Medium USA Novels [5.5 x 8.5 inches or 139 x 215mm]
Large USA Novels [6 x 9 inches or 152 x 229 mm]
Some common book sizes for books with photos are:
A5 Landscape Books [148 x 210mm] - This is a great size to balance costs and create a unique form.
A4 Portrait Books [210 x 297mm] - This is a classic document and suitable for corporate reports.
US Letter Books [216 x 279 mm] - This is a variation of A4 and is good for professional publications.
Square Books [210 x 210mm] - This is a classic size for children books.
B5 Books [176 x 250 mm] - This is a good size for memoirs and does not feel like a document
While some printers claim there is no difference in price between an A5 book and a 6x9 inch book, they are wrong. We are in Australia and you will be limited in paper options because we use the metric system.
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What We Like.
At Aburra Press, we are creatives ourselves so this is an interesting topic for us.
For smaller novels, we think 5.5 x 8.5 inches is a great size that balances the look of a traditional trade paper back while fitting into the standard Australian paper sizes with minimal waste. For something more out there, we love the traveler size of 104 x 210mm. It looks quite trendy and the reading experience feels familiar to text on a phone screen with its thinner text column, which may help the next generation read gooder.
For memoirs and larger photo books, as a general rule, we would avoid a book that is exactly A4. Simply because A4 is such a boring size - and reminds everyone of a bill or a document. Instead, we would recommend a custom size of 184 x 266mm for photo books as it fits landscape and portrait photos quite well or go with a B5 books for a more standardised template.
If you are unsure, the first step is to have a look at your bookshelf and measure the size of a book you like.
In the end, it is your book and there are no rules!
Margins and Contents
The body of a book is made up of sheets of paper.
On each sheet of paper there are two pages, a front and a back page.
On the pages are where the stories rest.
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Page Size
Once you have decided on the final book size, you need to set up your page size in a word processing software. The page size = final book size.
If you are doing this yourself, we would recommend using either Microsoft Words if you have a license, or Google Doc or Open Office as a completely viable free alternative. All of these software are easy to use (it’s 2026 afterall) and will generally get the job done. Keep in mind that word processors are not design software, and it will be hard to make advanced layout designs such as custom headers.
For a more professional publication or a photo heavy work, we highly recommend using a design software, either Affinity or InDesign.
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Margins
Ensure you set adequate margins on all sides of your pages. Margins are the frame for your contents to sit within on the page.
We recommend 20mm on all four sides as the default for both A5 or A4 style book.
You do not need to add additional margin space on the spine side or center gutter. Some online sites suggest that authors do this to try to improve readability, however this actually causes us a huge headache if it is done incorrectly. It is best to keep the margins even on all sides.
Because we manufacture the books ourselves, we make fine but important adjustments during the cutting and binding step. We generally leave an additional 2mm extra in the spine side for readability so words are not lost in the spine. So in short, please leave the margins equal on all sides.
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Fonts
Wow, where do we begin with font choices. There are so many fonts out there each with their own personality.
As a general classification, fonts are divided into serifs and san-serifs (or without serifs). There are also scripts which aim to replicate handwriting, and monotype which are fonts where all the letters are the same width.
Serif typefaces include finishing strokes or tails and feet. For novels, guides, memoirs, we would use a serif font as it feels traditional and elegant. We would use san-serif fonts if the book is aiming for a more modern feel, or use a san-serif font for a chapter title and page number to differentiate it from the body text.
Serif fonts we like include Times New Roman, Garamond, Georgia, and Gentium.
Sans-serif fonts we like include Arial, Helvetica, and Open sans.
We recommend keeping the body font size to 12pt or 11pt as the default.
For chapter titles, anything you want !
Bonus Tip - Table of Contents
One of the biggest drawback of making a table of contents in Microsoft Words is that it is a painful experience - why don’t the numbers match up ? why is there a number 2 under my title page ? But that aside, from a design perspective it is very obvious a table of content is made in Words as the design is always the same (in terms of the spacing and layout).
What you can do instead is to make a copy of your word document. So you have one where your body text starts on page 1 and another blank document where you can include all your title pages, imprint pages, and table of content. Then you can manually jot down the chapter start pages and create a simple table of contents manually. This is usually quicker than tweeking the table of content configuration in Words.
Afterwards, you can send us two PDF files and we can combine them to create one file for you.
Cover and Spine
Pages are bound together with a special piece of paper - the cover.
People judge a book by its cover.
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Artwork
Word processors are not Design software - you need the latter for bleed and graphics work.
The most common software used is the Adobe suite, such as InDesign and Photoshop. However, in our pursuit of being Adobe free, we would recommend giving Canva and Affinity (recently acquired by Canva) a try, or Scribus as a completely viable open sourced alternative. You can achieve professional print ready files on any of the software above.
Canva is very beginner friendly and they are an Australia company which is a plus, we highly recommend. Affinity and Scribus require a little bit of learning, which is mainly getting use to the user interface, but will produce impeccable files.
No matter which software you decide to use it is important that all your graphical elements are high resolution. For images, this means a resolution of at least 200dpi (dpi means dots per inch which is so counter intuitive as multiplying inches makes no sense), an alternate metric can be file size - a 200dpi photo should be more than 1mb (megabyte) in size. Images should be at least 200dpi OR at least 1mb in file size.
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Bleed
Explaining bleed is like trying to persuade magpies to come into your shop. It requires patience.
Bleed is a terms that is specific to print production. Web designers never have to think about bleed as pixels can be perfectly arranged and perfectly rearranged. Unfortunately, for the book maker physical reality is quite pesky and likes to decay into chaos.
The bandaid solution for this inevitable descent into entropy is a 5mm bleed. Bleed is extending your cover artwork past the intended cut line. So when your book is trimmed down to the final size, the bleed area is cut off, leaving a clean edge.
If full bleed is not setup from the get go, there are only three solutions of fix it as part of our pre-press workflow. False bleed solution one - Mirror bleed. Here we would mirror your original artwork on trim line to create the bleed. False bleed solution two - Stretch bleed. Here we would stretch your original artwork by 5mm to create the bleed. False bleed solution three - Patch Bleed. Here would extend the solid colour on the edge out by 5mm.
Each of these solutions have trade-offs and depend on how your artwork elements are arranged and the positioning of critical elements such as the title and author name.
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Spine
The spine is an essential element of a book. The title of the book and the author name is a must. Usually you would also see the logo of the publisher. Sometimes you will see an additional subtitle.
Every half a millimetre matter with the spine width - we recommend using our spine width calculator for the most accurate measurements as we have measured it against the physical papers we stock.
Also remember the front cover goes on the right of the spine, unless you are trying to make a Japanese book.
Part 2 - The Printing Industry
Paper
Paper is very important.
The paper you choose has a significant impact on the look, feel, and cost of your book. It’s a tactile element that readers notice. Paper is a very big part of printing and can dramatically affects the perceived quality of the print.
Paper weight is measured in gsm (Grams per Square Metre), paper weight determines the thickness and opacity of your pages. A higher gsm feels more substantial and thicker.
Our standard paper categories
80gsm Bond: this is your standard book paper available in white and off-white.
120gsm Bond: we use this for shorter books that need to be more sturdy.
95gsm Coated: this is your standard magazine paper
128gsm Coated: we use this stock for weighty company reports
150gsm Coated: we use this for photo books
120gsm Mondi: this is a smooth specialty stock we generally reserve for special occasions.
300gsm Silk: this is the standard stock we use for book covers.
70gsm Book Paper: these are bulky off-white paper used specifically for novels
80gsm Book Paper: these are handy for novels with shorter page counts.
We are very particular about our paper, and source from all top Australian paper suppliers - Ball and Doggett, Spicers, and SE Papers. If you need something custom feel free to reach out - we stock lots of different papers.
Printing
Printing has been around for a long time … like a really really long time.
Before printing I guess we just wrote or drew by hand. Maybe you would hire a scribe to write out all your marketing flyers in the ancient times.
Then a lazy man thought this was all too much work, so he carved all the letters into blocks and put these inked blocks into a machine that pressed. Voila! The Gutenberg Printing Press was invented.
Knowledge and information could be mass produced. Everyone was much happier for awhile until the Europeans came along and started writing about suffering.
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Around the same time suffering was discovered, we also discovered that oil and water didn’t mix aka lithography. This was important as paints are oil based and water is handy and generally useful. But the problem was that we still needed to carve blocks.
It was only when film photography became mainstream that things changed very quickly. Because for the first time, instead of carving blocks, we could project an image onto a metal plate at the resolutions of light (the highest resolution there is).
This lead to the rise of offset lithography printing - using images shone onto four metal plates to represent CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) which could produce perfect copies of a colour image. These machines are really cool and printers were literally printing money (20 years ago).
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Fast forward to 2025, customers and businesses no longer want large run prints, so the economics of maintaining offset machines no longer makes sense in Australia (with the exception of packaging needs). All of these machines are currently being exported to India for pennies on the dollar.
Digital printing is now the number one printing method here in Australia. Digital printing presses are also a marvel of modern engineering. It shoots a laser onto a positively charged roller which attracts the negatively charged CMYK dust. Then the dust is somehow laid perfectly onto your paper and the paper is then heated at high temperature to give you images.
Digital printing press without a doubt caught up in terms of printing cost and quality. It is easier and more versatile to use, and now paper registration is also perfect.
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We have a brand new Digital Printing Press from Canon. We choose Canon’s production presses because it is among the best in terms of photo quality and paper registration, so all our book covers are vibrant and the page numbers are perfectly aligned. Not only that, Canon Australia has an amazing service team and is extremely ethical. If we partnered with Fuji-Xerox, I think we would be out of business by now.
Binding
Binding is the craft - it is hands on and labour intensive and requires skill.
Perfect Binding
Perfect binding is the most popular and professional choice for softcover books, such as paperbacks, novels, and corporate reports. It is also gaining popularity in the photo book category. It is an excellent and cost-effective solution for a wide range of projects.
This is the go to form for a book. Theres a reason why all books look like this.
Saddle Stitch
We could never really figure out why this is called saddle stitch, but it sure sounds a lot better than stapled booklets. Sometimes for short books and zines, this is the best option.
Case Bound with Signature Sewn
Often referred to as section-sewn or hardcover binding, this is the best money can buy.
The process is more intricate: the book pages are printed in a complex order, then folded into sections called "signatures." These signatures are collated in order and then physically sewn together with thread. The book bodies are then compressed under pressured and glued together at the spine. After the glue dries, the body is securely attached to a rigid outer cover, or "case." This sewn construction is the strongest and most durable binding available and allows the book to lay completely flat when open, making for a superior reading experience.
Most Australian online retailers that offer hardcover books do not make signature sewn book.
Instead they make “clip on hardcovers”, which is a perfect bound book glued inside a hardcover case. These book look good when they sit on the table, but due to their construction they cannot open flat and are quite difficult to read. We refuse to make “clip on hardcover” - if you want a premium product, just do it properly.
Part 3 - Publishing
The Imprint Page
Traditionally the imprint or colophon page appears on the back of the title page near the start of the book.
It provides details about how the book came about, its history, and legal status.
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Copyright Statement
Copyright exists when a new work is created. The legal right is innately conferred to the author. While copyright is automatic in Australia upon creation, a formal notice is helpful for identifying ownership.
There is no standard text for the copyright statement. Eventually you realise that in every book it is all worded quite differently. Most likely, people are just reading the statement on an existing book and making a few tweaks.
The wording we like:
Copyright (c) Francis Chuah 2025
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
Apart from permitted use under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in an electronic database, transmitted, or used for training large language models, without the prior written permission of the author.
Public Domain or Creative Commons Statement
Alternatively, authors can also choose to voluntarily give up exclusive legal rights to a work they have created, allowing anyone to use, modify, or sell it without permission or payment. There are many reasons to do this.
The best and most legally sound way to waive your copyright is by using the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) Public Domain Dedication tool.
The wording we like:
Creative Commons (cc) Francis Chuah 2025
This work is released into the public domain by the author. No Rights Reserved.
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Example Imprint PageText
Published in Australia in 2026 by
NOTV SYDNEY Pty Ltd
notv.sydney
Copyright © Francis Chuah 2025.
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
Apart from permitted use under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in an electronic database, transmitted, or used for training large language models, without the prior written permission of the author.
ISBN: 978-0-999-77777-9
Printed and Bound in Australia by Aburra Press.
ISBN
An ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is a unique 13-digit identifier for your book. The company behind the ISBN is an “amazing” company, they have somehow managed to monopolise selling numbers. Wow, I wish I thought of that!
Do You Need an ISBN ?
You will need an ISBN if you plan to sell your book through major retailers, online stores, or have it available in libraries. It is the standard for tracking and inventory management in the publishing world. It also makes your book look more professional.
How to Get an ISBN ?
We have found that the online marketing around ISBN seems to make the process sound very difficult, but it is really not. You just fill out a form with your details and your book details and buy an ISBN for $10 -$100 dollars.
In Australia, ISBNs can be purchased through the official agency, Thorpe-Bowker.
Oh, Thorpe-Bowker also charge $50 to generate a barcode for you book (once again genius business minds). Here is the best free tool we found to generate a barcode and price for free.