These book spine design guidelines are good for all trim sizes, but this article is mainly focused on books with thin spines.
We see a lot of books here at BookBaby. Our prepress team spends so much time fixing the spines on those books you could call them chiropractors. With that in mind, we wanted to share with you some wisdom gained from all that experience. These guidelines are helpful for all spines, but this is mainly focused on books with thin spines.
1. Don’t feel the need to add a stripe of a different color isolated to the spine.
- With our process, you are given a template specific to your page count and the PPI (pages per inch) of the paper stock you choose. Some self-publishing options will give you templates based on a large window of pages to account for variances in their changing paper stocks. Even though our way is more accurate, there can still be variances in paper thickness from the mill, and the amount of ink applied to the paper can slightly effect the thickness of your book. In the image below, the bottom book has some of the front cover creeping onto the spine, the top book has a bit of the front and a bit of the back showing on the spine.
- In addition to that, there are acceptable variances when applying the cover to the book block. Our operators do their best to keep your book spine design from creeping onto the front cover, but if you prepare your file with a stripe down the spine you are increasing your chances of having less desirable results. In the image below you can see that the green strip is offset by only .05 inches, but it's not ideal to have the green bar creep onto the cover.
- 2. Give yourself some breathing room.
- If you are preparing your book cover with block letters that take up the spine, that is fine, but it goes back to what we discussed in the first point. You may end up with a slight amount of that creeping onto your front or back cover.
- However, leaving a bit of space around your text will set you up for success. If either of the scenarios we discussed in the first point happen, your book will still look perfect.
- If you are preparing your book cover with block letters that take up the spine, that is fine, but it goes back to what we discussed in the first point. You may end up with a slight amount of that creeping onto your front or back cover.
- 3. Avoid script fonts because they have wild ascenders and descenders
- Let’s start with two basic questions: What is an ascender? What is a descender? These are typography terms that describe the parts of a letter that ascend above the median line, or below the baseline. Those big billowy letters look nice and fanciful but present you with problems when they are put on a tiny book spine.
- This is probably not a big problem if you book is thicker, but if you have a thinner book, you could end up with the descenders of your “y” or “g” creeping onto your back cover unless you make your text very small.
- Let’s start with two basic questions: What is an ascender? What is a descender? These are typography terms that describe the parts of a letter that ascend above the median line, or below the baseline. Those big billowy letters look nice and fanciful but present you with problems when they are put on a tiny book spine.
- 4. Don’t try and put spine text on a soft cover book less than 50 pages.
- They’re very thin and it’s not the best idea. You can do it in some cases, but it will be very tiny and won’t look great. In most cases the spine on a book with this low of a page count will be one tenth of an inch or less. This means to fit properly, your text would be about 5-6 pt. This small text, compounded with the chance of shifting discussed in the first topic can cause problems.
- This is not an issue on hard cover books. When making the cases, we use a minimum of .25” inches.
- 5. If you are going to have a point where two pieces of art meet, do it where the book spine meets the back cover.
- If any piece of your book cover should look perfect, it’s obviously your front cover. If you follow this last rule, you can make sure your front cover won’t have any issues.
Let's take a look at a few examples.
- We discussed in number one how running a strip down just the book spine is not ideal.
- This gets a bit better, where we have two images meeting, but they meet at the front cover and the spine.
- This one is better than the previous example because the joint occurs at the back cover, so your front cover will always look perfect.
- This version will always look great on the back cover, front cover and spine because there are no images joining at the folds. We understand this is not an option for every book cover design, but this will always be the most optimal design for book printing.
If you’re interested in having the professional designers at BookBaby create a unique cover for your book, we offer affordable book cover design services for all book styles and genres.