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You are here: Home / Archives for Book Design / Book Page Design

Book Page Design


Book page designBelow you'll find links to all the information about book page design that’s available on our website, book, videos, and blog.

Get started with Part I of Book Design Made Simple, where you’ll learn how to lease and install Adobe InDesign, create a document, and import your manuscript from Word. Download Part I for free by subscribing to our blog—simply use the form below.

Excerpts from Book Design Made Simple

  • Basic principles of good design: what are they?
  • Front matter — what to include in the front of your book
  • Back matter — what to include in the back of your book
  • Running heads — what to include in your novel or nonfiction book
  • Typeface vs font: what’s the difference?
  • Book trim size: how to choose the right trim size

 

Video tutorials about book page design

  • InDesign basics: navigating, selecting, and using layers
  • Using columns to change your layout
  • Typesetting a poetry book

 

Blog posts about book page design

Below are all the blog posts in the Book Page Design category, starting with the most recent post.

Special signature inserts in books

April 7, 2025 By Glenna Collett 1 Comment

Special signature inserts in a variety of books.Have you ever wondered why some books gather all of their photos and other images together into a few pages in the middle? These groups of pages are called special signature inserts. We’ll explain why this is practical in traditional printing on paper, and why there are also reasons to do it even with print-on-demand. Plus we’ll show you how to set up your own book this way.

Practical reasons for special signature inserts

Cost

Artwork reproductions and historical images need to be clear and crisp. The main reason to use a multipage special signature insert is to print these images in color or on better paper than the rest of the book. In traditionally-printed books, the pages are produced in groups of 4, 8, 16, 24, 32, or even 48 (these groups are called signatures). So the text of the book can use standard paper while a special signature insert can use higher quality paper. (We explained more about signatures and book binding in a previous article, Book binding basics.)

Also, if the images are your only elements of color, sprinkling them throughout the book (and paying for color printing throughout) would be an expensive way to go about it. Grouping them all together to print separately might be smarter.

No matter how many pages the signatures are in the rest of the book, the special signature inserts can have a smaller number. Eight pages is common.

A special signature can decrease the overall cost of printing while also enhancing the quality of the images. Discuss the possibilities with your printer before you commit to the best approach.

Layout

Another reason to use a special signature insert would be to help with the layout process. If you’re not certain whether you’ll get permission to use some of your images, you’ll have trouble laying out the pages. (Should you leave space for those images on the relevant pages, or not?) In a book with a lot of uncertainty about the image permissions, you could reserve a certain number of pages, leave them blank for now, and fill them later once you find out which photos and artwork you’ll be working with.

Obtaining permission to use images

Wondering how to get permission to use images in your book? There are lots of articles online, but you could start with this good introduction from Stanford University in the US, or this one from Authors Alliance.

How to set up your book for a special signature insert

If you’re planning to print your book on an offset or digital (non-POD) press, talk to your printer first about your ideas for the insert. They will advise you about paper choices and how many pages you can work with.

Your insert signature will be slipped in between other regular signatures when it’s time to bind the book, so figure out with your printer ahead of time exactly where it will be placed.

Two examples of special signature inserts

Two examples of insert signatures. Top: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Bottom: 1421 by Gavin Menzies.

Most books do not use page numbers on these pages. So for instance, your text might stop on page 224, then your insert would appear, and the next text page after the insert would be 225. Because the insert will be printed on noticeably different paper, the reader should have no trouble locating the next text page. Do your best not to end page 224 in the middle of a sentence or even a paragraph.

On the insert pages, keep your normal margins but omit the running heads or feet, and as we mentioned above, don’t bother to number the pages. See the examples to the right.

When grouping images together on pages, use all the space! Or, if you’re displaying one image per page or spread, leave enough white space around each piece to make it look special. Alternatively, you could simply bleed images off the page if you have permission to do that. Always include captions to remind readers what they’re looking at.

A fake special insert in a POD book

Perhaps you simply like the idea of the special signature insert even though you plan to print with POD. That’s perfectly fine. You can place your “insert” anywhere you like and use any number of pages that works for you. If you want, you can even skip page numbers (see above) the way you would in a traditionally printed book. The only difference is that all of your book pages will be printed on the same paper, with no increase in print quality for your images. Depending on your readership, it’s possible that almost no one will notice.

We encourage you to at least consider creating a special insert signature for your book, if it’s appropriate. The result can be effective and possibly also save you money. After all, people like to look at the pictures first, so placing them all together in an easy-to-find location will satisfy everyone.

Read more: POD book publishing » explains the pros and cons of print-on-demand
And more: Converting multiple images to CMYK in Photoshop » to speed up your prep work

Book Design Made Simple. You can do it yourself.

[Top photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash.]

Filed Under: Book Page Design

Designing a book title page

January 13, 2025 By Glenna Collett Leave a Comment

Book title page.Every book needs a title page. Whether it’s in a printed book or an ebook, the title page shows the official title, author, and publisher that will go into the Library of Congress database—or the equivalent database in your country.

Also, it’s supposed to be the first, or almost the first, page that a reader sees. As such, it has the potential to set the tone for the rest of the book, and with a good design, add marketing value.

So here are some ideas, starting with the basics. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: children's books, copyright, images

Designing book running heads

January 8, 2024 By Glenna Collett Leave a Comment

Running heads in book design.What are running heads, anyway? And running feet? And should you care about how they are designed? Yes!

You might know a running head as a “header,” and a running foot as a “footer.” In fiction books, the running heads announce the author and book title on each spread. In nonfiction and anthologies, they help readers find their way around. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: typesetting

What type size should I use?

January 10, 2022 By Glenna Collett 2 Comments

Graphic showing type sizes for book genres.In Book Design Made Simple, we suggest type sizes that should work in most situations for adult readers. But there are so many other situations! What about children’s books? What about large type books? Reference books? In this article we’ll suggest solutions for these kinds of books. And we’ll only discuss printed books; with ebooks, the reader can enlarge or reduce the type size to whatever works for them. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: children's books, paragraph styles, typesetting

Design a coffee table book

November 11, 2019 By Glenna Collett 23 Comments

coffee table books on a coffee tableCoffee table books. Are they a blast from the past? No, actually, folks are still publishing them, and you can, too. Do you have an idea for a coffee table book of poetry and photography? About a specific artist or a place you love? About your local history, or something completely different? With good planning and design, your book could become very successful. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: book marketing, book printing, color, images, text frames

Using a layout grid in book design

November 12, 2018 By Glenna Collett 5 Comments

Layout grid depicted by LegosDo you use a layout grid? A few months ago, I saw a survey on Twitter for designers. The one multiple choice question went something like this:

  1. I always use a layout grid.
  2. I sometimes use a layout grid.
  3. What’s a layout grid?

I had to laugh, but then I began thinking that some of our readers could benefit from learning about this topic. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: text frames

Optical margin alignment

February 13, 2018 By Glenna Collett 8 Comments

quotation marks to indicate optical margin alignmentSome InDesign functions have names that you would never be able to guess, and that makes them really tough to discover and learn. One of these is Optical Margin Alignment (I’m calling it OMA), which is InDesign’s formal name for hanging punctuation. I used to see this effect in other people’s work and then try to imitate it, but I couldn’t because I had no idea what it was called. So this article explains what it is and how to do it. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: typesetting

Calculate book page count using word count

January 8, 2018 By Fiona Raven 38 Comments

Calculate book page countWondering how many Word pages equal a book page? You can easily calculate book page count using the word count from your Word document. We’ll explain two easy methods to calculate book page count: 1) use one of our simple formulas as a book page count calculator, or 2) use our InDesign template to experiment with book trim size and type size to accurately determine a page count for books. Use whichever method is easiest for you. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: book printing

Converting multiple images to CMYK in Photoshop

September 11, 2017 By Fiona Raven 14 Comments

Convert to CMYK in Photoshop using batch processingNeed to convert to CMYK in Photoshop? Let’s say you’re designing and typesetting a book with lots of images. You’ve finished laying out all the pages, and your last task is to prepare the images for print. All of your images have either been scanned or photographed, and therefore they are all RGB color (not CMYK color, as required by most offset printers). And most images are JPGs, although you might have a few PNGs too.

It’s a monumental task to convert each image to CMYK individually. Suppose you have 50+ images, or even 1,500+ images! I found myself in this situation recently, and am sharing with you a quick and easy way to convert all of your images to CMYK at once by batch processing actions in Photoshop. (It sounds complicated, but isn’t.) [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: color, images, Photoshop

Mixing colors for 2-color printing in InDesign and Photoshop

July 10, 2017 By Glenna Collett 15 Comments

two colors mixed in a patchwork design for 2-color printing

In my previous blog post, I mentioned mixing two colors to use for 2-color printing. So now I’m back to explain how to do that in InDesign, plus how to make a 2-color photo (duotone) in Photoshop. And I’ll let you in on the simple way to make a fake duotone right in InDesign, too.

So let’s start with what we can do in InDesign. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: book printing, color, Photoshop

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Recent Posts

  • Special signature inserts in books April 7, 2025
  • Designing a book title page January 13, 2025
  • Self-publishing services compared October 7, 2024
  • Book edge treatments July 8, 2024
  • Creative book cover treatments April 8, 2024
  • Designing book running heads January 8, 2024
  • A style sheet template for your book November 11, 2023

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