How to Design the Spine of your Hardcover Book in 5 Simple Steps

Hardcover spine is crucial for perfect bound book printing. Your book spine can be tricky to design perfectly. A perfect bound printing has three parts the front cover, the spine & the back cover.

A spine is the center of the book cover, the narrow or wide edge where are pages are glued or stapled or bound together. Perfect bound book printing is the most commonly used binding method.

Perfect bound printing involves cutting and pressing the spine edge of the pages to create a series of notches to glued over the spine, and the book pressed until the glue sets, the glued edge becomes the spine of the book.

Printbooks produces hardcover book printing in Australia at affordable rates. The spine of the book content should have three main things:

• Author Name.
• Book Title.
• Publisher name & logo or both.

Consider these five simple steps to design your spine of the perfect-bound booklets

Pick your template book design

Choosing the template design for your perfect-bound book printing will attract the viewers. Printbooks helps the authors with numerous templates to turn their manuscripts into attractive books.

Printbooks professionals help create hardcover bookbinding in Australia; we suggest the line spacing, font size, positioning of images, header, margins, and book trim to match printer specifications.

The next phase is to know about your unique perfect bound booklets elements, such as paper type, page count, and cover style, to make a personalised template with the exact match of the spine. Overall, make a unique spine to meet your page count to create a perfect hardcover book printing in Melbourne.

Frame your bleed or trim area

Have you noticed a perfect-bound book printing? Printbooks achieve this by printing the pages a bit large then trimming every page to the original size. The stack of pages, also called book blocks, can be cut precisely to get a neat finish.

A bleed margin is the excess page area lost when the page is cut & trimmed away. When we print pages of your book, we make sure it is large by 1/4 inch. So the overall book is printed at 1/8 inch on each side which is trimmed & cut, including the spine.

The spine width will differ based on your page count and page type for the book’s covers. So you need to create a spine to size based on your perfect bound booklets.

Understand the width of the spine

You won’t be able to complete your perfect bound booklet cover unless you understand the width of the spine. Two things determine the width of the spine; the number of pages in the book & the thickness of the paper used to create the perfect bound books.

Let us assume you have 475 pages and use 60lb stock. To calculate the book spine’s width, find the page’s viscosity in inches and multiply by page count: 475*0.0058 = 2.755 inches.

A book spine can vary widely, and it is dependent on the number of pages, the weight, the paper type the pages printed on it. At Printbooks, we ensure the width of the spine on your cover design is perfect for hardcover bookbinding in Australia.

Design the spine of your hardcover bookbinding

Desing your spine with unique colours and include them for at least 1/2 inch on the front & backside. The spine text must be small enough to allow at least 1/8 inch on each side.

Leave margin for your design, merge the front and back cover elements, and work on the final cover as a complete file. Make sure the colours are harmonised with the spine so that there is no conflict left to create a fantastic cover.

Printbooks experts will send you a PDF proof of your perfect bound booklet cover. You can visually see the two thin lines that represent the spine width. These lines will not print on the final book cover, and it is only to represent the positioning of the spine colour & text.

Check for typos and select your desired font & graphics

Bad grammar, typos & spelling mistakes can hurt your work. If you find a grammar mistake after a perfect-bound book printing, all the above points are a waste of money & time, so always proofread to save your work.

There is always a graphic style that can work on any perfect bound printing. Illustrate your imagination design to the skilled graphic designers who creates the cover and spine that stand out from the crowd.

A spine design can cover from a photograph, an abstract design or a cartoon doodle, but narrowing down a style can be challenging, so Printbooks designs the high-quality spine and cover for hardcover book printing in Melbourne.

Printbooks are professional printers that provide an array of digital & offset printing services, including business cards, flyers, stickers, letterheads and many more. We also have different binding types to make your books and booklets stand out from the crowd at affordable rates & free delivery around Australia.

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