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Trade paperback sizes will range anywhere from 5.5” x 8.5” (a size that’s called digest) to 6” x 9” (also known as US trade). Trade paperbacks: The better-quality books you might pick up in a Barnes & Noble bookstore, trade paperbacks are probably what you picture when you think of a paperback book. You’ll find them on the racks of grocery stores and supermarkets. Mass-market paperbacks: Compact and inexpensively-produced, these books (also called pocket books) are around 4.25” x 6.87”. Let’s first define some familiar industry terms to give you some context for the numbers coming next. Standard book sizes can vary depending on your genre. What are the industry's terms for trim sizes? Psst - want to find out if you're 100% ready to self-publish your book? Take our short quiz below to discover what steps you might've missed. Since print-on-demand presses charge you based on page count (and page count depends on trim size), your book’s size could possess a knock-on effect on your final profit margin.īut more on costs and pricing in a bit! First, we’re going to dive straight into something that you’re probably wondering: what are the standard book sizes in the publishing industry? Trim size affects costs and pricingĪnother important reason to care about your choice of trim size: it can affect your printing costs. To find out more about the art of typesetting, check out this primer. An example of the baseline grid used by the Reedsy Book Editor The page trim size is one critical part of this complex balance - and the first you'll need to decide - that will create a beautiful book.
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When you’re typesetting your book, you’ll need to maneuver a number of ingredients on the page: everything from the baseline grid to the size of your font. How many words will fit comfortably on a page? How wide can your margins go? Your choice of trim size will also assert a ripple effect on most aspects of your book’s interior. The book cover's dimensions will be affected. It also impacts your book’s spine: the more pages in your book, the thicker its spine will be - and the more substantial it will appear on the bookshelf. The smaller your trim size, the more pages will be required for your content. In a nutshell, the trim size dictates your page count. For future reference, we’ll be using the U.S.
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In the U.S., the trim size is denoted in inches in Europe, it’s in millimeters. The trim size relates these dimensions, in Width x Height format. “Trim size” is essentially the publishing term for “book size.” After each copy is printed and bound, the book is mechanically “trimmed” so that the size of every page is uniform. In this post, we’ll take you through the standard book sizes in the industry, why they’re important, and what should be on your mind as you pick out the best trim size for your own book. Your choice of book size will not only affect how you go about typesetting your manuscript but your audience’s reading experience and your potential profit margin. If you’re a self-publisher planning to produce physical copies of your book, you might be wondering if this should matter to you. The truth is that book sizes vary based on each individual book - and publishers determine these sizes based on economic, practical, and artistic factors. Have you noticed that books come in all shapes and sizes? Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t because publishers are out to obliterate the perfect symmetry of our bookshelves.
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