

They are only 72 or 96 dpi, which is not a high enough resolution for print. Please don’t even try to use images that you have used on your Web site.
#Indesign cc 2015 book software#
Using software like Adobe Photoshop, you can decrease an image without a loss of quality, but you can’t increase it. So if you have a 6 x 9 book cover and want the image to bleed off all sides, you do not want to “scale up” a 4×5 image to make it fit.

Virtually all book printers require that you use images that are at least 300 dpi at their final size. Unfortunately, image resolution is often a problem in book cover design. If your book will be sold in staggered display racks face out with other books in front of it, you may want to consider having the title at the top of the book cover, instead of in the middle. If you sell your books mostly online, you will want to make sure that your cover artwork (and particularly your title) can withstand being reduced to a tiny thumbnail on sites like.
#Indesign cc 2015 book generator#
Or you can use their cover generator to get a complete layout template based on your book’s specifications.Īs you design your cover, don’t forget to consider where it will be sold. In the case of Lightning Source, they actually have an online spine width calculator. Your printer can give you the calculations you need to determine the spine width. But the spine width varies depending on the length of your book and the type of paper that is used to print it. If you have a 6 x 9 book, you create frames that are 6×9 and take bleed settings into account. The frames for the front and back cover are pretty obvious. That extra 1/8-inch is trimmed off, so the color goes to the edge of your cover. 125 beyond the edge of the page in your layout. Many printers want a 1/8-inch bleed, so your frames will need to extend. The way most printers make a bleed happen is by printing the cover artwork on a larger piece of paper and trim off the excess. A bleed means that the ink runs right to the edge and “bleeds” off the page. When you design the art, you need to take “bleed” settings into account. A book cover is actually a big rectangle made up of three panels: the back cover, the spine, and the front cover. Once you have thoroughly absorbed the printer’s requirements for your book, it’s time to start laying it out. Create frames for the front, back and spine. Check out the options under File Creation.Ģ. A visit to LSI’s site yields a tremendous amount of documentation on what they need to successfully print your book. Because they use digital printing technology, their cover artwork requirements are somewhat different than printers that are printing using offset technology. In my case, our books are printed by Lightning Source (LSI), which is a digital printer that prints books only when they are ordered (a process that is called “print-on-demand” in the publishing world). You want to understand their requirements before you start laying out your book. The most important key to getting your book cover printed correctly is to talk to the printer first.

If you thought I was going to jump right into talking about software, you’d be wrong. Get the requirements from your printer and read them. To create a book cover, you need to follow these steps.ġ. As noted, whatever software you use must support 4-color process printing. In this article I explain how I create the covers of my books in Adobe InDesign, however, many of the issues apply whether you are using Quark XPress, a vector program like Corel Draw or Illustrator, or even an image editing program like Adobe Photoshop. It’s a mistake to try and do any type of 4-color design work using a word processing program, so please don’t even try. Because almost all book covers are 4-color, you need to use a professional-level graphic program to create it. The cover is one of the most important elements of your book.
