Margins for book layout

[Mateomono]

Hi, 
I am working on a book layout design. I don't have much experience in this area, so I wanted to ask if my margins are well setup or if they could be improved.

Info: The book will have around 250 pages and the sizing is 200x250mm (7.87 x 9.84 inches)

Top margin: 25 mm (0.98 inches)

Bottom margin: 28.15 mm (1.11 inches)

Outer margin: 25 mm (0.98 inches)

Inner margin: 20 mm (0.79 inches)

Thank you very much for any help!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Margins are both an esthetic choice and a functional one.

First, though, do you have that page trim size from an actual book printer/producer? It's much easier, and often cheaper, to work with standard trim sizes than it is to set up what will be a custom size (if the printer even handles such).

You don't say what binding your book will use, either. I assume it will be glued/perfect bound. While that's common, durable, attractive and cheap, it tends to have a fairly hard "pinch" on the inside, and allowing a larger inside margin really helps with readability. (I, for one, hate books I have to force open all the way through!)

It also depends on whether your pages have headers or footers  — you typically leave a little more room for those.

But a good starting point for a perfect bound book of that size is —

• Top/Bottom — 0.5 inch, 12-13mm, 3 picas
• Outside — 0.375 inch, 10mm, 2.5 picas
• Inside — 1 inch, 25mm, 6 picas

Allow a little more top and/or bottom for headers, footers or page numbers; you want about 0.25 inch or a little more between them and the page edge, and usually a little more (0.3 inch) between them and the body text.

The two things not to overlook are that printers often have a recommended minimum for outside margins (usually 0.375 inch), so that minor trim variations won't cut too close to the text; and that a generous inside margin, an inch or sometimes even a bit more, however wide it looks on the layout, makes a perfect bound book much, much easier to read.

[Eugene Tyson]

Just to add to @James Gifford—NitroPress excellent advice

Your margins are a good starting point, but there are a few considerations to ensure they work well for readability, aesthetics, and print production:

Aspect Ratio of Margins:

A traditional and aesthetically pleasing margin setup often follows the "Golden Canon" or similar principles, where:
Inner < Top < Outer < Bottom

Your setup loosely aligns with this, but increasing the inner margin will align it better.

One thing to note is that your print provider could give you a dummy sample, that is a book in white pages, mocked up, no printing, on the weight of paper etc. - they might charge might not, we never did. But each place will be different.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

All good points, a layer above the very basic ones. There are, of course, many layers of both practical and esthetic choices for book page layout. My answer was the bare-mechanics, print-vendor level stuff; the intersection of what a printer will demand and what a reader will appreciate. It's by no means an optimal esthetic or visual solution.

(That we prefer pages with the material more or less set down in the outside corner is... peculiar, but there you go. 🙂 )

Those basic esthetic ratios, tweaked to the exact page size, font size, text spacing and other details, are what distinguish one book from another; a book that is easy on the reader's eyes and effort instead of one that sort of has to be plowed through, page after page. It's an art — a subtle one, not appreciated by most of the amateur publishing crowd.

A next level to all this, if I can hang it on this hook, is the formatting and esthetics of headers and footers and page numbers. Too many, even beyond the novice level, just use the same formatting as the text  — which is often too large and too prominent — and then squeeze it in to too small a top or bottom space, without adjusting the layout for balance and readability. Choosing what info to put in headers and footers, and making it blend in with the page layout so it's not another distraction with each page... again, an art.

Then there's the novice mistake of making the copyright page information too large, again in text scale... that's my first touchstone when evaluating a book's interior layout. Do they know how to properly compose the front matter? No? I am then unsurprised when the interior pages are... off. 🙂

[Mateomono]

Thank you!