Book Cover Artwork Specifications

How to work out the size of artwork needed for a book cover.

You’ve written your Magnum opus. You’ve spent hours editing, writing and rewriting. You’ve shown numerous drafts to friends and family and they’ve all given it the big thumbs up.   You’re finally your ready to have your book printed by ASK print. Just one small thing left to do… the cover.

Its worth remembering that people really do judge a book by its cover and the better presented your book is the likelihood the better it will be received.

So how can you be sure your cover will do your book justice? Rest assured - ASK Print has all the tools and advice at hand to help to help.

First things first – we need to find out how thick your book spine is.  Simply pop your specification into our easy to use ‘Book Spine Thickness Calculator’ on the right and find out the final width of your hardback or soft book spine.

 

Hardback Book Covers

The diagram below will help to identify the separate components of a hardback book cover.

If you’re having a hardback book printed, there are one or two things to bear in mind when producing cover artwork.

Artwork for your hardback book cover needs to be larger than for a softback book because the cover image needs to be able to wrap around the edges of the greyboard card used to create the hard spine and covers.  

With that in mind we require 5mm to be added to the width and height of the front and back cover.

This will then allow for artwork to be wrapped around the edge of the cover, and because we wrap the cover print around the greyboard, we require a 15mm ‘wrap around area’ that will be attached to the greyboard and covered by the books end papers.

Simple huh? The following examples should hopefully shed a bit of light on the mysterious workings of hard back book maths.

Need to know paper sizes?

Book example: 152 page A4 hardback book printed on 100gsm paper

Hardback Book Front Cover
Width: 210mm + 5mm = 215mm
Height: 297mm + 5mm = 303mm
(+15mm on outside, top and bottom edges for image bleed)

Hardback Book Back Cover
Width: 210mm + 5mm = 215mm
Height: 297mm + 5mm = 303mm
(+15mm on outside, top and bottom edges for image bleed)

Hardback Book Spine Thickness
Artwork Width = 13.6mm (See Spine Thickness Calculator)
Artwork Height: 297mm + 5mm = 303mm
(+15mm on top and bottom edges for image bleed)

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Softback Book Covers

As the cover doesn't wrap around a softback book the only addition needed is a 3mm bleed around the edge of the combined covers and spine.

 

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