According to a federal judge, the U.S. Treasury Department is breaking the law by failing to design and distribute currency that helps the blind and visually impaired distinguish denominations.

It is odd to me that this oops is just now coming up. Currency designers did it right with coins: I can feel the difference between a dime, nickel, penny, and quarter, and when I’m fishing for laundry money, any coin that’s not large and ridged just won’t do. An obvious solution to this ancient oversight is to create paper money of different sizes according to denomination.

Ah, hindsight . . .

Reconciling art with logistics is an issue that comes up often for designers. We are focused on the idea, the creative concept behind the project—whether it’s a book cover, a marketing campaign, or an island wrapped in plastic. Part of our reality is inside Photoshop (I’m keeping my fingers crossed that CS3 will have the ability to make REAL breakfast tacos).

That can cause problems when it’s time to carry out the design in the real world. The last thing on my mind when I’m running with a new idea is what the shipping will cost, or if the holiday card with the eye-catching trim size will fit inside the box it’s supposed to be mailed in. This isn’t always a bad thing. It allows for unimpeded creativity. But the shape of things is important, and so is coming up for air near the beginning of the design process to make sure that all of your great ideas will work in real life.

Real life also has a habit of introducing new hiccups to work around. Beginning in spring 2007, there will be a 3-cent price hike on first-class stamps and the shape of your mail will have a bigger impact on the cost of shipping. If you’re designing an oversized, butterfly-shaped invitation for a garden party, remember, if it’s not “machinable” (it can’t be sorted automatically) it may cost more to mail. Make sure to think about shape—and everything it can affect—early in the project, so you don’t have to cut corners later.

Who Moved My Cheese?, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Chicken Soup for the Soul—their covers make self-respecting graphic designers cringe, yet they have astronomical sales. It’s common sense that attractive covers invite book shoppers and ugly covers repel them— so why do these unsightly titles consistently outsell their better-looking shelfmates? (And why do their creators keep producing similar-looking books?)

The simple answer is that, in a hypercompetitive, overcrowded market, branding trumps beauty.

What Is a Branded Book?

What exactly is a “branded” book? Well, a successful brand must be

• memorable,
• easily recognizable,
• attention-grabbing,
• and distinct from its competition.

But branding is more than a look based on a typeface, a color combination, or a trim size. These are merely symbols of a solid brand. In essence, branding is a perception. A branded book is perceived as having something special that nothing else can offer. When someone who knows the Chicken Soup brand walks into a bookstore to purchase an inspirational book for her teenager, she doesn’t say, “Can you tell me where I might find an inspirational book for my teenager?” She says, “Do you have a Chicken Soup book for teenagers?”

A brand is an implied promise to the consumer that they’ll consistently receive a particular experience. This is why publishers don’t like authors to change their writing styles or cover designs too much, because change might upset the consumer who feels that the author’s brand hasn’t delivered. This is especially true for nonfiction and genre fiction. Think of Sue Grafton’s A Is for Alibi series—even if you only saw R Is for Ricochet, you’d immediately know B through Q were also available, all with the same suspense trademarks. And you’d know what you’d expect them to look like.

A consistent look tells the consumer that your new book has the same or more merit than your previous book. But that still leaves us with the question of why so many successfully branded books look so bad.

How Ugly Books Are Born

The typical scenario goes like this: Author writes book. Book becomes huge seller. Book goes into reprint many, many times, keeping the same cover for recognizability’s sake. Author writes second book. To capitalize on the success of her first book, she and her designer develop a similar cover. By this time, trends have changed, and the original cover and title are out of date.

But that doesn’t really matter. Or, more accurately, it doesn’t matter as much as the brand equity the first book has gained over the ensuing years. The look and title may not be attractive by the day’s standards, but they are familiar and capitalize on consumer loyalty. The publishers aren’t relying on the cover to attract a consumer—they’re using it to remind the consumer.

That’s why so many “ugly” books are installments in powerful, consistent series—because the customer remembers and recommends the first book and associates it with the following books. If the first book doesn’t build a significant base, the design is much less likely to be repeated, and there’s little danger of it going out of date.

Why Their Brands Won’t Work for You

Many people see the ways brands work for well-known series and decide that’s the look they want for their books, too. But your book’s content is original, and it deserves a cover tailor-made to market its unique message. Imitation is not branding. Nor is it a sound strategy for marketing a book in an overcrowded industry. A copycat cover may do more harm than good by making a book indistinguishable from its competition.

Do what the bestsellers did: Take a great book, give it a unique look, and never disappoint your customers. Take the lead and soon enough others will want to copy you.

How to Brand Your Book

STEP 1: Create a great product.

STEP 2: Figure out what makes your brand unique and stick to it.

STEP 3: Be consistent in marketing your brand. All aspects of your brand need to communicate one core message. Your book’s content and visuals need to back that message up.

STEP 4: Deliver on the brand. Consumers are fickle. If you disappoint them, you’ll lose them. Whatever your brand image, make sure that it signifies quality.

STEP 5: Continue to evaluate, build, and refine your brand. The only way you’ll know you’re doing it right is by the success you achieve. Trends come and go. Amend your look only when what you have in the bookstore is inconsistent with your brand.

Remember what it was like when you had to have your picture taken for the school yearbook? Did you get nervous? Wear dorky clothes? Panic and blink at the wrong moment? What if the whole world was going to see your yearbook photo? Well, that’s kind of what it’s like when you’re putting an author photo in your book. Except now, you’re completely in control.
Here are the three things to remember to get a photo that stops traffic.

1. Leave photography to the pros and schedule a professional photo shoot. Amateur photos—and trust me, you can tell—make the book and the author look sloppy and may hurt your credibility. If you ask around, chances are good you can get a recommendation for an excellent photographer at a reasonable price. Some photographers will take the time to get to know you and photograph you in your environment, or in a way that brings out subtleties in your personality. The lighting, color, and composition also make a big difference.

2. Use a current photo. You don’t want your readers to be shocked if they show up to a book signing and find out what you really look like. Older photos also tend to look dated. If you’re wearing a piano key necktie in your photo, you will make your readers wonder if anything you have to say is timely or relevant. If you still wear piano key neckties, you may want to ask for a few honest opinions on hair, clothes, and presentation before heading to the studio.

3. Match the tone of your photo to the tone of your book. If your book is a tragic love story, no jazz hands in the author photo. If you’ve written an anthology of jokes, try not to cry while they’re taking your picture.
On the other hand, you do not need to prove you know what you’re doing by displaying an image in the back of your cookbook of you smiling in front of a wok. Likewise, for the business genre, a photo of the author sitting at a desk, at a computer, or leading a meeting is not appropriate. Everyone sits at desks and uses computers these days. In this situation, a simple, professional head shot is best. Let the pages of your book prove your skill.

Now that you’ve got a great photo, make sure it looks great in print. A high-resolution digital file is the preferred method of file submission. If you only have a physical copy of your photo, make sure it is fairly large and of very high quality. It is best to submit a color photo. Your designer can convert it to black and white or duotone if you so desire, but it is very difficult to add color to a grayscale image.

As for where the picture goes, author photos are very rarely appropriate on the cover of your book. Unless you are a celebrity, putting your face on your cover will not increase sales. For hardcovers, author photos should go on the inside back flap along with the bio. On paperbacks it is acceptable on the back cover or on the last page of text.

Keep these pointers in mind and you’ll have a photo—and a book—you wouldn’t mind your mom giving to all your relatives. Say cheese!

You turn and look, and there she is—beautiful, mysterious, seductive in the midst of her drab sisters. Your breath catches in your throat. More than anything, you want to pick her up—caress the soft, smooth texture of the cover, trace the line of the emboss, smell that new-paper perfume. The outlines of the die-cut are a little rough to touch, teasing you with a glimpse of the case beneath her dust jacket. Before you know it, you’re lost in her flap copy, still stroking the silken front cover as you fall deeper and deeper under her spell.

It’s called Feel Appeal—the textures, colors, and effects that make you want to touch what you see. A book with strong feel appeal gets noticed, admired—and taken home, far more often than her plain siblings. A bookstore browser looks at a book’s cover for only a few seconds, but if that cover entices a reader to pick the book up, it’s far more likely to go home with him tonight. Feel Appeal is a powerful allure—if a book looks interesting to touch, it’s going to be picked up.

The Feel Appeal Index measures four categories of a book’s attractiveness and rates its overall seductive qualities—a perfect 10 on the FAI is that beauty in the first paragraph; a 1 is a piece of dirty Xerox paper on the floor. What does the FAI measure?

1. Size
The trim, the spine, the weight, the shape—an uncommon figure catches more attention in a crowd or on a shelf. Some books increase their Feel Appeal with a smaller trim size—5 x 7 is shorter, smaller, thicker than you’d expect, petite, compact, intriguing. But even 9.5 or 10 x 6 presents a significantly different silhouette than the typical 9 x 6—taller, slimmer-seeming, exotic. Even in a line spine-out on a bookshelf, an unusual trim size breaks the line of the ordinary, expected 5 x 8’s and 9 x 6’s to present something different—maybe something extraordinary.

2. Visual texture
Shiny metallics and foils gleam in the pale fluorescent light and add flash and sizzle to the shelf. Elkote and spot varnish make slick reflective surfaces to contrast with soft, sophisticated mattes. Every so often, you even see a book that’s not afraid to show off a lot of bling, like ink on foil or glitter. If it’s classy, it’s hot.

3. Tactile texture
The ultimate touch appeal is texture you can feel—rough Rainbow paper; soft ribbed cotton blends; smooth, cool linens. Little ridges of embossing, valleys of debossing. Die-cut shapes, the cut edge of the paper palpable and some small piece of the unseen case visible beneath, like peeking through a keyhole. When a book’s design incorporates these elements, it’s flirting with every customer in the store.

4. Color
You can’t feel color. But a luscious, vivid red, a wicked, mischievious green, or a rich, serene blue can capture the eyes with the sort of siren beauty that lures the hands to follow. Color emphasizes the book’s other feel appeal attributes, giving foil stamping a background with contrast and allure, heightening the effect of a die cut or emboss, and making sure no one can overlook that unusual trim size.

Of course, like any measure of attraction, the Feel Appeal Index is subjective. One reader’s Venus is another’s Medusa, but in the world of books, no one beauty rules the others. Take home as many young lovelies as you want. If you face any interrogation from a suspicious spouse, just tell the truth—you were seduced.

TIP: Check out hot covers from the New York Times Book Review or take a peek at Foreword’s hot-or-not book design page. Then discuss with other book-watchers.

If you want your book to be a contender, don’t underestimate the importance of your cover—more than any other single factor, it determines whether or not your book sells. The average consumer spends just eight seconds looking at a front cover; consider that your book’s “standing eight count.” Printing technology gives a cover a potent visual punch. Read on to find out how you can use special effects in sharp, non-tacky ways that will make consumers see stars all the way to the cash register.

Embossing
Embossing is the process by which a die is used to raise an area of paper to create letterforms, shapes, and textures. There are several types of embossing, including sculptured, multilevel, chiseled, platform, and dome.

• Lightweight Use: Use embossing to emphasize the title.
• Welterweight Use: Emboss images to give them dimension. Or try embossing the edges of faux stickers for a more realistic look.
• Combination Punch: Combine embossing with foil stamping to give a more “finished” look to the foil. (Using foil stamping and embossing together is called “stamp and bump” in printer jargon.)

Ringside Tip:

• Don’t emboss spines or back covers. Embossing really only packs a punch on the front cover.
• If possible, only emboss areas that are close together. This reduces the size of the embossing dye and consequently reduces the printing cost.

Hall of Fame: The Loch by Steve Alten (the title, monster, paddle and boat are embossed)

Foil Stamping
The foil stamping process covers paper with a super thin, flexible sheet of metal. The foil comes in a range of colors and levels of sheen. Mirror foils are the most reflective, while dusted foils are more subdued, and nonmetallic foils offer shiny solid colors that look a little like plastic. The foil is carried on a plastic sheet and during the printing process, stamping separates the foil from the plastic and makes it adhere to the paper.

• Lightweight Use: Use it to emphasize the title. Foil can also be used in decorative elements.
• Welterweight Use: Printing ink over foil is a very dramatic effect. “Ink on foil” can be done on a small area or over the entire cover. For more information about ink on foil, check out Cutting Edge Technology Guaranteed to Make Your Book Cover Pop.
• Heavyweight Use: Foil stamp the entire cover and print on top of the ink.

Ringside Tips:

• When using foil over the entire cover, use opaque white ink to cover the foil in specific areas where you don’t want the foil to show (for example the area for the ISBN barcode).
• Foil stamping is the most effective way to achieve a metallic look on uncoated paper. Do not use metallic inks on uncoated paper stocks. The rough texture of the paper absorbs the ink and eliminates the metallic look.

Hall of Fame: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling, The Lost Van Gogh by A. J. Zerries

Holographic Foils
Holographic (or diffraction) foils have a “rainbow” or patterned light reflection.

• Heavyweight Use Only: Use holographic foils with caution. Holographic foils can overwhelm a design and look tacky fast! However, used in the right way, they can be show-stoppers.

Hall of Fame: Spook by Mary Roach, Confessions of an Heiress by Paris Hilton

Uncoated Specialty Stocks
Uncoated paper is usually rough to the touch and is manufactured in a great variety of finishes, colors, and weights.

Ringside Tips:

• Use uncoated papers to create eco-friendly, historical, literary, journalistic, or nostalgic looks.
• Use a photographic texture that mimics a textured or antiqued paper to get the specialty paper look without the cost (example: Season of the Snake by Claire Davis).
• Due to its rough and absorbent surface, uncoated paper becomes dirty more easily than a coated paper. If you opt for a white or light-colored cover design on uncoated paper, be prepared for more damaged/returned books. (Note: That didn’t stop Blink!)
• Remember, metallic inks on uncoated paper lose a lot of their sheen. Opt for foil stamping instead.

Hall of Fame: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Blink by Malcom Gladwell, and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Follow these guidelines and your contender will have more than just a fighting chance.

For more information about printing technology, see Cutting Edge Technology Guaranteed to Make Your Book Cover Pop.

Yo’ Mama Earth. It’s true: the publishing biz is hard on the planet. But there are ways to make it easier on her. One of the best ways is to work with earth-friendly partners. So, how do you tell if a publisher, printer, or paper mill is environmentally conscious? Score them based on these three criteria.

1. Materials. Recycled paper and biodegradable glue are both widely available earth-friendly options. Most of the glues used in book binding today are biodegradable. Some are solvent-free and labeled as nonhazardous—even better! As for paper, due to increasing demand for earth-friendly products, many book printers now offer some recycled papers among their house stocks. However, make sure to ask how much recycled material is actually used in the paper. Recycled paper can also be significantly more expensive than a standard house stock, and a higher recycled content percentage translates into a higher price. Some printers only choose house stocks that have some recycled content. Usually the percentage is relatively low, but the papers are more affordable.

There are environmentally superior options for other materials, too. Many printers also use recycled binding boards, or boards with a percentage of corrugated material, which cuts down on paper consumption. Check out Green Press Initiative for updates on particular publishers, printers, and papers and a good look at the deforestation rate.

2. Tree harvesting. Because of the incredible amount of trees consumed every year for paper production (400 billion per year, according to Ecology.com), deforestation is a legitimate concern for printers, publishers, authors, and even readers. To watch out for all those falling trees, cooperative organizations, such as the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), have been founded, with measurable success. SFI plants more than a million trees per day, and its members include book printers and paper mills. Find out how your favorite printer is getting involved. You can also contact paper mills and find out which ones use sustainable sources for their paper.

3. Energy use. Paper mills are huge consumers of energy. But many of them use creative methods to boost energy production and decrease consumption. Some mills accumulate the unusable scraps from trees, such as bark and knots, to be burned for fuel. Others have found alternative fuel sources such as used tires, which can provide a great deal of energy. A resourceful average-size paper mill is capable of producing enough surplus energy to power a city of thirty thousand. Though some of these alternative fuel sources can contribute to air pollution, they save on natural resources and space in the world’s landfills.

These three categories represent some of the best ways for printers and publishers to lessen their toll on Mama Earth. Although some of these options are less cost-effective than the tree-hater alternatives, increased demand and increased attention to publishing’s effect on the environment will make them cheaper and more widely available. Doing business with innovative, environmentally friendly printers, publishers, and paper mills will help encourage their practices. It’s one way to make Earth happy, and as everybody knows—if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

A good fisherman knows that the way to catch a fish is with the right bait, and a good author knows the way to catch a reader is with a great cover. When reviewing concepts with your book designer, be sure to consider my TOP 4 tips that will have your book reeling in readers by the boatload. But first, make sure you’re fishing in the right pond.

When I start a new project I almost always take a trip to the bookstore and spend some time browsing whatever genre I’m designing for. A good cover design needs to fit in and stand out. I make a point to study the new releases. This keeps me on the forefront of trends in the genre, but I also make sure to browse the entire section, to see what trends have lasted over time. Identifying lasting trends is important because it helps me understand what readers expect on a cover. For example, in the mystery/thriller section, some trends include: typography (big and bold), imagery (often a simple object, or a blurred person or scene), color palette (bold, often dark), technology (lots of embossing and ink on foil). Once I identify trends in the genre I think, “How can I create a cover that fits in this group, but stands out as the best?”

1. Typography
Typography is a huge contributor to the overall look and tone of a design. The style, color, and size of typeface you use to communicate the title of your book influences how the reader interprets it. Spend some time exploring type combinations until you achieve the tone you wish to get across to readers. For flap copy, make sure the font is very legible. Remember, you want it to be easy for this fish to bite. If you choose a typeface that is too serifed, too condensed, too scripty, or too screamy, you are preventing your reader from learning about your product—a definite no-no.

In the interest of good flow and balance, I try to keep it down to three typefaces on a cover. There are always exceptions to good rules, but generally a cover using more than three varieties of type can be chaotic and disconnected. For my projects I need a good serif, a sans serif, and sometimes a display font. When choosing a typeface, study the shape of the letters and think about the colors used on the cover. What emotions do they evoke? How do the shapes relate to the content? Is your chosen typeface too masculine or too feminine? Do the edges of the letters taper or are they bold and blocky? All of these factors can affect the tone and mood for readers. I love the new design for Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The typography is soft but strong, and works well with the image. This new design makes me want to chuck my old, beat-up copy and buy the classic all over again.

2. Imagery
Finding the perfect image is rarely easy. If an original photo shoot is not an option, stock photography is a great resource for designers. Stock image research works best after you have an idea, but sometimes browsing stock sites helps you explore your concept even further by tossing an image into your search results that makes you see your subject in an entirely new way. Some of my favorite stock sites are gettyimages.com for traditional rights-managed and royalty-free stock photography and illustrations, veer.com for trendier and eclectic images, and istockphoto.com for super low-priced, royalty-free photography and illustrations. Many of istock’s images need work before they are cover-ready, but they are a good start and you can’t beat the price.

3. Spine Design
The spine is an often forgotten part of the book cover, but for most books on the shelf it is the only way to lure in potential readers. The spine should be clearly readable from several feet away. It should also be interesting. When a spine contains an intriguing image, color combination, or type treatment, it is more likely to hook a reader into picking your book off the shelf: the first step to victory. I especially like spines that are a continuation of an image from the cover. I always want to know what the rest of the image looks like, so I pick up the book. One way to discern whether your spine makes the cut is to fold your cover and look at it on a bookshelf. James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, despite all the bad press, has an artful spine design. Everyone remembers the sprinkle-covered hand reaching out across the cover, but when only the spine is visible, the image is sliced beyond recognition, luring the reader into picking it up. The title could be more legible, but the memorable image communicates the designer’s intent, ties the front and back covers together, and is colorful enough to catch a reader’s eye.

4. Technology
Printing technology is that extra pop that attracts your catch. Some common technologies are specialty papers, embossing, using a combination of matte and glossy areas on your cover, and foil stamping. My favorite new technology is printing ink on top of a foil stamp. The foil adds a metallic appeal that is much more dramatic than metallic ink, and the technology allows designers to manipulate the look by printing ink on top of the metallic parts of the cover. Using technologies in fun and innovative ways can really light up your design and communicate your message more clearly.

Don’t let your potential reader be the one that got away. Follow these design tips, and your sales numbers won’t be fish stories.

Some fonts scream TACKY and others whisper amateur, but if you’re not a designer you probably have no idea if you’re committing a font felony. To protect yourself from snotty judgments about your taste and experience level, follow these two simple rules in all typed work: manuscripts, emails, proposals, and, of course, books.

RULE #1: Avoid the following five fonts at ALL costs,

1. Comic Sans. Unless you are writing a comic book or materials for a film adapted from a comic book (i.e., Sin City—great design) don’t use it.
2. Sand. Never. Ever.
3. Times. Very few books have body text set in Times. This is a dead giveaway of an amateur design.
4. Papyrus. Even for cookbooks. This font is overused to the point of exhaustion. Pay attention to restaurant menus and you’ll see what I mean.
5. Lucida Calligraphy. This common script font is very recognizable, but rarely appropriate.

RULE #2: Use the following three fonts at your own risk.

Copperplate, Eurostile, and Courier are great fonts—if you know how to use them. These typefaces are easily recognizable and have uncommon letterform shapes—a recipe for poor design if you’re not careful. Use these fonts sparingly, or leave them to a professional.

TIP: For really unique fonts and fresh ideas, check out http://www.dafont.com/. They add new fonts on a regular basis, and their prices are hard to beat.

Most small publishers understand how important cover design is to the success of their books. But often, interior design is either overlooked or created without knowledge of industry standards and what ultimately makes a book readable. A bookstore buyer can tell when a book has been designed by an amateur and may label the book self-published if it doesn’t meet industry standards. Following are five keys to professional interior book design.

#1: KISS
Keep it simple, silly. This is probably the most important bit of advice we can offer. Overly designed books that use lots of different fonts and have lots of different design elements within the text are hard to read and often look amateurish. The best book designs are relatively simple, allowing the reader to work through the material at a steady pace without a lot of distractions. Consistency of design is the key to professional looking books, and it’s easiest to keep the design consistent if it is simple.

#2: Don’t Be Foolish With Fonts
When choosing the fonts you will use in your interior design, choose carefully. Don’t use crazy specialized display fonts that many readers will quickly be able to identify because they come standard with many types of software. For instance Brush Script, Comic Sans, and Curlz are all fonts that many people will quickly recognize. Easily recognizable fonts, particularly if they are unusual, will distract the reader and diminish his/her experience with your book.
It is also important to limit the number of fonts used in a single design. For instance, you may use one font for chapter titles and numbers and another font for the primary text, and that might be it. You may also use variations of a particular font for the headings within the text, and that font may be the same font that was used for the chapter title. In general, if you stick to two or three fonts, you’re probably safe.

#3: Guidelines for Font Size and Leading
Appropriate font size and presentation is critical to the readability of a book. The industry standard for the primary text font in trade books is 10.5 to 11 pt. font on leading that is about 3 pts. larger. Leading is the amount of space from baseline to baseline, meaning that if a font is 10.5 pts. on 13.5 pt. leading, there are 3 pts. of extra space between lines of text. If you use 11 pt. font, you should use a minimum of 14 pt. leading. The leading is critical to readability, and not having enough can quickly tag your design as amateur.

#4: Tips for Running Heads and Folios
A running head is the text that is usually placed at the top of a book page near the page number, which is also called the folio. Running heads and folios should be unobtrusive and should not distract the reader. They are typically set in a font that matches the primary text font or the display font used for headings or chapter titles. The font size should be a point or two smaller than the primary text font. The folios should be set in the same font and the same size. The folios can be bold to set them apart from the running heads. The running heads can be italic to differentiate them.
Occasionally, you will see a book that breaks lots of rules with the placement and design of running heads and folios. That type of design work should be left to the professionals. It is very difficult to be creative with running heads and folios and still end up with a design that is attractive and not distracting.
Deciding what text to use in a running head is also part of the design process. Common information to use in the running heads is author name on the left-hand pages and book title on the right-hand pages, book title on the left-hand pages and chapter title on the right-hand pages, or part title on the left-hand pages (if the book is divided into parts) and chapter titles on the right-hand pages. Whatever you decide, be sure that it is consistent throughout the book.

#5: Final Word on Margins
There are four margins to consider on a book page: top, bottom, inside, outside. The margins of facing pages (a spread, or a left-hand page and a right-hand page) should mirror each other. Therefore, we don’t talk about left and right margins, we talk about inside and outside margins.
The top and bottom margins should be a minimum of half an inch. For instance, if the top margin is half an inch, then the running head/folio would butt up against that margin and the actual text on the page would start at about one inch from the top of the page. It is best if the bottom margin is between .5 and .75 inches.
The inside margin, also called the gutter, should usually be at least .75 inches. If your book is longer than 304 pages, you might consider using 1 inch as an inside margin. Note that this is 1 inch on each side of the spread (a 1 inch right margin on the left page and a 1 inch left margin on the right page).
The outside margin should be at least .5 inches, and generally should be .75 inches for aesthetics. You can use a measurement between those two points, also.

If you follow these general guidelines, you’ll be well on your way to designing and producing a book that will be readable, clean, and professional.

Going back to press? You may find your printing costs to be higher than you expected. Typically, reprinting is more cost-effective than first print runs, but as many publishers are finding out, rising printing costs have been outweighing the discounts. Why is this?

Several market changes have affected the printing industry this year. The first change has to do with basic supply and demand. The demand for book printing has increased, taking printing costs with it. In fact, 2005 was the best year for U.S. printers in a long while. The lower demand for book printing in preceding years kept competition fierce and margins small among U.S. printers. Now that demand has increased, the phenomena of a “buyer’s market” has diminished for publishers going to press. As long as demand remains high, the costs associated with book printing will probably be a little higher than they were a couple of years ago.

Additionally, gasoline and postal service rate increases have drastically affected freight costs. Meanwhile, several major domestic paper mills have been on strike in recent months, lowering inventory levels at many presses and driving up prices for some of the most sought-after papers. The industry sector most affected by the strikes is uncoated offset paper, commonly used for standard hardcover and trade paperback books. The weakened U.S. dollar has made paper imports unfeasible for printers, meaning that the publishing industry will need to tough it out until domestic conditions change.

Higher printing prices shouldn’t necessarily keep you from going back to press, however. As it turns out, consumer spending is on the rise as well. You may be able to sell more books than usual in upcoming months. Don’t miss out on increased sales just to hold out for better printing prices. As always, make sure you have enough books in the warehouse to meet consumer demand. It may be the right time to go back to press after all.