Book Construction Basics
New here? These guides support our professional book templates for Word, Apple Pages, and InDesign: a designer's interior from $49.99, trusted by 70,000+ authors since 2011. Check out our templates → Prefer it done for you? See 30 pages of your book designed free.
Book Construction Basics
This page explains the core book construction terms every self-publishing author runs into, so you can talk about your book with confidence. It covers trim sizes and spine width, why ebooks have no fixed page size, verso and recto (left and right) pages, gutter margins for the binding, and how much formatting carries over when a print design becomes an ebook.
There are a few terms and industry standards that can be helpful when discussing your book and its design needs. We have compiled a short list of the most basic elements of book construction here.
Trim Sizes and Spine Width
Books are measured by their physical dimensions, or trim size. Our templates come in a variety of trim sizes that will correspond to the physical height and width of the book. For example, a 6x9" template will yield a print book that is 6" wide, and 9" high.
The spine is directly proportional to the number of pages in the book. In industry terminology, a page is one side of a sheet of paper. So a book with 100 pages will have 50 sheets of paper, printed front and back.
eBooks Have No Set Page Sizes
eBook formats will not have a set page size. Word does require a page size for the document, but once the file has been converted to an eBook, the margins, gutters, and spacing will be ignored by eReader devices.
Further, Section Breaks get converted by eReader platforms into page-breaks automatically. This removes blank pages automatically from your finished eBook file.
Verso and Recto Pages
When you open a book, even-numbered pages on the left are called verso pages. The odd-numbered pages on the right are called recto pages. (The verso page is the back of the previous recto page.)
The vast majority of books follow the industry standard of the first chapter opening starting on a Recto, or right-hand (odd-numbered) page 1.
Often, a prior chapter ends on an odd-numbered page. When this happens, it is customary to make the back of that recto page (the verso) blank, to allow the next chapter to start on the correct page.
This is also true for many front matter pages like dedications and quotations.
Gutter Margins
Books have bindings in the center to hold all of the pages together. These bindings cause the pages to roll inward toward the center in what is called a gutter. Extra page spacing, or gutter margins, are required on the inside edges of the page to account for the gutter.
Even pages will have larger margins on the right side, and odd pages will have larger margins on the left side to allow the page to appear centered when bound in book form. These are called mirror margins, and your template has them built in.
Most Formatting is Discarded during eBook Conversion
eReader platforms still vary widely in what they support. Although many eReaders now handle some font embedding, drop caps, and fixed layout, reflowable eBooks are dominated by minimal text layout options. As such, our 2Way templates are built with formatting that is most common across the multitude of eReader platforms, and omit format features that most often malfunction, like fancy fonts and fixed layout.
