The interior of a printed book is a set of decisions that a reader never consciously notices and always feels: how wide the margins run, how far apart the lines sit, which typeface carries the text, and what the paper does to it. Print on demand makes most of those decisions yours rather than a printer’s, and several of them are fixed the moment the file is accepted, because changing the trim size or the page count changes the cover too.
This guide gathers our posts on setting up a print interior in one place: the page itself, the type on it, the paper behind it, and the point at which a manuscript runs past what print on demand will carry. Each post answers a single question and stands on its own, so start wherever your question sits rather than at the top. We add to the guide as we cover more ground, so it is worth bookmarking.
One caveat: the specifications here are set by the printers rather than by us, and KDP and IngramSpark do not always set them the same way. Where a figure matters to your book, check it against the platform you are publishing with before you build the file around it.
The size and shape of the page
- Trim size: how to choose one, and what it commits you to later.
- Margins: what the inner and outer margins need to be, and how to set them in Word.
- Estimating the page count: how to know roughly how long the book will run before it is laid out.
- When the page count runs over: what happens at the limit, and what can be done about it.
- Trade or mass-market paperback: the two formats, and which one print on demand will actually produce.
The type on it
- Choosing a typeface: how to pick one, and what makes a face work in a long read.
- Font and size for a 6×9: a worked answer for the most common trim size.
- Line spacing: how much space belongs between lines, and what happens when there is too little.
- Where to get fonts: which sources are safe to use commercially, and which “free” ones are not.
- Typography terms: the vocabulary a formatter or designer will use with you.
How the text sits on the page
- Paragraphs: indents and alignment, and why a printed book does not look like a letter.
- Page breaks: what they are, and where a book needs one.
- Widows and orphans: the stranded lines at the top and foot of a page, and how to clear them.
- Running heads and page numbers: what goes in them, and where the numbering starts.
- Drop caps: how to set one so it does not fight the first line.
Paper, and books that are not ordinary prose
- White, cream or groundwood paper: what each one does to the reading, and what it costs.
- Poetry collections: how to keep a layout that depends on line breaks and white space.
- Large print: what actually counts as large print, and the standards behind it.