Guide

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A comprehensive guide to POD productions, ebook and other electronic book designs and related book distribution and promotional services.

POD book guide

 

Preparing your book for PDF generation

After you have selected your book size and binding options there are a basic set of rules you need to follow.

  1. The book interior (bookblock) and covers need to be supplied as two seperate PDF files.
  2. PDF file type, cover and bookblock in PDF/X1a:2001 format.
  3. PDF output resolution should be set to 600dpi for black & white and colour
    books.
  4. PDF files should be centred (left-to-right and top-to-bottom).
  5. Crop marks. Depending on the POD book type used crop marks may or may not be needed, please consult. No other printers mark should be used at any time, like; registration marks, colour bars or page info.
  6. Page bleed. This is the area of artwork that goes over ethe edge of your printed page. Please consult for bleed settings as these different depending on book type chosen. If a bleed is required the settings will be; Black and white interiors books 3.4mm all sides, with crop marks. Colour books 6.4mm all exterior edges, with a 3.2mm margin on the inside edge (except for saddle stiched books, where there is no margin on the inside edge).
  7. All fonts should be embedded, PDF font subset should be set at 100%.
  8. Images. Continuous tone photographs and artwork should be 8-bit grayscale, at 600dpi. Line art should be 1-bit black and white at 600dpi.
  9. Text safe area is recommended to be 12.8mm margin on all sides.
  10. All colour management settings must be set to “Off”, inclusing ICC profiles.
  11. Black and white interior content must have all images and all colours set to greyscale and have no colour elements.
  12. Interior colour content (colour text, images, graphics) must be submitted as CMYK. RGB is not acceptable. Spot colours must be rendered as CMYK. Black & white images or black & white text in a colour bookblock must be submitted as grayscale.
  13. Covers should be produced on a single document page as PDF files, wide enough to encompass the front, spine and back of the book, along with 3.2mm bleed on all sides for black and white book block (6.4mm bleed required for colour books). Please contact Picopress for a template for cover generation.
  14. Spine width, please contact Picopress for your spine width calculation.
  15. Cover barcodes. The back cover must contain a barcode, made of black only.
  16. Rich black for covers and colour interiors should be CMYK values of 60% Cyan, 40% Magenta, 40% Yellow, and 100% Black. CMYK total value should NOT exceed 240%.

eBook guide

 

Providing your content for eBook processing

 

Generating eBook formats

Most common file formats can be accepted for conversion to eBook formats, including.

Indesign, Quark, Word, Open Office, PDF, HTML, XHTML, LaTeX, Scribus.

Please supply all images, fonts, profiles and other resources used in document.

Please also consider the metadata informatio that will be needed to accompany your publication, see Dublin Core as a guide, http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/

 

Supplying eBook ready formats

If your eBook file is ready to publish, please provide sample files to be able to progress your project.