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Book Cover Specifications

Creating your cover with Viovio is a piece of cake. During Step 2 of the Product Maker, simply upload a front and back image, enter your text, and you're done! For many customers this is all they need, and they're off to checkout.

Gaining Knowledge, Losing Bliss

Professionals and designers need more information and details about how design their cover. First, we cannot emphasize this enough:

Three #1 Rules of Cover Design
  • Do not try to be precise about placements of items on your cover.
  • Do not try to place anything on the spine
  • Leave lots of bleed. You cannot be too conservative moving elements away from the edge.


All about Covers

  • We HIGHLY recommend your covers be created as RGB .jpg files
  • We HIGHLY recommend you leave plenty of room around your cover edges so important items (heads, text) are not trimmed.
These recommendations are in place because our covers are printed as a single image file. Thus, we must flatten everything in order to make a uniform print. To avoid font and color space issues all cover manipulation is processed with RGB .jpg images. Images that are not RGB .jpgs are converted in the background and this may lead to some format and color space miscalculation. Thus, we recommend you perform the conversion prior to uploading your cover file. See these screen captures for information on saving a PDF as a JPG.

Living on the edge is bad

Your mother probably told you this and hopefully you listened. If you set up your image to run to the very edge of the fold or crop guides, you will be disappointed. Binding equipment can easily have 1/4" fluctuation between cycles. Please compensate for this fluctuation.

Cover Dimensions


Perfect Bound Softcover

All softcover books have 1/8" (3mm) bleed on all edges, so the cover should be .25" (6mm) larger than the final book size.

Spine width for softcover books is 300 pages (150 sheets) per inch, or 118 pages (59 sheets) per cm.

Imagewrap Hardcover


Safety Margin for Turn-in (Bleed) for all book sizes: 1.0"
Spine Widths for all book sizes: 24-72 pages: .22"; 73-146 pages: .37"; 147-220 pages: .52"; 221-294 pages: .67"; 295-368: .82"; 367-440: .82"

Book Size Fullwrap Guide Front Cover Guide Back Cover Guide
11"x8.5" 11 11 11
12"x12" 12x12 Cover Template Fullwrap 12x12 Cover Template Front 12x12 Cover Template Back
8.5"x8.5" viovio imagewrap cover template 85x85 fullwrap viovio imagewrap cover template 85x85 front viovio imagewrap cover template 85x85 back
8.5"x11" viovio imagewrap cover template 85x11 fullwrap viovio imagewrap cover template 85x11 front viovio imagewrap cover template 85x11 back


All files are shown in the Cover Guides Gallery

Getting all wrapped up

The full wrap cover is another great feature of Viovio that many individuals use to make breathtaking books. This option is easily selected under the "Advanced" tab during Step 2. of the Product Maker. This option will auto-stretch the front cover image to exactly fit the entire book.


Comments

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11x8.5 Dust jacket

by Jonathan Fellows, Fri 06 of Aug, 2010 (08:37 UTC)
Hello,

I like the new interface for the covers, and I see now that there is an option for the dustjacket. What is the total size dimension for the dustjacket cover including the inside flaps? I can only find a template for the full-wrap cover. I've got plenty of bleed, and everything looks fine so far. If you have that template, or could tell me the total length and width dimensions to upload for the dustjacket cover, I think I can get it done.

Thanks!
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Re: 11x8.5 Dust jacket

by Viovio Support, Sun 08 of Aug, 2010 (21:00 UTC)
Yes, right now there is no printing on the inside of the flap
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Re: 11x8.5 Dust jacket

by Viovio Support, Fri 06 of Aug, 2010 (12:23 UTC)
The dust jacket cover is the same as the softcover in terms of the guides. So create your cover at 11.25x8.75 and keep all important items 1/2" from the edge on all sides smile
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Re: 11x8.5 Dust jacket

by Jonathan Fellows, Fri 06 of Aug, 2010 (18:28 UTC)
So no printing is allowed on what will become the inside flaps of the dustjacket?
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Cover for 14x11 portfolio book

by Julian Richards, Thu 29 of Apr, 2010 (08:15 UTC)
I'm creating a cover for a 14x11 wire-bound portfolio book in InDesign. How should I lay out the front and back cover pages - as right-hand and left-hand or as a spread?

And when I export to PDF, should the PDF be in spreads?
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Re: Cover for 14x11 portfolio book

by Kettie Mooney, Thu 29 of Apr, 2010 (20:30 UTC)
Julian,

Greetings from viovio and thanks for your interest.

Just upload your cover as normal and we'll take care of the rest :) We prefer one complete PDF or separate .jpg files. We recommend your images be at 300 dpi.

For all our trim sizes we recommend you make the cover images as well as the interior page images 1/4" larger than your book size. For example if you plan to create an 8.5x11 book the cover image as well as interior pages would be 8.75x11.25 (at 300 dpi).

Most importantly, keep all important items (people, heads, text,borders) away from the outer 1/2" on all sides.

If you have any questions please let us know!

Kettie
viovio support
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Re: Cover for 14x11 portfolio book

by Julian Richards, Wed 05 of May, 2010 (14:17 UTC)
Is it possible to have a separate image for the back cover? I tried uploading a two-page PDF, but I couldn't find a way of making the second page appear on the back cover.

I could create a single image twice as wide as the actual cover and use the full wrap cover option, but with the 14x11 wire-bound portfolio book that I want to make I suspect there would be problems with the "spine" side trim.

And is there a way of printing on the inside of the front and/or back cover?
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Re: Cover for 14x11 portfolio book

by Viovio Support, Wed 05 of May, 2010 (18:35 UTC)
Julian, greetings, we don't print on the inside of the covers (front nor back). You can upload a separate .jpg file for the front and a separate .jpg file for the back cover if you prefer. You can also upload one complete PDF that is for the back (on the left) and the front (on the right). Just check the "full wrap" cover button if you upload a full wrap cover
Reply to this comment

by David Fisher, Thu 14 of Jan, 2010 (18:29 UTC)
  • "We recommend you make the cover images as well as the interior page images 1/2" larger than your book size. For 11x8.5 the cover image would be 11.25x8.75."*

I kept it simple and followed those instructions, but on the cover preview the hardcover turn-in bleed area cuts waaaaay into my image.

That is what I don't understand... support says to do one thing, but then the preview shows that everything will get cut off.

Tell me this: If I was going to make both a hardcover and a softcover of the exact same book, would I have to shrink down the image for the hardcover to fit inside those lines, even though the sentence above in quotes says what it says?

Do you see what I mean? Am I missing something here?
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Re:

by Christian Fowler, Wed 20 of Jan, 2010 (18:06 UTC)
David,

One of your assumptions is incorrect - "when both books (hardcover and softcover) are printed, the cover image is the same size on both"

An 11x8.5 softcover needs a file that has an extra 1/8" on each edge. That is pretty straight forward.

An 11x8.5 Imagewrap hardcover (technically called the 'case') is 1/4" bigger than the trim size. Also, and this is a key, Imagewrap hardcovers need an extra .5" of paper on each edge to wrap around the edges of the book. In order to maintain aspect ratio as best we can, we adjust the .5" some (a touch less on the vertical, and touch more on the horizontal).

So, to allow one to order a book in different bindings, we resize the 11.25x8.75 cover to get large enough cover we can wrap around the cardboard.

For your book, the exact size of the Imagewrap hardcover file turned out to be 24.17"x9.67" - 11.98" wide for the front and back, and .21" for the spine. The vertical needed an extra .58" for the oversized case and extra paper to wrap around the edge (technically called "turn in").

The exact dimensions for the image wrap vary and change as our manufacturing process changes. This is why we don't give exact numbers for the Imagewrap hardcovers.

Follow the guides we give you and all will be fine. So the simple answer, do not let important elements go into the yellow, orange or red zones, and everything will be fine.

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