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HOW DO I CALCULATE SPINE WIDTH?!?!?!?!

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freekshow09

Technical User
Oct 7, 2000
3
TH
How do I calculate the spine width for a book?
( ie. text pages are 5.85x8.27", 60 pages, 2 up saddlestich)
this is personal use and would greatly accept anyones help

thank youjacquie
(stressed out kid) :) [sig][/sig]
 
I am going to assume you are talking about the "creep" that builds up from the gutter or fold area on your book. The problem is that by adding sheets or pages to your book you increase the area you need for a fold in order to compensate for the added width. A good pagination program should be able to take this into account when building your book or page set up. If you do not have such a set up, the easiest and most reliable method is an old printing trick. Actually build a sample book, this is called a "dummy". You must use the actual stock (paper) that you are going to print the job on, or it will not work. After deciding upon your outside page margin width, both left and right, measure your margin width on the outside page, which should be your first page and also the last page of your publication. Take a regular straight pin and push though the mark you made for your margin, it is not necessary to measure both sides of book, left side will be the same as the right side. You should notice that the inside page margin is larger than the outside pages. That is exactly correct. The thickness of the pages gathered together makes it impossible to use the same margin width. Do a little math and figure the difference in the width and distribute it evenly over the remaining pages. On a book of any real thickness, you correct the pages that will stick out by what is called a "face trim", actually trimming off the excess paper. Hope this helps.
 
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