Home Formatting Guidelines
Formatting guidelines

We will publish your soft cover books in perfect-bound format. This is a type of book binding that uses glue to hold the pages and cover together or we can thread sew and perfect bind your book. We thread sew all our hardcover books and these are available in two sizes in two trim sizes: 5.5" x 8.5" or 6" x 9". We do not bind books in the following formats:

  • wire-o
  • plastic-comb
  • three-ring
  • spiral-bound books

The chart below lists the binding and paper options available to you at PublishMe.ie

Trim Sizes and Interior Paper Options

 

Soft Cover Sizes and Options

Trim Size
Paper Specifications
Paper Colour
5.5" x 8.5"
90/100 gsm, acid free
White or Cream
6" x 9"
90/100 gsm, acid free White or Cream
7.5" x 9.25"
90/100 gsm, acid free White or Cream

HardCover Sizes and Options

Trim Size
Paper Specifications
Paper Colour
5.5" x 8.5"
90/100 gsm, acid free
White or Cream
6" x 9"
90/100 gsm, acid free White or Cream

All our e-books are Sony Reader and Kindle compatabile.
Sony Reader
The Sony Reader holds more than 150 titles and offers a slot for optional removable memory cards that allows you to carry more titles, Web content, and other supported documents. When users purchase books online, they can download the titles to their computers and easily transfer the titles to their Sony® Reader.
Amazon Kindle
Kindle holds more than 200 titles. Along with downloading bestsellers, customers can download and read first chapters of books found on Amazon.com for free before they decide to buy. When users click on an Amazon-powered book search result in their Kindle, the book can be downloaded to the device in less than a minute.
E Book Publishing
An eBook is a completely electronic version of a book that can be downloaded to a single laptop or desktop computer or other digital device, such as a handheld PDA.
How to layout your book for publishing.
There are many parts to a book, you start first with the cover followed by the “intro†pages, main body and finally the index or at the back. The following information should give you an idea on how to lay your book out for printing. If you have a specific question, please e-mail us directly at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Book Layout, Margins, Images
For a book to look “professional†it must have proper margin’s, type font and size. It is not advisable to have different fonts for different chapters and all the margins should be the same throughout the book The kinds of images you incorporate and the type of paper used for printing help define — or detract from — your book's "personality." Focus on the needs and expectations of your target audience when making these decisions.
Typefaces & font sizes
Typography convention holds that sans serif faces should be used for display headers and book covers while serif typefaces are used for body text to ease readability. You should use whatever faces or combinations of faces best express your book's "personality," but keep in mind that sans serif fonts may be difficult to read for an entire book. The most widely used typefaces for book body text include Baskerville, Bembo, Garamond, Janson, Palatino, and Times Roman (although this more of a newspaper font). If using a sans serif font for body text (Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, etc.), do not use smaller than 8pt. size. If using a serif font for body text (Berkeley, Palatino, Garamond, etc.), do not use smaller than 10pt. size
Outside & inside margins
In Microsoft Word, click on File and choose Page Setup. Check the Mirror Pages box. The areas for Left and Right margins now become Outside and Inside margins! This allows you to set the margins differently on even and odd page numbers. To skip all the hard work, simply download one of our handy Word templates above.
Pagination, headers/footers
Page numbers are never displayed on the title, half title, blank, or promo pages. By convention, lower case Roman numerals — ii, iv, x, etc. — are used throughout the front matter pages. Numbers for the body text of the work are displayed using Arabic numerals: 1, 2, 3, etc. Generally, numbering of the body text begins at the end of the front matter. So, if the last page of the front matter is numbered x (10 in Roman numerals), the first page of the body text will be 1 in Arabic numerals. This will typically be, though not always, the first page of Chapter One. Numbering with Arabic numerals continues to the final page of the book Odd-numbered pages always appear on the right. If you've decided to force all chapters to start on right pages they will all be odd-numbered and may follow blank pages. Feel free to disregard this rule, however, if you want to save pages. But remember that blank pages should never be numbered or display a header/footer. Typically, L page headers contain the Title of the book and R pages display Chapter titles. Another format places the author's name in L page headers and book titles in R page headers. Neither headers nor page numbers should be displayed on beginning Chapter pages — whether L or R — or on blank pages. top
Setting margins
The minimum page margin to use is .5 inches on all four sides, but feel free to use larger margins. We have Microsoft Word templates available for download below that sets margins for different-sized books of varying page lengths. If your book has margins that are smaller than .5 inches, we cannot guarantee that it will be fully readable because the binding may obscure content in the inside "gutter" margin. Therefore, using already formatted Word templates is highly recommended.
Inserted images
Because we use state of the art digital printer’s, we can incorporate colour and black/white throughout the book. We recommend that if you are using cream paper then all the colour pictures should be printed on white paper and these can be inserted as a stand alone section any were in the book. We prefer if you could convert your manuscript to PDF before you send it to us as using word files can create problems when moving files from one computer to another. Create PDF File. Cover contents must be submitted in image format. We accept most popular image formats (JPG and PNG are recommended), with a minimum resolution of 300 DPI .