Softcover Perfect Bound Cover Setup Guide

Because a single sheet of paper is wrapped around the rest of your pages to create your cover, perfect bound / softcover book covers should be created as a single spread.

Design a Softcover Children’s Book

Perfect Bound Cover Template

Recommended: Create your perfect bound cover template file using our automated template generator. Once your template is generated, please be sure to reference the design considerations below.

1. The “Page Height” and “Page Width” measurements in the guide below should be the same as the inside pages of your book.
2. Next, you’ll have to accommodate for your book’s spine. To calculate the width of your spine, see our online spine calculator.
3. Finally, as with your inside pages, you should include 0.125 inches of bleed around the edge of your design that will be trimmed off. Also make sure to keep all important text and graphics 0.125 inches away from the trim line since softcovers, like all offset printing, exhibit minute variance in their production.

Important Design Consideration

Because the book block is glued into the cover, perfect bound books have 10 millimeters of area on their inside covers that will be glued to the first and last inside page. This means that all artwork on the inside covers, the first inside page, and the last inside page should be kept at least 10 millimeters away from the spine.

Additionally, we score the front and back cover to allow them to open without a rough crease.