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Perfect Bound Glue Area Design Considerations

When perfect bound books are assembled, there’s a small area between the inside cover pages and the first and last interior pages that will be glued together, so everything on those four pages should be kept at least 10mm away from the trim line on the binding side on those pages.

To aid in further explaining, we have provided a visual comparison of a production file spread PDF vs the actual manufactured print.

For a video breakdown of the safety area + danger zone for casebound books, check out our visual guide:


See below for the production file PDF example:

10mm glue area
The artwork highlighted red shows the 10mm glue area.

See below for the actual printed project:

10mm glue printed
You can see the artwork in the 10mm glue area is not visible, but the customer did a fantastic job compensating for this!

There’s more info about this on the bottom of our softcover setup guide page. 

Be mindful that due to the nature of perfect bound books, content that is very close to the binding area may be obscured. Please keep any important text and artwork 10mm (0.39 inches) away from the bound edge (the center of the page for two-page spreads) to be fully visible. 


To aid in further explaining, we have provided a visual comparison of a production file spread PDF vs the actual manufactured print.

See below for the production file PDF example:
Production file

The magenta boxes highlight the 10mm “danger” area on either side of the binding.

See below for the actual printed project:

Printed Book
You can see that the 10mm danger area makes for less visibility of the content closer to the binding, but the customer did a fantastic job compensating for this by making sure crucial text and artwork is at least 10mm away from the binding.