the words close to the bend of the book. A typical 6×9 inch book will have margins of ½ inch on the top, bottom and outside and ¾ inch on the inside. If you are struggling to find the correct parameters for your layout, consult your printer or publisher.
Photos. Simply put, great photos sell books. Try to stay away from photos taken from common digital cameras. The image quality is fine for a scrapbook, but they will look very amateur in your professional product. Your photos should be professionally processed if at all possible. If you are processing your own photos using Adobe Photoshop or other processing software, do your best to highlight the key areas of your images. Crop out unnecessary portions of images. Always set the dots per inch (DPI) to at least 300, and adjust image sizes to fit the area needed. Contact your publisher or printer if you need help preparing your images.
Full bleed. When an image goes to the edge of a page that is called a full bleed. A lot of designers like to use full bleeds to make images as large as possible. Each printer can inform you of their full bleed standards, but you should expect to extend your full bleed images by at least 1/8 inch beyond the edge of the page to avoid clipping. Be aware that many printers charge extra for full bleed processing.
Shelf appeal. Your book should have a strong appeal to skimmers. Most readers will decide whether or not to purchase your book while standing in a bookstore or browsing online. One great way to hook potential buyers is with lots of quick facts or interesting information set in pullout boxes, illustrations, charts, graphs and crisp photos.
File types. Be very cautious when