Print Book and Ebook Margins

Are you also wondering how to optimize margins for printed and digital books?

Why Margins Matter

Carefully designed margins help guide the reader's eye through the text and improve legibility. Margins also impact pacing and design harmony.

Printed Book Margin Considerations

For printed books:

• Mirror inner and outer margins
• Make bottom margins slightly larger than top
• Keep outer margins a bit wider to allow grip
• Minimum 0.75-1 inch margins

Flexibility with Digital Margins

Ebook margins offer more flexibility:

• Can be more centered around text
• No need to account for physical space
• Inner margin can match top and bottom

Margin Design Best Practices

When crafting margins:

• Avoid making text feel boxed in or adrift
• Account for gutters* between facing pages
• Use whitespace to establish appropriate pacing
• Perform thorough testing across devices

In editorial and book design, the "gutters" refer to the space between two opposite pages (left and right) when the book is open.

It is the blank space that forms in the center fold of the pages. The streets allow to adequately separate the content of both pages and make the reading more comfortable.

Some important points about fairways:

• Lanes should be wide enough to separate the text/images on each page and prevent them from looking too close together or overlapping. A standard street width is 0.5 to 1 inch.
• The size of the lanes should be uniform throughout the book to maintain consistency.
• In books with a lot of visual content, wider lanes (1.5 inches or more) are often used.
• The width of the lanes must be taken into account when defining the inner margins of the pages.
• The streets have an impact on criteria such as legibility, visual weight and economy of paper.

• It is a key element of editorial design that must be carefully planned.

Achieving Overall Design Cohesion

Well-designed margins, along with strong typography and layout, give books a refined polish. Conscientiously optimizing margins, both for print and digital formats, also positions you as an author.