How to Prepare a Book for Printing in InDesign Creating a book with InDesign involves many details, but these basic steps will help ensure you won't have any unpleasant surprises when you take your project to a commercial printer.
Instructions 1. Before you begin o
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Talk with your commercial printer about your choices for page size, resolution needed for photos and graphics, page counts and files accepted for print. Each printing operation and its press may have different requirements which a printer will share, often in a prepared checklist, before you begin your design. o
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Create paragraph styles for your body type, chapter headings, page numbers and any other text elements you may use in the book, such as footnotes, an index or sidebars. Setting styles for each element ensures consistency and allows you to later adjust a style automatically across the book. o
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Use fonts that work with InDesign and with your commercial printer. Adobe recommends sticking with Microsoft OpenType, Type 1, PostScript, or TrueType fonts. While other styles are readily available on the Internet, they can create unexpected results if they don't match the recommended type. o
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Design master pages for each type of page you have, including the first page of a chapter, chapter body and pages for front matter (dedication, contents and forward) and back matter (index, endnotes). This ensures consistency throughout the book. Design the cover in a separate document; it will have different dimensions from interior pages because of the book's spine. o
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