Setting page size and margins a few key terms before you start.
Book margin gutter setting.
Choose the margin settings in the relevant fields see below.
Documents with mixed orientation.
Let s take a 6 x 9 book as an example.
The margins are different because the margin closest to the binding of the book the inner margins must to be larger than the outer so that the text doesn t get cut off from being too close to the binding.
There are spots there for you to set up your left margin your right margin and your gutter.
If you enable mirror margins with a top gutter setting it will be changed to left making it useless for duplex documents.
This particular book happened to be fairly thick 356 pages so i set the gutter to 0 3 inches.
This creates a gutter where the two pages join.
Your printed book s width and height.
For a typical novel or narrative nonfiction book of about 200 pages i would start off with an outside margin of 75 and a gutter margin of 875.
The left gutter setting can be combined with mirror margins as shown below.
Yet when i viewed a youtube video on createspace the video showed on one screen the alleged default settings for createspaces s master book template which had separate settings for inner margin and gutter.
Okay so we know the gutter or inside margin on bound books has to be larger than the outer margin but how much.
In effect a 1 inside margin combined with a 1 gutter is the same as a 2 inside margin.
By default the gutter margin will be set to 0.
The more pages in a book the more pronounced this effect and so the wider the gutter has to be.
If you are designing your book for double sided printing essential for hard copy books and it can be a good idea for pdf ebooks as well keep in mind that you should set your margins differently for inside and outside margins.
Click the margins tab.
That said go ahead and give the gutter a 1 margin so the content of your book doesn t get lost in the fold.
A standard is to set the left and right margins at a half inch each and to then have a quarter inch gutter.
This could cause issues further on as the gutter margin is the amount of space between the content of your book and the fold where the pages of the book will be bound together.
Whether it s choosing to a flat laying binding style such as saddle stitch booklets wire o booklets or spiral bound booklet or including the gutter margin when you start designing your perfect bound book or hard cover book.
These inner margins are called gutter margins based on the gutter like shape they create in the middle of the book.
Now that you understand what the gutter margin is you can take the proper steps to prevent this potential issue.
I thought for a book as opposed to say a two column newsletter inside margin gutter.
Once that s done go into the margins area.
As the pages disappear towards the binding the edge of the page is obscured so the margin has to be wider on this edge to allow for this.
