{"id":890,"date":"2019-11-05T15:36:11","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T07:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.haguepublishing.com\/?p=890"},"modified":"2019-11-05T17:52:53","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T09:52:53","slug":"what-size-paperback-is-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/what-size-paperback-is-best\/","title":{"rendered":"What size paperback is best?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This is a question that I seem to come back to every couple of years. This time I decided to attack the problem properly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first paperback Hague Publishing put out was Barry Dean&#8217;s <em>The Garden of Emily Washburn<\/em>. This was sized at 5&#8243; x  7 13\/16&#8243; (12.8 x 19.8cm), and from memory was based on a quick visit to our local bookshop to see what they were stocking. When it came time to put out our second book I thought I&#8217;d address it a little more scientifically and approached Google for advice on the most popular size for Trade Publications. The answer was a resounding 6&#8243; x 9&#8243;, which is the size we&#8217;ve generally stuck to for the last couple of years. However, I have never understood why 6&#215;9 is so popular, because it is really too large for comfortable reading, and particularly when a bookseller friend of mine has pointed out on multiple occasions that that format is not a popular size in Australia, and simply won&#8217;t fit on his shelves. So with the impending release of Leonie Roger&#8217;s <em>Amethyst Pledge,<\/em> the first book in a new trilogy, I thought I&#8217;d dig a little deeper. <br>       <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bookprintingcompany.com.au\/book-printing-checklist\/book-sizes\">Book Printing Company <\/a>states that:  the most common (trim) sizes for Trade paperbacks&nbsp; in Australia are: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>5 x 8 inches (203 x 127mm)<\/li><li>5.5 x 8.5 inches (216 x 140mm)<\/li><li>6 x 9 inches (229 x 152mm)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>After a couple of minutes work I was able to locate examples of the three sizes in my own bookcase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.haguepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/3Books.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In my personal opinion, the 5 x 8&#8243; looks by far the better, so why are people using 6 x 9&#8243;. Well, unsurprisingly, it all comes down to cost, and the fact that our books tend to have more words in them than they did 20 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikibooks.org\/wiki\/Basic_Book_Design\/Page_Size:\">Wikibooks<\/a> points out that smaller books lose disproportionately more space to margins,  increasing the cost. A 6&#8243;x 9&#8243; book has nearly 20% more text space. But a 6&#8243;x 9&#8243; book costs only about 5% more than a 5.5&#8243; x 8.5&#8243; book. The result is a 15% cost savings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In reality the difference in printing costs are negligible. As on 5 Nov 2019  <a href=\"https:\/\/myaccount.ingramspark.com\/Portal\/Tools\/PubCompCalculator\">Ingram<\/a> charges $89.20 AUS for 10 paperback books of 230 pages 5&#8243; x 8&#8243;, and only $91.55 for a 6&#8243; x 9&#8243; book of the same number of pages. Taking into account that the 6&#215;9 book can hold considerably more words and there you have it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Australia we are also restricted to ensuring that the printed book is less than 1.5 cm, to allow us to post it at the cheaper &#8216;paper rate&#8217; of $5. If the envelope goes over 2cm it falls into the parcel rate of $11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve now done some preliminary formatting of <em>Amethyst Pledge<\/em> and it       looks like using the same font size, spacing, and margins as we did for the Frontier Series the 5 x 8&#8243; format will still only require 220 pages, and as we can go to 250 pages we can probably tweak the size of the type up a bit to improve readability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a question that I seem to come back to every couple of years. This time I decided to attack the problem properly. The first paperback Hague Publishing put out was Barry Dean&#8217;s The Garden of Emily Washburn. This &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/what-size-paperback-is-best\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12,2],"tags":[177,268],"class_list":["post-890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-publishing","category-for-readers","category-writers","tag-paperback","tag-size"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":899,"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions\/899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}