What factors should guide my decision on adding extra inside margins when preparing a book for perfect binding?
I'm working on a book that will be perfectly bound. It's a budget job, so I'm using an online service with little/no communications with the printer and no opportunity for a proof.
As far as I'm aware, I need to add inside margin for two reasons:
- Because the inside margin will be curved inwards, leaving less horizontal space because of horizontal compression due to foreshortening.
- Because some of the page will be lost to the binding.
My book is 120mm x 192mm and I have allowed margins at:
- Inside: 19mm
- Outside: 14mm
I have tried printing off a stack of pages and this feels like the right amount, but I don't want to get caught out.
Incidentally, the book is a poetry book with the text on each page left aligned and centred on the longest line. I'm using inDesign which means I need to do the centring manually, so baking uneven margins into my page makes the centring really tricky.
