What are the Standard Book Sizes in Publishing • Your Guide to Trim Sizes

What are the Standard Book Sizes in Publishing Your Guide to Trim Sizes What Are the Standard Book Sizes in Publishing? Glance at the nearest bookshelf. Have you noticed that books come in all shapes and sizes? Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t because publishers are out to obliterate the perfect symmetry of our bookshelves. The truth is that book sizes vary based on each individual book - and publishers determine these sizes based on economic, practical, and artistic factors.If you’re a self-publisher planning to produce physical copies of your book, you might be wondering if this should matter to you. The answer: yes. Your choice of book size will not only affect how you go about typesetting your manuscript  but your audience’s reading experience and your potential profit margin.In this post, we’ll take you through the standard book sizes in the industry, why they’re important, and what should be on your mind as you pick out the best trim size for your own book.What is trim size?â€Å"Trim size† is essentially the publishing term for â€Å"book size .† After each copy is printed and bound, the book is mechanically â€Å"trimmed† so that the size of every page is uniform. The trim size relates these dimensions, in Width x Height format.In the U.S., the trim size is denoted in inches; in Europe, it’s in millimeters. For future reference, we’ll be using the U.S. format and talking about U.S. book sizes in this post.Why does trim size matter?Asking why you should care about your book’s trim size is akin to asking, â€Å"Why do people make a big fuss over the iPhone’s shape?† You want a phone that’s sleek and a joy to grip - not an awkward clunker. In much the same way, you can boil the importance of trim size down to three things: reading experience, marketability, and cost.Trim size determines a book’s presentationIf you imagine your physical book as a house, then the trim size is its footprint. It bolts in the size of your â€Å"real estate,† and influences bot h the interior and exterior of your book. If your physical book is a house, then the trim size is its footprint In a nutshell, the trim size dictates your page count. The smaller your trim size, the more pages will be required for your content. It also impacts your book’s spine: the more pages in your book, the thicker its spine will be - and the more substantial it will appear on the bookshelf. Your choice of trim size will also assert a ripple effect on most aspects of your book’s interior. How many words will fit comfortably on a page? How wide can your margins go?When you’re typesetting your book, you’ll need to maneuver a number of ingredients on the page: everything from the baseline grid to the size of your font. The page trim size is one critical part of this complex balance - and the first you'll need to decide - that will create a beautiful book. For our review of four major print-on-demand services, check out this post.If you want to experiment with book sizes and the way they might impact your typesetting choices, the Reedsy Book Editor allows you to do so for free. The Editor also provides four popular trim sizes for formatting (4.25 x 6.87 in, 5 x 8 in, 5.5 x 8.5 in, 6 x 9 in).Having some real-life examples at your side, you should get a better sense of which trim size is best for your book. And if you find yourself truly struggling to pick between book sizes (particularly for those working on illustrated content or unique products that require the right paper and format), why not reach out to a professional book production manager for some advice? Their expertise in these matters is unmatched, and they’ll be able to polish your project - especially if you’re working on an image-dependent book that must appear professional on bookshelves.Trim sizes, with all their complicated, similar-sounding numbers can b e confusing - but they're worth wrapping your mind around if you keep the end product in sight: a beautiful book.