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Re: [BKARTS] How to print the same book on two sizes of paper
Hey Jeremy,
One of my design clients is a small academic book publisher that was
originally based at the University of Alberta here in Edmonton,
Canada, but moved to the University of New South Wales in Sydney when
the prof here retired and the logical successor was over there. So I
now design books for them on A5 for all new volumes, unless its a
Jane Austen work which they continue to put out in letterhalf so that
they can hopefully put out a boxed set one day. Based on that factor,
and the timing and location of the most critical first delivery, they
also choose whether they print here or in Sydney.
On the one hand, the Robert Bringhurst disciple in me says you must
adapt the design to the page. Of course, that's the same voice that
also says I should also letterpress everything onto handmade paper
and bind it in leather!
That said, designers are also pragmatic people and I've been
pondering just this issue in terms of this client, anticipating the
possibility that they may at some point wish to print simultaneously
in Australia and Canada. The simplest solution I've arrived at so far
is to design for a page that is 5.5 inches wide (letterhalf) and 21
cm tall (A5), the smaller of the two dimensions in each case. Anchor
your top and inside margins and go from there. Basically you end up
with the "luxury" of an extra 0.3268 inches on outside margin on the
Australian version and 0.59 cm more bottom margin on the North
American. You'll need to fiddle around with the actual file before
sending to the different printers, making sure the software you use
doesn't mess things up when you change the page size, but ultimately
your textblock and design relative to the top of the spine should
stay the same.
I appease my inner Bringhurst by figuring that back in the days of
untrimmed edges, there probably was that much variation in the
finished page size anyways!
Hope that helps. Please let us know how it goes, and welcome to the
list!
Winston
---
Winston Pei, BA, MA, MGDC
Black Riders Design
ph: 780-913-0031
http://www.blackriders.com/
On 24-Apr-08, at 6:48 AM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
Hello,
I have just joined this list because I am self-publishing a book
based on my PhD thesis. However I loathe how ugly most self-
published books are, and I don't want mine to be one of them.
Hence I have typeset it using LaTeX with the Memoir class (I know
this isn't a LaTeX list so I won't go into more detail than that),
and it looks quite beautiful.
HOWEVER...
For cost reasons, I need to print the book separately in Australia
(where I live) and in the US and Europe, and the printers do not
share a common size of paper stock. In Australia, the paper size I
can afford to publish on is A5 (148 mm x 210 mm), whereas overseas
the closest size is half-letter (5.5" x 8.5", or 140 mm x 216 mm).
I would really like to be able to set my text only once, though, so
that the page numbering is identical between the Australian and the
overseas editions. I have tried formatting for half-letter and
scaling it up or cropping it down to A5, and vice versa, and I am
unhappy with the results in each case.
Does anyone have any experience they can share about formatting a
book so that it looks correct on both sizes of paper?
Many thanks.
--
Jeremy Malcolm LLB (Hons) B Com
Internet and Open Source lawyer, IT consultant, actor
host -t NAPTR 1.0.8.0.3.1.2.9.8.1.6.e164.org|awk -F! '{print $3}'
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