Features

Publishing has developed its own jargon, which can be confusing for the first time print-on-demand user. Here's a list of the terms you're likely to encounter, along with their meanings:

Copy: The text of your book.

Bleed: An area of an image lying outside the trim size. In designing your cover, you should ensure you use the image size stipulated by the POD site - otherwise, important parts of it may end up in the bleed.

Drop cap: A large capital letter usually used as the first letter of each chapter.

GSM: Grams per square metre. This is a measure of the thickness of paper. 80 GSM is regular printer paper, for instance, while 100 GSM is slightly thicker.

Gutter: The inner margins of the book.

Perfect bound: A book in which the pages are glued in a block against the spine. Most paperbacks are perfect bound.

Plasticoil: Like a notebook, the pages in Plasticoil-bound books have holes in their pages near the spine, through which runs a
coil of plastic to hold them together. A similar binding is called Wire-O.

Point: In modern publishing, there are 72 points to an inch. A character in 72-point will span an inch on the printed page, whereas a character in 12-point will measure a sixth of an inch.

PPI: Pages per inch. A measurement of the thickness of the paper.

Saddle stitch: A method of binding thin books and pamphlets by stapling pages to the cover at the spine.

Trim size: The area of an image that fits on to the page or cover. The part lying outside the trim size is the bleed.