Calculating Spine Bulk
When preparing your perfect bound book files for print, you will often be required to calculate your spine bulk. Spine bulk is the bulk or width of a book, including the cover material. Knowing the spine width of your book will help with the cover layout, determining the number of books per carton and estimating shipping costs.
The spine width of a perfect bound (paperback) book is dependent on three things:
- The number of pages in your book, including blank pages.
- The thickness of the paper, expressed in PPI (pages per inch)
- An allowance for the thickness of the cover. This number will be provided by your printer.
Thankfully, you can skip the complicated math and just use our Spine Bulk Calculator.
Contact your Sales Representative or Project Manager if your cover stock is over 12 pt. C1S or your book has any binding method other than perfect binding. A cover layout template is available upon request. If you need help calculating your spine bulk or creating a print-ready file, contact your sales representative or project manager. You can also download some helpful support documents below.
