How to format a landscape children's picture book for print

A landscape picture book gives your illustrations room to stretch out, with wide scenes that open across two pages. That shape also brings a few setup details that portrait books do not have. Here is how to build the pages and cover so the book prints the way you pictured it.

Page size and orientation

Our picture books are 10 x 8 inches: 10 inches wide and 8 inches tall. The spine runs along the 8 inch side, so the book opens left to right like a wide window.

Set up each page in your layout app at the trim size, 10 inches wide by 8 inches tall. Double check that width and height are not swapped. A file set up at 8 x 10 inches will be a portrait book, and every illustration will be the wrong shape.

Bleed and the safe area

Most picture book pages have art that runs right to the edge, so bleed matters on almost every page.

• Bleed is an extra 0.125 inch of art on every outside edge. Each page is exported at 10.25 x 8.25 inches.
• The safe area is 0.25 inch inside the trim. Keep text, faces and important details inside it.

Picture books are printed in full color on heavier coated paper, which makes colors rich and art crisp. It also means any thin white sliver at the edge is easy to spot, so stretch every background into the bleed. The bleed, trim and safe area guide covers the setup in InDesign, Affinity and Canva.

Spreads across the gutter

The gutter is the inside edge where two facing pages meet at the spine. Many of the best picture book moments are spreads, one illustration across both pages. They need a little planning.

• Keep faces and text out of the gutter. Some of the page curves into the binding, so anything right at the center can be hard to see. Leave a generous margin on each side of the fold for important details.
• Let the background run through. Skies, fields and water are perfect for crossing the gutter.
• Check how the spread is split. Even if you draw the spread as one wide piece, it prints as two separate pages. The left half becomes one page and the right half the next, each with its own bleed.

Hardcover binding does not open completely flat, so the amount lost in the gutter varies with the binding and page count. As a rule of thumb, keep faces and words well clear of the center, and check the spread in your proof before you approve it.

Image resolution

Illustrations should be about 300 pixels per inch at the size they print. For a full page with bleed, that is roughly 3,075 x 2,475 pixels. For a full spread, you need twice the width. Scans and digital paintings made at a smaller size and enlarged later can look soft in print, even if they look fine on screen. The 300 DPI guide explains how to check.

Page count

Count every page, including the title page, the copyright page, the dedication and any blank pages. Hardcover books are printed on large sheets that are folded, so the total page count has to land on a set multiple. If your story comes up short, add blank pages or a final illustration at the end. The spec picker tells you which counts are allowed for your book.

Remember that page 1 is a right hand page. If you want a spread to open across pages 2 and 3, plan your page order with that in mind.

Uploading your pages

You can upload your interior in either of two ways:

• One PDF with every page in order, each at 10.25 x 8.25 inches.
• JPG or PNG page images, one file per page. We assemble them in order by file name, so number them with leading zeros (page-01, page-02, and so on up to page-10). Without the zeros, page-10 can sort before page-2.

Export each page as a single page, not as a spread, unless your template asks otherwise.

The cover

The cover is a hardcover case wrap, one file with the back on the left, the spine in the middle and the front on the right. A case wrap needs a wider wrap area than bleed, because the art folds around the edges of the boards. Spine width depends on page count and paper. These measurements vary by printer, so always build from the cover template for your exact specs.

Keep the title and any characters' faces well inside the front panel, away from the spine and the board edges.

Next step

Start your picture book in the kids book spec picker and download the free template for your page count. Upload your pages when they are ready, and our file check will flag common problems like missing bleed or low resolution images, with clear options to fix them. You review every change before anything is used.