Pendium Publishing House

Note, if you select to contract your own artist to design your bookcover then your bookcover should consist of a front, back, and spine together when submitted to PENDIUM. The artist of your bookcover is responsible for making sure the bookcover submitted meets the below specifications prior to being submitted to PENDIUM. Whenever a bookcover is designed by anyone other than a PENDIUM artist, PENDIUM will not perform any design work as the artist of your cover will have to perform the following:

1) Please leave a white boxed area for our technicians to insert a barcode on the back cover. The recommended size for the white box needed is 1.75" wide by 1" high. Please note: barcodes are mandatory on all covers.

2) For best results regarding using black on your cover, we recommend using a rich black where the CMYK values are 60% Cyan, 40% Magenta, 40% Yellow, and 100% Black. CMYK total value should NOT exceed 240%. Black elements should NOT be built in ‘Registration' Black (or 100% of all colors).

3) Please convert all spot colors to CMYK, including those in .eps files

4) ALL fonts must be embedded if sending a PDF files

5) If you choose to lay out your files using Pagemaker, the files must be converted to a PDF before submitting them to us.

6) Files must be PDF/X-1a:2001 compliant. This setting is only found in the Professional versions of Adobe Acrobat 6 or above.

7) All images must be CMYK. Images in a cover that are less than 200 dpi (for color books) will be rejected back for higher-resolution submissions. Images included with these resolutions are considered too low in quality for printing.

8) The finished document size of the PDF submitted should be 20.5" x 14.33"

9) 1/4" (0.25) bleed is required on all four sides

10) All text must be a minimum of 1/8" from final trim size (this applies to non-bleeding text & art)

11) Graphics, illustrations, and color intended to print to the edge of a cover should bleed a full 1/4" past the final trim size.

Click here for an example of a print-ready bookcover (designed by PENDIUM).