Order the proof. Then read it in daylight
You have looked at your cover a hundred times. You have not looked at your book. Those are different objects, and the second one is the one readers buy.
A proof copy is a single printed copy of your book, produced on the same machine and the same paper as the run, sent to you before anyone else can order it. It is the last check in the process and the only one a screen cannot do.
Paper is not backlit
A monitor emits light. Paper reflects it. That single difference changes almost everything you thought you knew about your cover.
A deep blue that glowed on screen prints darker and flatter. A moody near-black background that looked rich becomes a muddy field with your title sunk into it. Gradients that read as atmosphere on a display often read as nothing on stock, because the range between the darkest and lightest ink a press can lay down is narrower than the range a monitor can throw at your eye.
This is not a fault in your file. It is the medium, and no amount of soft-proofing substitutes for holding the thing.
Ink spreads into the paper
Ink does not sit on top of a page. It sinks in slightly and spreads at the edges, and the amount it spreads depends on the stock.
Two consequences, both of which catch authors out:
- Fine type thickens. Hairline serifs and tight counters fill in a little. Type that looked delicate at 100% zoom looks heavier and less crisp in the hand.
- Light type on a dark background fills in. The worse one. Pale type reversed out of a dark panel loses its thin strokes to the surrounding ink, and a 9 pt light-weight serif on black can come back looking broken.
You cannot judge either from a PDF viewer. You can judge both in two seconds from a printed page.
The spine becomes an object
On screen, the spine is a number in a field. In your hand it is a strip of card with a fold at each side, and you can see immediately whether the title sits in the middle of it or creeps toward one edge.
An error of a millimeter or two is invisible in a file and obvious on a shelf. So is a spine color that doesn't quite continue the front, or a title that has wrapped and left a letter on the front cover.
The gutter tells the truth
The inside margin is the one measurement that only exists once the book is bound. Until then it is an assumption.
Open the proof flat at several places — near the front, near the middle, near the end — and see whether the text runs into the binding. A thick book pulls more paper into the curve than a thin one, so a gutter that was generous in a 180-page draft can be tight in a 400-page final.
In the tools. The Interior Formatter sets the gutter from your trim size and page count, and flows that final count to the Cover Maker so the spine matches the book you are actually printing. The proof is how you confirm it in the hand. Start a book → · about the tools
The checklist worth following
Do these in order, with the book in front of you and nothing else open.
- Look at the cover in daylight, then under a lamp. Two light sources, because they will not agree. Hold it at arm's length, not at reading distance — that is the distance a browser sees it from.
- Check the spine. Is the text centered between the two folds? Has anything wrapped around a fold? Does the spine color continue the front?
- Open the book flat at five or six places. Does the text run into the binding anywhere? Check the thickest part of the book, in the middle.
- Check the first page of several chapters. Same drop from the top, same style, same placement of the chapter number. Inconsistency here is the most visible amateur tell in an interior.
- Flip through and look for blank pages in the wrong place. A blank verso where a chapter should open on the right is fine. A stray blank in the middle of a chapter is not.
- Read three pages closely. Not skim — read. You stop seeing your own typos on screen after the fortieth pass; a different medium restores them.
- Check the barcode area on the back. Is it clear of artwork and text, and is it where your printer expects it?
- Confirm the page count. Count what the book actually ends on and compare it with the number you gave the printer. If they disagree, your spine is wrong.
Ordering it, practically
A proof is printed as a one-off rather than pulled from a run, and it is normally marked as a proof — usually a line across the last page or a band on the cover saying it is not for resale. That marking is expected, and it does not appear on the copies readers get.
The part that catches people is time. A proof has to be printed and then shipped, and shipping is the long half. Build that into the schedule as a real block of days. The worst version of this is discovering the wait in the week you planned to launch, then choosing between a delay and shipping a book you have never seen.
Order the proof when the files are done, not when the marketing is done.
If the proof is wrong, order another
It usually is, a little. That is what it is for. You fix the file, you upload again, you order a second proof. Nobody in publishing treats that as a failure, and plenty of books go to three.
Set it against the alternative: a thousand copies of a mistake, or a slow drip of reviews mentioning the margins. A proof and a second proof is the cheapest insurance in the process.
In the tools. Previews are free, unlimited and watermarked, so you can rebuild the cover and re-export the interior as many times as the proof demands. You only pay when you want the files without the watermark. Start a book → · about the tools
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Preflight: what to check before you upload · More: White or cream paper? · How to calculate spine width · Margins and gutters · Mistakes that mark a book as self-published