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Content Creation Standards

A press-ready PDF is one a printer can print without problems. A PDF that looks right on screen can still print badly: some of its colors may not reproduce on press, and some of its graphics may print at very low quality. Check the three things below when you generate one, and build each cover to the size its product gives.

Embedded fonts​

Embed every font the PDF uses. A PDF that leaves a font out still looks correct on the machine that produced it, because the font is installed there. Any other machine, including the one that prints the file, replaces the missing font with the nearest one it has, which changes how the text looks.

Preflight rejects a PDF that uses a font it does not embed; see Preflighting.

Bleed​

Bleed is the part of a design's pictures or color that extends past the edge of the page. The page is trimmed to size after printing, and the bleed is what gets trimmed away, so any design whose pictures or color run to the edge needs it. A press-ready PDF is therefore larger than the printed book in both height and width.

Missing bleed is one of the most common problems in the PDFs RPI receives. The exact dimensions of each product, including its bleed, are on Product specifications and in the Products section of the RPI Print API Dashboard.

Images​

We recommend images of at least 300ppi at the size they will be printed. Whether a lower resolution prints acceptably depends on the image: a sunset may print well at 150ppi, while fine detail such as jewelry can look pixelated at the same resolution. Preflight warns about images below 150ppi.

How do I build a cover?​

A cover is a single PDF page that holds the back cover, the spine, and the front cover side by side. A dust jacket is also a single page, and it holds a flap at each end as well. Preflight fails a cover or dust jacket file with more than one page and cannot fix it.

Build the cover to the same size as the template that Product specifications generates for your product and page count. The template is the exact size preflight expects, and its size already includes every allowance its cover type needs, so do not add anything to it. The generator also shows the spine width, the flap width of a dust jacket, and the cover's total width and height.

The spine width depends on the interior book block's page count, including any blank pages preflight adds to it, so generate the template for the page count your interior book block will have.

Preflight rejects a cover whose size does not match the product's specifications, unless it can fix the difference; Preflighting lists the size checks and the fixes.