In the publishing world there are three main types of book layouts: square, landscape, and portrait.

Square is pretty straight forward: the width and height of your book are the same. It is when you get into rectangular layouts that things start to get a bit tricky, and you have to pay attention to the way you lay your book out and how you place your images and text in your book. Depending on where your long axis lays determines whether your book is Landscape or Portrait.

Landscape Layouts
A landscape layout has the longest edge ( axis ) of your book along the horizontal, and the shortest edge ( axis ) along the vertical. In the image below I have shown an example of a standard US Letter sized page in Landscape Layout. Any time the width of your book is greater then the height of your book you are working in a Landscape Layout. In all of your layouts for Sharing Books ensure that your binding edge ( the edge where your book is bound ) faces to the left.



Portrait Layouts
A portrait layout has the longest edge ( axis ) of your book along the vertical, and the shortest edge ( axis ) along the horizontal. In the image below I have shown an example of a standard US Letter sized page in Portrait Layout. Any time the height of your book is greater then the width of your book you are working in a Portrait Layout. In all of your layouts for Sharing Books ensure that your binding edge ( the edge where your book is bound ) faces to the left.


Hopefully this helps you out when you are trying to do the layout for your book. In most PDF and image editing software you are able to set your document size to landscape or portrait. If it does not just remember you can just change the width and height to suit what you need for your book.

Labels: advice, help, publishing, support, tips n tricks