Questions about a book page count are frequent at Bookmobile—how do you estimate the page count in a manuscript? What counts as a page? And does it need to be divisible by 8, 16, or 32? Read on to learn the scintillating answers to these questions!
How Do I Estimate the Book Page Count of a Manuscript?
This one is easy: use our Castoff Calculator. It estimates the number of pages of a book, based on your final trim size, number of pages, character count, and typeface.
What Counts as a Page?
For a book printing quote, any printer will want the total and final number of pages. A book page is each side of a sheet of paper. For example, a book with 48 pages is 24 sheets of paper, printed both sides. Blank pages count too!
Blank pages create frequent misunderstandings, especially for coloring books. Even if the artwork is printed on just one side of the sheet of paper, and the other side of that sheet is blank, it does count as two pages for Bookmobile.
And, don’t forget to add your front matter and back matter pages to the total page count of your book. Front matter (the title page, copyright page, etc.) is often numbered with roman numerals, and it’s common for even the most experienced publisher to forget to include these pages in their final page count.
What doesn’t count as a page? The book’s cover (outside cover or inside cover) or the end sheets of a hardcover book.
Does my page count need to be divisible by 8, 16, or 32?
Unlike an offset printer, Bookmobile is a sheet-fed printer. We often print from a roll of paper, but we cut the roll into sheets before it’s fed into our printers. An offset printer prints from a roll of paper, or sheets much larger than ours, then gathers those pages into signatures, which is why an offset book’s page count needs to be divisible by 8 or 16 or 32 (depending on the printer and other factors).
So at Bookmobile, we just need a page count divisible by two. Curious how it works?
A roll of paper, which is fed into the sheet trimmer.
This trimmer cuts sheets from the roll of paper, then feeds the sheets into our printers.
Printed sheets from the printer. We print four books to a sheet when possible, to save on cost and waste.
Trimming the collated, printed sheets from the printers, into the book blocks we will bind.
Book blocks that have been trimmed and are ready for binding.