A crocodile, a shark chomping a burger and a speech bubble begging Jack never to let go crowd the front cover of Realities of Life, every inch drawn in fine black line. In the middle, inside a little window of colour, a man sleeps with his arms wrapped round his pillow. On the back, against mustard yellow, a bald grandpa in blue glasses announces "I'm ready to leave...". Aaron Lopez-Barrantes, an illustrator living in Paris, sent it to us as a graphic novel in which each full colour scene faces a blank white page carrying one handwritten line. The finished book is an A5 paperback, perfect bound around 48 full colour inside pages, a 4mm spine and a 300gsm uncoated cover finished in matt lamination.
Gloss first, then a change of heart
Aaron's first enquiry described a smaller book: 36 pages at six by nine inches, with a gloss cover. Harriet quoted it the next morning. Five days later a second request arrived, the book now 52 pages long and its cover switched to uncoated stock under a matt laminate. We priced a custom 231 x 173mm version and, alongside it, A5. After a phone call about spines and formatting, Aaron chose A5.
The cover switch was a good instinct. That front is a dense black drawing on white, and gloss throws light straight back at you, so the eye meets glare before it finds the jokes buried in the doodles. Matt lamination keeps the white reading as paper while guarding the board against scuffs in a bag.
Fifty two pages, cover included, divides neatly by four and sits well inside our stapling range, which tops out at 72, so staples were possible and would have opened flatter. Perfect binding won because a graphic novel wants a square spine with its name running down it, and 48 inside pages gave that spine 4mm of width.
Friday files, Saturday night fixes
The artwork landed on a Friday lunchtime. Within ninety minutes Mike had replied, opening with "Your illustrations are absolutely superb!!" before listing the fixes: cover spreads back on our template rather than trimmed to size, and artwork stretched 3mm past each trim edge as bleed. Aaron turned both round that afternoon.
On the Saturday evening Mike wrote again. We impose press sheets ourselves, so each inside page needed supplying on its own instead of paired in spreads. Aaron, who was "just learning the ins and outs of indesign", had built everything on a two page master. Before the night was out he replied: "Never mind we got it all set now!"
Monday brought a colour note. Many illustrations were saved in RGB, the colour mode of screens, and would shift a little in CMYK ink. Aaron chose to "take the risk of losing some of the color saturation" rather than hold the book back, and in the finished copies the purple shop wall and the teal diner table still come up bright. A caption hugging the bottom trim moved up a few millimetres, the proof went out next morning, and once approved the job went to press.
A title on a 4mm spine
Lettering a spine this slim is precise work. Spine text normally wants about 5mm, so at 4mm every millimetre counts. Aaron set his title on our A5 template, and Mike dropped each revision into it to check the lettering sat squarely on the spine, with clear space at the head and tail where the trim falls.
The cover file carries a second job that first time authors often miss. A perfect bound cover prints on both faces, so we need two spreads: the outer one carries the back, the spine and the front, while the inner one puts the inside front cover on the left and the inside back on the right. Even plain colour inside covers need that second spread. Our cover file walkthrough shows both layouts.
At proof stage Aaron signed off with thanks, "you guys have been so helpful, much appreciated", and once the box reached Paris his verdict was short: "Everything looks great".
For a stapled take at the same size, see Hannah Connolly's A5 graphic novel, and our comic and graphic novel printing page covers sizes, stocks and bindings. Once your own pages are drawn, price your graphic novel instantly and ask us to measure the spine before a single cover is printed.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
