48 Hour Books offers free book formatting templates and book cover templates, so your book stands out and looks great.
Learn why book templates streamline the publishing process and how to choose the best book cover template for your book. Plus, download your choice of free book design templates, so you can get started right away.
48 Hour Books offers inside page templates that can be used on nearly any word processing system (Microsoft Word, Open Office, Pages, Word Perfect etc.). If you’re just getting starting typing your book, now is a great time to use the templates.
For cover design help, we offer two free cover design templates (Adobe InDesign and PDF) in our four most popular book sizes.
Here’s how to get your free templates:
Please note: If you have already written your book using a word processing program, it may be easier to simply do basic formatting in your existing file. It is not necessary to use these free book design templates.
There are two basic kinds of book templates:
Book layout templates are for the interior of your book (the pages inside)
Book cover templates are for the exterior (the cover)
Book layout templates are also sometimes called book formatting templates or book interior design templates. They’re like a blueprint for your book. Book templates are documents that are pre-formatted so that all you have to do is fill in your text.
Interior book design templates take the guess work out of sizing, fonts, spacing, and margins, so you know your book will look professional and crisp.
You don’t need to wait until after you’ve written your book to download a book template!
In fact, if you download a free book formatting template before you’ve written your book, you can save lots of time later, during the formatting stage. Book templates make it easy, too. You don’t need to fuss with document settings: You can just open up the file and start typing right into the template.
A book cover template helps you design the cover of your book. These book templates help you design not just the front of your book, but the spine (where the pages come together) and the back cover, too.
Book cover design templates help you account for all the major parts of a cover design, so you know you aren’t leaving anything to chance during the book printing process. Plus, they ensure that your book has the right dimensions for sending to the book printer.
A great time to use a book cover design template is after you’ve written your book and are ready to begin the self-publishing process. The book cover template helps you refine your cover design, and you’ll need it to be complete before you can order a printing of your book.
Using a book template helps ensure your book is formatted correctly for printing. When you use a template, you don’t need to worry that your file is the wrong size. Book templates ensure you’ve got the right document dimensions for the printer. This streamlines the printing of your book and reduces the risk of errors in formatting which can slow down the publishing process.
Using book templates also saves you time. You don’t need to learn graphic design or typesetting in order to use a book template. You can be a beginner and still have a beautifully formatted book when you use a book design template.
Book templates are not one size-fits-all. As you might expect, just like there are many different sizes and styles of books, there are many different options for book templates, too. Some common types of book template options include:
Which book template you choose will depend on your book, the desired finished size, your intended audience, your personal preferences, and your software program compatibility.
For interior book templates, you’ll likely use a word-processing program such as Microsoft Word. For book cover templates, you’ll probably use creative design software such as Adobe Photoshop (image software) or Adobe InDesign (a layout program).
To choose the right size book template, start with an idea of what size book you’d like to produce. (These are also called “trim sizes,” because the printer “trims” the pages to this size.)
How big should your book be? While ultimately it’s your choice and your decision, there are a few standard sizes when it comes to publishing your book.
At 48 Hour Books, we offer common book sizes:
For reference, fiction books are usually 4.25” x 7”, 5.5” x 8.5”, or 6” x 9”.
Non-fiction books are usually 6” x 9”, 7” x 10”, or 8.5” x 11”.
Children’s books are typically 7” square or 7” x 10”.
Memoirs are often 5.5” x 8.5”.
We also provide custom page sizes, so you can get exactly what you want! Custom sizes are especially suited for photo books and cookbooks.
Once you’ve chosen your trim size, you can calculate your book’s cover size.
We offer a cover size calculator to help you determine what size your book cover should be. The calculator takes into account how many pages your book is and what type of cover you’ll be using. Both of these factors affect the final document dimensions. This is especially useful for determining how wide your book’s spine should be.
Choose from soft cover or hardcover size calculator,
then click to download the file.
Open with Adobe Acrobat, then enter your selected book size, paper stock, and number of pages in the document to get the exact dimensions of your book’s cover. (Find out how many pages your book contains by checking the file in your word-processing program.)
Please note: If your file doesn’t open automatically in Acrobat, double click the .zip file, which is probably located in your Downloads folder. The calculator is a PDF form, so it will only work in Acrobat. If you don’t have Acrobat, simply call us and we will help you determine the proper dimensions.
Most newer programs have a built-in option to save or export your file as a PDF, especially if you're using a Mac. Search for the option to "Save-as" and you'll likely be able to choose .pdf as the file type option from a drop-down menu.
However, if you're using a Windows computer, you may need to download a PDF converter. We suggest using the free one below:
To use a book cover template, you will first need to choose which software you want to use to create your cover. We offer two free cover design templates (Adobe InDesign and PDF) in four of our common book sizes.
PDF templates can be opened in several editing programs including Adobe Photoshop, which is a well-known program that’s useful for creating graphics, images, and, book covers. You can purchase this software from Adobe and download it to your computer.
Our PDF book cover templates will have the file extension .pdf. When you open a PDF book template in Photoshop, you’ll be able to design your cover on top of the template: enter text, adjust settings, and even insert images or photos. You can also open this template in Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat and simply use it as a guide to determine how to lay out and correctly size your book cover.
Perhaps, lesser known in the Adobe suite of software is a program called InDesign. This software is designed for use in publication layout, making it perfect for composing your book’s cover. Documents for this program will have the file extension .indd. When you open an InDesign book template, you’ll see margins, bleed, and trim area, plus room for text and images.
The trim is the outside edge where the paper is “trimmed.” The bleed shows where printing that goes off the edge of the page will end. It helps avoid tell-tale white lines when you have images or graphics that should go all the way to the edge.
Use the form below to access your free cover design template, then download it to your computer.
Next, open the file in the corresponding design program.
Add your text and images. Using the text cursor, enter your book title, author name, and other information in text fields. With the arrow cursor, insert photos, images, or graphics as required. You can change colors and select your favorite fonts, too.
Be sure to stay within the margins. Keep all text at least 0.5” away from the edges of the front cover, back cover, and spine. This will avoid portions of your text being “cut off” or difficult to read, or even missing.
Watch the bleed. The bleed area extends past the edge of your page. If you’re using a background, make sure it reaches to the outer edge of the bleed area. If not, your cover may have unwanted areas of white where the background failed to reach before it was trimmed.
