Make a Book
Send two PDFs — your interior and your cover — and get finished, bound books delivered. One copy or a thousand, from Rs 0.34 a page on A5 at 100 copies or more. We have printed 41,453 books in the last two years; a paperback ordered here averages 355 pages. This page is everything you need to prepare files that print correctly the first time.
Before you start: you need two PDFs
Every printed book is two separate files. The interior is your text, laid out at your finished page size, exported as one PDF with fonts embedded. The cover is a single flat spread — back cover, spine and front cover side by side as one page — sized to your page count, because the spine width depends on how thick the book is.
Those two files are the whole job. Everything below is about getting them right.
Step 1 — Choose your trim size and binding
Decide this before you typeset. Changing trim size afterwards moves every page break in the book.
| Trim size | Millimetres | Inches | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| A5 | 148 × 210 mm | 5.83 × 8.27 in | novels, handbooks, notes - the cheapest per page |
| B5 | 176 × 250 mm | 6.93 × 9.84 in | textbooks and academic journals |
| A4 | 210 × 297 mm | 8.27 × 11.69 in | manuals, workbooks, theses, anything with diagrams |
| A3 | 297 × 420 mm | 11.69 × 16.54 in | art books, portfolios, large-format work |
Then the binding, which is priced per copy:
- Soft cover / perfect binding — Rs 110 (Rs 65 at 51 copies, Rs 40 at 101). A printed spine and a squared edge. This is what a paperback is, and it is what most books should be. Needs at least 32 pages.
- Hard binding — Rs 250. Rigid boards. For library copies, gifts, submitted theses and anything meant to last. Rs 275 with golden print on the front, Rs 350 with the spine lettered too.
- Spiral — Rs 40, wiro or comb Rs 45. These lie flat, which matters for workbooks, manuals and cookbooks. They have no spine, so your cover does not need one.
- Centre staple — Rs 25 (Rs 35 laminated). Saddle stitch, for booklets up to about 64 pages.
Binding selector → · Binding cost calculator →
Step 2 — Build your interior PDF
One PDF for the whole book, first page to last, at your chosen trim size. Fonts embedded. Images at 300 DPI. Page size consistent throughout — a PDF that mixes A4 and A5 is the single most common reason a book comes back wrong.
Set a mirrored gutter of at least 15 mm on the inside edge. A perfect-bound or hard-bound spine swallows roughly that much, and a template set for symmetric margins on screen will run text into the binding on one side of every spread. It cannot be fixed after printing.
Choose your interior paper:
- 75 gsm Normal — the standard text paper, and the cheapest
- 75 gsm Premium — smoother surface, slightly better ink hold
- 85 gsm Bond — heavier, less show-through on double-sided text
- 85 gsm Duo — as Bond, different finish
- 100 gsm Bond — for books with images or heavy ink coverage
- 100 gsm Duo — as Bond, different finish
- 130 gsm Matte — coated. For photographs and colour plates
Most books are black and white at Rs 0.60 per A4 page double-sided or Rs 0.38 for A5. Colour is Rs 3.36 per A4 page, and a mixed file is charged as colour throughout — so if only the plates need colour, supply the body and the plates as two files and have them bound as one volume. On a 300-page book that is the difference between hundreds and thousands of rupees.
Margins and gutter guide → · Colour cover, black and white inside →
Step 3 — Build your cover PDF
The cover is one flat spread, not three files. Its width is back cover + spine + front cover, and its height is your trim height. The spine is the part you cannot guess: it depends on your page count and your paper.
Our spine calculator takes your page count, paper and binding and gives you both the spine width and the finished flat cover size — which is the measurement to build your artwork to.
Cover stocks:
- 170 gsm Matte or Glossy
- 225 gsm Matte or Glossy
- 270 gsm Matte or Glossy
- 300 gsm Matte or Glossy
We do not have a cover designer. You supply the cover PDF, made in whatever software you use. If your spine is under about 3 mm, do not put text on it — there is not enough width for it to sit straight.
The one thing to know before you design: no full bleed
Printster holds a margin on all four sides. Artwork cannot run to the edge of the page, on the interior or the cover. If you have designed for full bleed — a background colour or photograph reaching the trim — it will print with a white border.
This is a real constraint and worth designing around rather than discovering at delivery. Two ways to work with it: build a deliberate border into the design so the margin reads as intentional, or use a white or pale background where the margin is invisible. Photographs placed inside a frame work; photographs meant to fill the page do not.
What people actually print here
From our own order records, 24 months to September 2026. Average pages and copies are what a real order of that type looks like, which is a more useful guide than any recommendation we could write.
| Type | Orders | Average pages | Average copies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paperback / softcover books | 28,493 | 355 | 1.7 |
| Hardbound / hardback books | 4,502 | 403 | 1.2 |
| E-book to printed book | 4,170 | 292 | 1.4 |
| Study material and guides | 2,087 | 210 | 1.2 |
| Magazines | 658 | 35 | 2.4 |
| School books | 390 | 217 | 2.1 |
| Comic books | 379 | 116 | 1.5 |
| Thesis | 301 | 142 | 1.6 |
| Children's books | 156 | 51 | 1.2 |
| Training and instruction manuals | 127 | 229 | 1.9 |
| Bulk book runs | 103 | 270 | 4.6 |
| Dissertations | 87 | 124 | 1.9 |
The pattern worth noticing: almost everything is a short run. A paperback averages 1.7 copies and a hardback 1.2. Most people printing a book here are printing it for themselves, a supervisor or a handful of readers — not a print run to sell.
What it costs
| Book | Printing | Binding | Per copy, ex-GST |
|---|---|---|---|
| 300-page A5 paperback, 1 copy | Rs 114.00 | Rs 110 | Rs 224.00 |
| 300-page A5 paperback, 100 copies | Rs 102.00 | Rs 40 | Rs 142.00 |
| 300-page A5, hard bound, 1 copy | Rs 114.00 | Rs 250 | Rs 364.00 |
| 200-page A4 thesis, hard bound | Rs 120.00 | Rs 250 | Rs 370.00 |
| 120-page A4 comic, full colour | Rs 403.20 | Rs 110 | Rs 513.20 |
Add 5% GST, and delivery is charged separately by weight and destination. Cash on Delivery is not available on any order. Price estimator →
How long it takes
Three to five working days in production, then transit. In practice that is four to seven working days across Delhi NCR and seven to ten to the rest of India, counted from the next working day after the order is confirmed. Hard cover, soft cover and glue-tape binding add one to two working days because glue and cases have to set.
Measured median transit, from 13,438 delivered orders: 1.9 days within Delhi, 3.0 to North India, 5.0 to West and Central, 5.5 to East and North-East, 5.7 to South India. Half of parcels are slower than the median, which is why the published window is wider. Check your pincode →
There is no same-day or express option anywhere, including Delhi.
Print one copy before the run
On anything above a handful of copies, order a single proof first. Read it in your hand: the gutter, the running heads, the spine, the image pages, where the blank versos fall. It costs a few hundred rupees and it is the only reliable check on a run of hundreds. Almost every fault that ruins a print run is visible in the first copy and invisible on screen.
What we do not do
Worth being plain about, because several services that look similar do these and we do not.
- No ISBN. We do not issue or register them. In India an ISBN is free from the Raja Rammohun Roy National Agency for ISBN.
- No distribution or retail. We do not list your book anywhere, do not supply bookshops or Amazon, and do not pay royalties. We print copies and send them to you.
- No cover design service and no built-in cover creator. You supply the artwork.
- No editing, typesetting or proofreading. We print the file you upload, exactly as it is.
- No full bleed, as above.
If what you want is a printer, that is what this is, and one copy is as welcome as a thousand.
Full book creation guide → · Spine calculator → · Book printing by city →
Frequently asked questions
- How do I get a book printed in India?
- Prepare two PDFs - the interior and the cover - then upload them, choose trim size, paper and binding, and pay online. The bound copies are couriered to you in four to seven working days across Delhi NCR and seven to ten to the rest of India. There is no minimum: one copy is priced from the same rate card as five hundred.
- What is the minimum number of books I can print?
- One. There is no minimum run and no setup fee, because this is digital printing rather than offset. Per-page cost falls at 100 copies or more, where A5 drops from Rs 0.38 to Rs 0.34 and A4 from Rs 0.60 to Rs 0.54.
- How much does it cost to print a book?
- A 300-page A5 paperback is Rs 114 of printing at Rs 0.38 a page plus Rs 110 for soft cover binding - about Rs 224 before 5% GST. The same book hard bound is Rs 364. At 100 copies or more the printing falls to Rs 0.34 a page and soft cover binding to Rs 40, bringing it to Rs 142 a copy.
- Do you print full bleed?
- No. A margin is held on all four sides, so artwork cannot run to the edge of the page. This is the main thing to know before designing: build your interior and cover with a border rather than a bleed, or choose a light background where the margin does not read as a mistake.
- Do you give an ISBN or sell my book?
- No. Printster is a printing service, not a publisher. We do not issue ISBNs, we do not distribute to retailers, we do not list books for sale and we do not pay royalties. You send files, we print and deliver copies to you, and what you do with them is yours to decide.
- What size should my book be?
- A5 at 148 x 210 mm is the natural novel and handbook size and the cheapest per page. B5 at 176 x 250 mm suits textbooks. A4 at 210 x 297 mm suits manuals, workbooks and anything with diagrams or code. Decide before you typeset - reflowing a finished book into a different trim moves every page break in it.
- How do I work out my spine width?
- Spine width is (page count divided by 2) times the sheet thickness, plus what the binding adds. Our spine calculator does it for the papers we stock and then gives you the flat cover artwork size including bleed allowance, which is the measurement your cover PDF actually needs.
- Can you print a book from a Word file?
- Yes, but export to PDF first. A DOCX is re-rendered by whatever opens it, which is how page breaks move and fonts get substituted between your screen and the press. PDF carries its own fonts and layout, so what you see is what prints.
- How long does it take?
- Three to five working days in production, then transit. That is four to seven working days total across Delhi NCR and seven to ten to the rest of India, counted from the next working day after the order is confirmed. Hard cover, soft cover and glue-tape binding add one to two working days because the glue and cases have to set.