Touchwood Press Blog

Trim sizes

Published on by Mike McCandlessLeave a comment

If you’ve taken my Publish It Yourself Course or read my book the Publish It Yourself Primer, you know a little about trim sizes. “Trim size” is one of those holdover terms left over from the days when analog printing was all there was. For efficiency, book pages were, and still are, printed on large sheets of paper. They come off the press, are stacked, and then cut, or “trimmed,” to size. Then they are gathered in book sets with all the pages in the right order. This work was originally done by highly-skilled printers, then later, computers helped to speed things up. Just like now.

The size of your book plays a part in how it’s perceived, in general and against other books in its genre. Not every country prints books in the same sizes used by American printers.

I asked Google Gemini whether I should consider re-designing the Touchwood Press 50 Fun Facts baseball books for international markets, now that baseball is rapidly growing as a global sport.

Dear AI: I have published a series on books on baseball teams and used a trim size of 5″ x 8″ to make them easily portable and pocket-sized. Should I change the trim size for international markets?

Gemini: While your 5″ x 8″ trim size is a classic, portable choice that works well in many markets, there are a few professional and logistical reasons you might consider adjusting it for international distribution—specifically if you are looking at the UK and Commonwealth markets.

Here is a breakdown of how trim sizes translate globally:

1. The “Trade Paperback” Standard

In the United States, 5″ x 8″ and 5.5″ x 8.5″ are standard for trade paperbacks. However, in the UK and Australia, the standard “B-Format” is slightly different:

  • UK B-Format: Approximately 5.1″ x 7.8″ (129mm x 198mm).
  • Your Current Size: 5″ x 8″ is very close to this, meaning it won’t look “wrong” on a shelf next to British sports books. It is actually a very safe “middle ground” size.
2. Industry Expectations by Category

According to the IngramSpark guide to popular trim sizes, different genres have “trained” readers to expect certain dimensions.

  • Reference & Nonfiction: Many international nonfiction titles lean toward 5.5″ x 8.5″ or 6″ x 9″.
  • Portability: Since your brand is built on being “pocket-sized,” staying small is a smart move. Moving to a larger size like 6″ x 9″ might alienate your current fans who value the portability.
3. Print-on-Demand (POD) Economics

If you use services like IngramSpark or KDP for international distribution, you should check if your specific size is “Standard” or “Custom” in those regions.

  • Distribution Reach: Most POD services offer 5″ x 8″ as a standard size globally. If you chose a highly unusual custom size, you might be restricted from “Expanded Distribution,” but 5″ x 8″ is widely supported.
  • Page Count & Pricing: If you change to a smaller size, your page count will increase, which can raise the print cost and lower your profit margin per book.
4. The “Look and Feel” Factor

As noted by Amy Collins, book buyers and librarians are often “trained” to recognize professional quality by the trim size. A 5″ x 8″ book:

  • Feels like a Mass Market or B-Format book in the UK.
  • Is perfect for “commuter reading,” which is a huge market in Europe and Asia.
Recommendation

I wouldn’t recommend changing it. Your 5″ x 8″ size is globally recognized as a standard portable format. Changing it for international markets would require you to manage multiple interior layouts (files) and different cover wraps for the same book, which increases your overhead and the risk of formatting errors. The “pocket-sized” branding is a unique selling point for a sports series—stick with it to maintain brand consistency across the globe.

Gee, thanks. I’ll stick with my current strategy.

There’s a lot I could unpack in AI’s comments, but that will wait for another post or book. Let us know if you have questions.

Good writing!

The Farm System

Published on by Mike McCandlessLeave a comment

Book publishing sales growth is impressive to say the least. Furthermore, the number of traditionally published books increased 10% between 2022 and 2025, while during this period, self-published books jumped 43.5%. — Publishers Weekly, 17 March 2026.

So, what does this really mean?

Traditional publishers have been playing catch-up for more than 20 years. It has been clear for at least that long that a) self-publishing is a thing no matter how trad publishers have criticized it; b) people still like books; c) traditional publishing was collapsing under its own weight; d) there was probably a better way for large enterprises to continue publishing.

So much can be written about this trend, but the scope of this post is that traditional publishers, in their corporate wisdom and struggle to survive, and whether accidentally or strategically, have turned the self-publishing phenomenon into a business opportunity by using the self-publishing marketplace as their farm system — yes, just like baseball.

Imagine

Imagine me as the CEO of Mammoth Publishing, Inc. Why would I invest millions in finding, grooming, and advancing more authors than is absolutely necessary? Let them duke it out themselves in the global bookstore that is Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. I’ll keep my eyes glued to the winners and recruit them to our team. Better yet, let’s start our own businesses (farm clubs) to help find and develop new publishers, and make them pay for the privilege. This is exactly what’s happening with the advent of publishing services like Archway Publishing (Simon & Shuster) and Westbow Press (Nelson/Zondervan).

I am not complaining here. I am celebrating the creativity not only of book writers but corporate leaders trying to meet quarterly earnings goals. Services like Archway and Westbow are like other publishing services: they provide the help you need to publish your book, with you doing the marketing, and then wait in the wings to welcome you into their fold. Everyone wins. Corporate publishing survives.

The results are in. Self-published book sales are growing four times faster than traditionally-published sales. People like books more than ever. The publishing farm system helps everyone.

See this Publishers Weekly article for more.

More about the three ways to publish.

dash it all!

Published on by Michael McCandlessLeave a comment

I can’t imagine why there’s a controversy around the using dashes correctly, but there it is. Especially the “em” dash. My position? Use the em and other types of dashes liberally, but accurately. Like so many publishing terms, the “em” in “em dash” derives from the old days of printing and typesetting. The length of an em dash, far from being arbitrary, was equal to the width of the letter “m” in whatever typeface was being used. Simple, right?

Usage

The bigger question is when to use em dashes. That’s pretty simple, too, but also a bit sublime. I find that em dashes are all about pacing — (note the em dash) guiding the reader through your text. This is really useful in fiction. Storytelling with em dashes at just the right points is almost like being there — listening to you tell the story audibly.

Less-experienced writers sometimes use an ellipsis (the three-dot thingy) where they should being using an em dash. Ellipses indicate missing text: “His boring speech began with a joke…it ended with mild applause.” In some instances, the em dash may be confused with a colon, which is used to show that what follows provides detail to what was just said, as in “We had a great summer vacation with special side trips to some of our favorite places: Disney World, Cape Canaveral, and Daytona Beach.”

More dashes

Then, there is also the “en” dash, which — you guessed it — is equal to the width of the letter “n” in the typeface. En dashes are used by rule to separate the elements of a range, as in pages 12–15, a connection, as is in the date 12–19–2025. It’s sort of like a hyper hyphen, which is just a shorter dash.

How do you insert em and en dashes? Your word processing tool may let you use the commands Insert and then Symbol. A faster way is to place your cursor where you want the em dash to appear. Then, hold down Alt and type 0151 for an em dash, 0150 for an en dash, or 0045 for a hyphen. These numbers are part of the ASCII range of codes, but that’s another post.

For more on any of this, just consult your favorite style guide (mine is the Chicago Manual of Style) , search engine, AI tool, or Wikipedia. And have fun going crazy with dashes until you get them under control.

Sum-sum-summertime reading

Published on by Michael McCandlessLeave a comment

The picture shows my perfect summertime scenario. Reading on the beach, shaded, with a tall, cool one close by. This aspirational reading scene is my hope every year around this time.

As a self-published author, you could be the name on the cover of the book enjoyed by the summertime reading enthusiast. How would that feel?

Maybe Touchwood Press Publish-It-Yourself resources can help you toward that feeling.

I like detective fiction best as a summertime read. Or that classic that I’ve been promising myself I would finally get to. I’ve been trying to finish Moby Dick since high school. I’m re-reading Slaughterhouse Five and launching a project to read all the Vonnegut books I read but didn’t understand in college.

The New York Times, Goodreads, Kirkus Reviews, and other sites with book reviewers all see summertime, and especially vacations, as reading time. Rightly so. But if you’re not getting away to the beach or wherever on vacation any time soon, find a summertime reading spot and while away a few hours a week working on that stack that’s been growing on your nightstand, or trespassing on valuable desktop real estate. Open your mind and make space for new content. Wander in your thoughts in a summertime sort of way. I mean what is summertime for?

reading: an appreciation

Published on by Michael McCandlessLeave a comment

Do you just love books? Me, too. To carry a love of reading with you for a lifetime is to never be without friends, faraway places, and fascinating stories. And books are so much less expensive than practically any other form of entertainment or lifelong learning. What a deal.

I read my first book, all the way through, when I was seven. The book was Peter Pan. Shortly after that, I sat down at the typewriter early one morning to write a book, a novel. The story of that project is for another time. But I see one thing at least in that now.

Writing starts with reading. If you do love books, stories, and learning, you have probably at least thought about writing a book of your own. A diary becomes a memoir; a special skill becomes a how-to or self-help book; a hobby becomes an expert guide; your business writing becomes a guide for new entrepreneurs and leaders; your photos or watercolors become a coffee table book; a recipe box becomes a cookbook. The possibilities are probably endless.

But how do you journey from an idea, or a diary, or random notes, or a recipe box, to a book? Find out more about that here on our website. Ask for a 1-on-1. Read one of our books. Get the story. Tell your story. It all starts with reading.

Yikes! Amazon raises prices.

Published on by Michael McCandless1 Comment

Here is Amazon’s May 30, 2025, announcement: For the first time since starting print operations almost two decades ago, starting June 10, 2025, we are changing the royalty rate for books priced below certain list prices (e.g. less than 9.99 USD) from 60% to 50%. 

I have been in and around publishing long enough to understand that printing and binding a book is not cheap. In the pre-POD (print on demand) days, printers and publishers were compelled to produce print runs as large as possible in order to reduce per-book costs to a level that they and their customers could handle.

Back when I was in the textbook publishing business (the 1980s), tiny changes in the commodity price of lumber (used to make paper) and manufactured paper caused great angst in the C-Suites of the major publishers. These same economics usually made it impossible for authors to self-publish because the print runs that printers demanded were way beyond what self-publishers could spend. We are thankful that POD technology made it possible for us to self-publish and Amazon to re-invent book selling. Note: The economic travails of the 70s and early 80s also sent US publishers as a rule to Asian printers, where labor costs were much less. This spelled the deaths of American companies and industries with long-standing stakes in book printing and binding. That’s another story.

I am impressed with how creatively Amazon configured the price increase. Lowering the commission rate for books priced below USD 9.99 is definitely a price increase for authors with books below that price level, but Amazon figured out how to give us a choice. When I received the first notice of the change, I dropped everything, logged into KDP, and raised the prices for all my books priced that were below USD 9.99 to that level. By acting fast, I was able to avoid losing any sales and avoided the lower royalty rate ahead.

When I raised my prices, I did not notice initially that there are new thresholds for most of Amazon’s non-US markets as well. So, I had to make a second pass and re-set prices for the UK, Canada, etc.

Take a quick look at this analysis of the costs of printing and binding a 200-page paperback book. Thirty-five to 45% of the total cost of printing and binding can come from paper and ink. A five ot ten percent increase (tariff or otherwise) will play havoc with the bottom line.

Cost ComponentTypical % of Total Cost
Paper25–30%
Ink10–15%
Labor15–20%
Binding10–15%
Overhead10–15%
Other (margin, packaging, etc.)10–15%

But wait, there’s more.

It seems pretty transparent that Amazon bundled a cost reduction with their price increase to soften the blow.
…we are reducing color printing costs for paperbacks in some marketplaces to help authors adopt color printing…

Color printing generally requires better-grade (thicker, denser) paper than black-and-white printing to avoid “bleed-through” and ink dispersion effects that degrade image quality. This costs more. So, by lowering the cost, Amazon has either found a workaround or is able to handle reduced margins for color printing as compared with the margin increases that they will realize from the price increases described above.

Either way, I will re-think whether I have books that will benefit from color printing. Note that the cost reductions impact both standard and premium color jobs. At Touchwood Press, we’ll be looking at the viability of creating color versions of our 50 Fun Facts print books to match the color we can include in the eBook versions of those books for readers using phones or tablets.

verso and recto

Published on by Michael McCandless4 Comments

Publishing, being based around printing, and printing, being an old thing, has given us many terms and concepts that carry on in use today. Two of these are verso and recto, denoting the left-hand and right-pages of a two-page spread.

I remember these because verso suggests the reverse side of a page, and recto starts with “r” like right-hand page. Silly but effective.

If you had never heard, much less used, these terms before, well, now you can. Let your designer or artist or formatter know that you know what these words mean in context, saying, “The copyright page will, of course, be on the verso of the title page.” Impressive.

Most important, embrace the ageyness of publishing. You love to read because generations of printers and designers and publishers built the foundations of what we do when we self-publish and made beautiful books with verso’s and recto’s all over the place. Live it.

Memoir Your Thing?

Published on by Michael McCandless1 Comment

I have a story to tell about my life, my trials, my breakthroughs. How do transform my memories into a book?

In my Publish-It-Yourself Course, I meet many writers with a strong impulse to share their life experiences and help others find a way through struggles of their own. Humble, maybe desperate beginnings, traumatic childhoods, young adult crises, adult failures. But somehow they found their way to better times, hope and healing, with support from people, faith, or inner strength.

Writing a memoir is hard. The place to start is to decide the one message that you want to pass along and maintain focus on that. Begin unpacking your memories and experiences, crafting them into clear, compelling stories. Compile the stories around a central structure and journey through your life. Forget being chronological; be thematic.

Will I offend? Will I be criticized? Will I pay for my honesty? These and more questions will challenge your resolve and eat away valuable time better spent just writing.

As you begin writing, read what others have said about the writing of memoirs. Here is a short list of the best of the best:

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr. As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past. Anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Agonizing over the seemingly impossible task of writing a school report on birds, Anne’s father counseled “bird by bird. Just take it bird by bird.” For a quarter century, more than a million readers—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice and learned how to approach writing memoir. 

Educated by Tara Westover. About a young woman home-schooled and isolated by survivalist parents to age 17. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, this bestseller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work.

Where do I start?

Published on by Michael McCandlessLeave a comment

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end. Then stop.”
— Alice in Wonderland

“Start with the end in mind.”
— The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Take time to imagine your finished book—in your hands, handing “thanks for your support” copies to relatives and friends, on the book shelf of someone you’ve just met, in your favorite book store and library, on an e-reader or tablet, as an audio book. How does that feel?

Continue reading “Where do I start?” →

Do-it-yourself…or get a little help.

Published on by Michael McCandlessLeave a comment

Publish-It-Yourself is just like “Do-It-Yourself” before computers. Back when I was a new homeowner, I spent many off-work hours doing it myself—our household plumbing, our garage, basement, and backyard. I gave this up when I got hooked on doing computer stuff because I discovered I was less likely to cause damage to myself and others and because all those trips to the hardware store—to pick up what I forgot the last time or replace what I’d broken—got expensive. Like the guy in the picture, I exchanged my DIY’er tools for PIY’er tools.

Luckily, I knew my way around a word processing program and loved to read, so the transition was fairly painless. And I’d had some experience working for an actual publisher, so I had a basic idea of how books are made.

Enter print-on-demand. Now, the economics of making and selling books became doable because you did not need to use up your life saving printing a garageful of books, hoping you could find someone to buy them. Print-on-demand means you can print books one at a time, as you sell them.

You can absolutely learn and accomplish everything required to publish your own books on your own. And the first time around, you should keep at it until you succeed. You will then be able to say you are a published author. How about that?

Sooner or later, you will see that publishing is a collaborative art form and craft, like movies. There are freelancers and professional groups all around, and at every price-point, who can help. A good place to start looking is Reedsy.com or just by searching book editors or book printers. When you’re ready, getting a little help is the way to go. Maintain your independence, but with some help from experts. Join a community like ALLi, the Alliance of Independent Authors. Commune with other self-publishers as a supporter of Joanna Penn on Patreon. Help is all around. But publish-it-yourself first. The experience and thrill of meeting someone for the first time and saying “Oh me? I’m a published author” can’t be beat.

Now, you can do your own book yourself, get your creative out, and dream of fame and fortune on the best seller list…or not. But the first step is getting inspired. Read on.