Book Sizes

By sticking to the below sizes and formats, you should be safe for a UK printed book:

U.S. Trade 6 x 9" 15.24 x 22.86 cm	Black & White Perfect Bound books - 48 to 700 Pages Black & White Casewrap Hardcover books - 108 to 700 pages Black & White Dust Jacket Hardcover books - 108 to 700 pages
U.S. Letter 8.5 x 11" 21.59 x 27.94 cm	Black & White Perfect Bound books - 48 to 700 Pages Color Saddle Stitch books - 4 to 48 pages Color Perfect Bound books - 48 to 480 pages
Large Square 8.5 x 8.5" 21.59 x 21.59 cm	Color Saddle Stitch books - 4 to 48 pages Color Perfect Bound books - 48 to 480 pages
Royal 15.59 x 23.38 cm 6.13 x 9.21"	Black & White Perfect Bound books - 68 to 700 pages
Crown Quarto 18.90 x 24.58 cm 7.44 x 9.68"	Black & White Perfect Bound books - 68 to 700 Pages
A4 20.99 x 29.70 cm 8.26 x 11.69"	Black & White Perfect Bound books - 68 to 700 Pages

The cheapest of the above options is the Royal (6.13 by 9.21), and to be honest for anything like a professional look you need to have a perfect bound. Lulu provide templates for all their size options that can be used with Microsoft Word, and using these templates can save you a lot of time and heartache later on in the publishing process. With regards to what font to use, and what point size, any of the fonts that have 'book' in the title would be appropriate for a published book. Fonts like Times New Roman may look fine on the computer screen, but apart from not being as easy on the eye in printed form, they scream self published. I personally use Bookman Old Style with a point size of 9 for my book, but it would be best to print a few out and see which you feel most comfortable with. Obviously the larger the point size, the more pages your book will have, this will increase the cost, and if you go too large it will look like a book for the partially sighted. Certainly anything above 12 point should not be used for a novel, unless it is for young children, then a little larger is acceptable. So far we have a book size, font type and size, so we should now be able to calculate the number of pages. From this number we should be able to work out the cost of printing for the book. There is an extremely useful calculator for this here. This tool will also help you cost how much royalty you might receive.