<p>I heard 0.5 inches on each side is enough for a thin (<0.5cm tall) 8.5"x11" spiral/ring-bound book. Is this true? What about the cover? The objects on the cover seem quite off-center if I leave a 0.5" margin on the left side. Should it be less for the cover or the same?</p>
<p>For a coil-bound book, for the coil to not intersect the contents of the page you should leave a .25 in gutter. You should probably add an additional 1/8th inch to this for text. All around the rest of the page text should be at least 1/8in to 1/4in away from the edge of the paper.</p>
<p>If you are working with full bleeds (images that run to the edge of the paper), you should use a layout program such as Adobe InDesign, and set up your document to include a 1/8th in bleed margin around your page (there are provisions to do this), that way when the printer (the people who print and bind your book) prints the pages the images will extend beyond the size of the page, and when they cut them down the edge of the picture will get cut off leaving a perfect bleed. For one-sided pages this isn’t as important- but since it’s very hard to perfectly line up double-sided pages, it is very important to take advantage of this for duplex (double sided) bleeds.</p>
<p>Good luck! I know how time consuming and frustrating the portfolio process is!!</p>
<p>And to answer your question about the cover: for a coil-bound book, the cover needs a .25 in margin on the left-side if it is to open like a normal book. For a perfect bound book (like a softcover book), you would only need perhaps a 1/8th in margin for text.</p>