# Book Template (Print-Ready 6×9) > A complete 6×9 book you can use as a starting point: half title, title page, copyright, dedication, contents, preface, chapter openers on right-hand pages, a scene break, a block quote, a figure and back matter. Blue guide labels name each part and its rule. Source: https://buildpdfs.com/templates/book-template Category: Digital Products A complete 6×9 book you can use as a starting point: half title, title page, copyright, dedication, contents, preface, chapter openers on right-hand pages, a scene break, a block quote, a figure and back matter. Blue guide labels name each part and its rule. ## What's included - 6×9 in trim with mirrored margins: 0.75 in inside (gutter), 0.5 in outside - Front matter in book order: half title, title page, copyright, dedication, contents, preface - Roman page numbers in the front matter; page 1 starts at chapter one - Chapters start on a right-hand page with a sunk title and no running head - Running heads: author on left pages, book title on right pages - Scene break, block quote and a captioned figure inside the margins (no bleed) - Back matter: acknowledgments, about the author, also by - Guide labels on each part of the book; delete them before you publish ## Sample content Half title · title only · right-hand page ### The Orchard Year Title page · title, subtitle, author, imprint ### The Orchard Year Twelve months on my father's apple farm ❦ Ruth Calloway Independently published Copyright page · left-hand page · ISBN and imprint _The Orchard Year: Twelve Months on My Father's Apple Farm_ Copyright © 2026 Ruth Calloway. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the author, except for short quotations in reviews. This is a work of memoir. Some names and details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people in it. ISBN: \[paperback ISBN\] Independently published First edition, 2026\. Set in Crimson Pro and Jost. Dedication · right-hand page For Dad, who knew every tree by name. Contents · page numbers come from the layout #### Contents * Preface * 1 Pruning in the Snow * 2 The North Block * Acknowledgments * About the Author Preface · front matter · roman page numbers #### Preface My father planted his first apple tree in 1974, the spring before I was born. By the time he died, the farm on Hollow Road had four hundred and twelve trees, a cider press that leaked, and a ledger in which he wrote down the weather every single day for forty-nine years. I came home for what I thought would be a month, to settle the estate and sell the land. I stayed a year. This book is that year, month by month, told mostly through the trees, because that is how my father would have told it. I am not a farmer. I learned most of what is in these pages by getting it wrong first. Where the ledger and my memory disagree, I have trusted the ledger. Chapter opener · right-hand page · sunk title · no running head Chapter One #### Pruning in the Snow The ledger for the first week of January says only _cold, clear, pruned the Macs_. My father pruned in the snow because the trees were asleep and he was not. He said a dormant tree tells you everything: you can see every branch that crosses another, every shoot that grows straight up and steals the light, every limb that will break under fruit in September. I found his loppers on a nail in the barn, the handles wrapped in electrical tape where his hands had worn through the rubber. The blades were sharp. Of course they were. The first tree I cut was a McIntosh near the gate, older than me. I stood under it for twenty minutes before I made a single cut, and when I did, I took the wrong branch. You can't put a branch back. That was the first lesson of the orchard, and it turned out to be the first lesson of the year. Our neighbor, Walt Pruitt, came across the road on the third day with a thermos of coffee and watched me work for a while without saying anything. Then he took the loppers out of my hands, showed me where to stand, and gave them back. > Block quote · set in from both sides > > "Open the middle," he said. "Your dad always said you should be able to throw a cat through an apple tree." > > "Did he ever throw a cat through an apple tree?" > > "Not that I saw." By the end of the month I had pruned the Macs, the Cortlands and half of the Northern Spies. My shoulders ached in a way they had never ached at a desk. At night I read the ledger by the woodstove and found that the January entries were almost the same every year: the trees, the weather, the date of the first cut. A man who had written down the same few words for half a century, and never once got bored of them. Scene break · centered ornament❦ The letter from the realtor came on the thirty-first. A developer in town had made an offer for the whole of Hollow Road, trees and all. It was a fair offer. It was more than fair. I put it on the kitchen table under the salt shaker, and went back out to finish the Spies before the light went. The snow was blue by then, the way it gets just before dark, and the cut ends of the branches showed white against it. I counted them as I walked back to the house. It seemed important to know how many. Chapter Two #### The North Block Every orchard has a part that its owner doesn't talk about. On Hollow Road it was the north block: three rows of trees at the top of the hill, planted in 1987, that had never once given a good crop. Too much wind, my father said. Wrong rootstock, said Walt. The ledger has a different theory, written small in the margin of a page from 1991: _my fault_. In February I walked up there with a notebook and drew every tree, the way he must have drawn them when he planted. Nine trees to a row. Some were strong. Some had died and been left standing, grey and bare, because cutting them down would have meant admitting they were gone. Farm track · wind from the north-west Figure · inside the margins, so no bleed The north block in February. 27 trees in three rows. ● bearing ○ weak ◌ dead Eleven strong trees, eight weak, eight dead. I sat on the stone wall at the end of the third row and looked at the drawing for a long time. Then I did the thing my father never did. I called a nursery in the valley and ordered eight new trees, on a rootstock that Walt swore would stand up to the wind. Walt came up the hill in April to help me dig the holes. He did not ask why I was planting trees on land I was about to sell, and I did not tell him. We worked down the rows in silence, the way my father and he used to, and when the last tree was in he leaned on his spade and looked at the line of them, eight thin whips tied to eight stakes, bending in the wind. "He'd have liked that," he said. "He'd have said you put them in crooked. But he'd have liked it." That night I wrote in the ledger for the first time. _Wind NW, cold. Planted eight Liberty on Geneva 41, north block. Walt helped._ My handwriting looked wrong under his, too round and too careful. I wrote the next day's entry anyway, and the one after that. They would not bear fruit for four years. I knew that when I ordered them. I did not yet know what it meant: that some part of me had already decided not to sell. Back matter · acknowledgments, about the author #### Acknowledgments Thank you to Walt and June Pruitt, who fed me more often than I fed myself that year. To the Hollow Road Grange, for letting me read early chapters aloud and laughing in the right places. And to my sister Anne, who read every draft and never once asked when I was coming home. #### About the Author Ruth Calloway grew up on an apple farm in western New York and spent twenty years as a copy editor in Chicago before she went back. She still keeps the ledger. _The Orchard Year_ is her first book. #### Also by Ruth Calloway _Hollow Road Cider_ A small book of recipes from the press _Forty-Nine Winters_ Selections from a farm ledger, 1974–2023 ## Frequently asked questions ### What pages does a book need, and in what order? A printed book usually opens with a half title, a title page, a copyright page, an optional dedication, the contents and a preface or introduction. Chapter one starts on a right-hand page. Back matter (acknowledgments, about the author, other books) comes at the end. This template has each page in that order. ### Can I write my book in Google Docs and use this template? Yes. Write in Google Docs with Heading 1 for chapter titles, then use File > Download > Microsoft Word (.docx). Upload the .docx to BuildPDFs and ask for this template. The AI moves your text into the 6×9 layout with front matter, chapter openers, running heads and page numbers. ### What trim size should I choose? 6×9 in is the most common size for nonfiction and memoir. 5×8 and 5.5×8.5 in are common for fiction. Ask the AI for another trim and it re-flows the book; for a 5.5×8.5 novel, start from the novel template. ### Are these margins right for KDP? KDP asks for an inside margin of 0.375 to 0.875 in, by page count, and at least 0.25 in on the other sides. This template uses 0.75 in inside and 0.5 in outside, which meets the KDP minimums for books up to 700 pages. Source: KDP Help, checked November 2026. ### Is this book template free? Yes. You can edit the template for free and download a print-ready PDF. ## Related reading - [The full self-publishing steps, from manuscript to KDP](https://buildpdfs.com/guides/how-to-self-publish-a-book) - [From Google Docs or Word to a print-ready PDF](https://buildpdfs.com/guides/word-google-docs-to-professional-pdf) [Use this template](https://buildpdfs.com/signup?templateId=book-template) — free, no credit card required.