Reply To: Inside Margin Calculator?

Baah Humbug. Prepress isn't very helpful, sadly. (Though they are very nice!) They just tell me to keep doing what I'm doing, which is a 7/8 inch inside margin. Personally, I find it too big and would like to go smaller. Have a 8.5L x 5.5W book, 512 pages, perfect bound, 1/2 inch outer margin, 7/8 inch inner margin. Would love to shrink margins and reduce page count, too. But am afraid a) i'll shrink inner margin too much and text will dissapear into spine and b) the book will look too crowded.

Anyway, thanks Eugene for the thorough answer!