Add bleed and trim marks for print submission
Bleed is the extra artwork outside the finished edge that stops a slightly-off cut from showing white paper. An A5 page at 148 x 210 mm becomes a 154 x 216 mm PDF.
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Why 3 mm
Sheets are printed oversized and then guillotined at the trim line, and a guillotine is accurate to about one or two millimetres. If the background stops exactly at the trim line, a miss shows as a white sliver down one edge. Extending it 3 mm past the line hides that. The same tolerance means text should stay at least 3 mm inside the line.
Do you actually want the marks?
Most Japanese doujinshi printers ask for bleed but no trim marks, which is the default here — A5 comes out at 154 x 216 mm. Shops that want marks, or that expect an Illustrator-style submission, get them with the checkbox: 10 mm of extra paper on each side, so the same A5 lands at 174 x 236 mm. Bleed, trim marks and paper thickness differ from printer to printer — always check the spec sheet of the shop you are submitting to.
Reading a double trim mark
Japanese corner marks come in pairs. The inner line marks the trim; the outer line marks the edge of the bleed, and the gap between them is the bleed amount — normally 3 mm. The centre mark on each edge is a registration target used for folding and for lining the front of the sheet up with the back.
Vocabulary: bleed, trim, safe area
Japanese shops call the bleed nuritashi or dobu. Trim marks are tombo. The trim line is the finished page outline; the 3 mm inside it is the safe area, where nothing important should sit because a cut can wander into it.
Frequently asked questions
What if the source artwork has no bleed at all?
Choosing "scale up to fill" enlarges each page by roughly four percent so the artwork reaches the bleed edge. That crops a sliver off every side, so if something sits near the edge, choose "leave it white" and extend the background in your source file instead.
Can the bleed be something other than 3 mm?
Yes — type any value. Japan standardises on 3 mm; Western printers use 3 mm or an eighth of an inch, which is 3.175 mm.
Does the page count change?
No. Every page of the source becomes exactly one bleed-sized page in the output.