I don't agree with the old saying "You can't tell a book by its cover". As far as digital art goes, the artwork on the book cover is a window to what's inside. Let's assume that you have your book layout completed in InDesign and your ready to add the cover.

One question that I frequently get is how to setup the pagination in InDesign^R CS5.5 so that the cover is not counted as a page of the book. This is an easy problem to fix. Let's assume that our sample book project is a small children's book that has ten pages and the cover. We have set the document to use facing pages.

Our next step is to add a dynamic page number text field to the Master page. This will cause the correct page number to be displayed on each page of the book.

1. From the Pages panel, double-click on the Master page spread.

We will want to add a dynamic page number text field to both the left and right Master.

2. With the Type tool, add a text box to the left Master.

3. Right click on the box and choose Insert Special Character - Markers - Current Page Number from the menu. You will see a small A added inside the text box.

4. Repeat this for the right Master.

Moving from the Master pages and back to the actual pages in the Pages panel, as you click on each page thumbnail, you can see that each page now has it's own page number.

When we import the cover image with the Place command and position it on the first page of the page 1- 11 sequence, the other ten pages of our book are still 2 - 11. This is not what most people want. So how did we change the pagination?

InDesign has a built-in function for solving this problem.

1. Select all page thumbnails in the Pages panel.

2. From the Pages panel menu, uncheck both Allow Document Pages to Shuffle and Allow Selected Spreads to Shuffle.

3. Select only the page 2 thumbnail in the Pages panel.

4. Right-click on the thumbnail and choose Numbering and Section Options.

5. In the Start Section area of the dialog box, select the radio button next to Start Page Numbering at input box.

6. Add "1" to the input box and click OK.

Although the numbers under the page thumbnails still show 1 -11, you will see that the current page number on page 2 now shows a 1.

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