The shortest page in the catalogue
At 11 by 12 inches this is nearly square, and it is the smallest custom newspaper format covered on this site. That shape is unusual enough to be worth thinking about before you commit: a nearly square page does not read as a newspaper the way a tall one does, and layouts built on tall narrow columns look wrong on it.
What it is genuinely good for is short publications where a tall page would look empty. Event programmes, order of service papers, single day conference handouts and small product catalogues all suit it. If your content runs to four or eight pages, this proportion carries it better than a 22 inch broadsheet would.
Half an inch, all four edges, no exceptions
MakeMyNewspaper applies the same rule to every format it sells: half an inch of white around all four edges of every page, and no bleeds accepted at all. That gives a printable area of 10 by 11 inches here.
The uniformity is a genuine convenience compared with Newspaper Club, where the margin differs between formats and does not always apply to the inside edge. Learn the rule once and it holds across the whole MakeMyNewspaper range. The strictness about bleed is the part to internalise: nothing can touch the edge of the paper, so a design built around a full bleed photograph or a colour band running off the page has to be reworked rather than adjusted.
Working in inches
MakeMyNewspaper publishes in inches because it is an American printer, and if you design in millimetres you will be converting constantly. 11 by 12 inches is 279.4 by 304.8mm and the half inch margin is 12.7mm, none of which are round numbers to work with. Setting your document units to inches from the start avoids a whole class of small rounding mistakes, and the unit switch on the margin calculator will give you either.