BOOKS
Maybe you have written and planned it out but aren’t sure on how to put it all together, what options of paper or how to send it to us. Here’s some tips to help you make the right choices.
Supplying Artwork
If you are supplying artwork, and some pages have the design that goes to the edge of a page, the finished pdf artwork will require 3mm bleed. This will add 3mm to each edge and then the total size of the pages of the book. An A4 (210x297mm) page will then be 216x303mm. See our page on Bleed if you would like this explained a bit more thoroughly.
Files should be supplied as pdfs with a reasonable quality. Photos and pixel artwork needs to be 300dpi at actual size. If you are having trouble determining, just get in touch with us. It’s our job to help you get things printed!
Page Margins
Setting up margins on a book correctly is very important. That being said, there is quite a bit of flexibility in the design of a book. Generally, a decent border around each page is good design. Objects, colours and photos can be printed to the edge, as long as the book has bleed. Important things like key people in photos or text should be well away from the edge of a page. In addition to this, an extra amount of tolerance should be applied to the binding edge, depending on the type of book being made. See the sections below for tips and what to look out for when designing each type of book.
Types of Books
Wirebinding
See below for more detailed info and tips on each type!
Perfect Binding (Glue Binding)
Saddle Stitched (Staple-Bound)
Wirebinding
A line of holes is punched along the binding edge and then a metal coil is inserted and attached.
A Wirebound book opens the flattest. Design-wise it’s pretty forgiving, as long as an allowance has been made on the spine edge of each page. The line of holes is slightly variable but allowing a good 10mm, plus your designed centre margin should keep the book looking tidy.
If you’re using design software that displays your design in 2-page spreads, a Wirebound book that requires bleed needs to be designed as single pages! Since the binding edge of each page is visible, we need bleed on the ‘inside’ of each page.
Perfect Binding (Glue Binding)
The inside pages are bound with a strong strip of glue. A wrap-around card cover is then applied to the outside. A paperback novel would have this type of binding.
These books need to have a design allowance along the binding edge. Around a centimetre along the spine edge becomes obscured by the glued pages. Take a look at a paperback book that you might have at home to see this.
A Perfect Bound book loses some of the page visibility as the centre of each spread curls around into the spine. A good 5mm would be totally lost and after that is a space where the pages are quite rolled around. If you started to place objects at 15mm away from the spine edge, that would be the minimum space that you could comfortably read a block of text.
This type of book can be designed in 2’s (like 28, 30, 50, etc.) If you had an odd number of pages designed, a blank, unprinted page would be the reverse side of the last page. Other options could be designing one more page or adding a blank page at the start of the book. (Keep in mind that adding a page early can throw off the way pages are displayed. If you had 2-page spreads that work together visually, this would push the second side of this spread to the next page all the way down the book.)
Saddle Stitched (Staple-Bound)
Pages are printed in 4-page sections, folded in half, collated together, and then stapled along the spine edge.
This type of book requires the pages to be in multiples of 4. Think of a piece of paper folded in half; it sort of makes a 4-page book. Stapled books are made of multiple sections like this.
A stapled book opens reasonably flat. It’s possible that pages can be designed with graphics placed across a 2-page spread, especially if it is on the centre-spread in the middle of the book. However... other than the centre pages, it’s recommended that important things, like photos, don’t cross the page spine area.
Still curious why? That’s because a stapled book requires creep. It’s maybe more boring than scary. See below...
Book Creep
When the pages are folded, put together and stapled, we would then make a final trim, using the trim marks on the cover. The disadvantage of this type of binding is the total thickness of the pages. Let’s say that the measure of the unfolded pages is 2mm. Now, due to the bulk of the pages, it has pushed out each page by one paper width. The centre-spread is pushed out the furthest at 2mm away from the outside of the spine. So, now, 2mm of the outside of the innermost page will be trimmed off.
This situation is called ‘page creep’. Our machines can actually allow for this and print each page slightly closer to the spine. Removing a sliver of artwork from the spine edge works most of the time and keeps things, like page numbers, in the same place.
If your book is designed with generous margins, you might not even notice 2mm. On the other hand, if you have designed important things too close to the edge of the page, or across two pages, we might have a situation where the artwork would require an alteration.
Other Types of Books & Specialty Finishing
We have a fully equipped print factory on-site. Things like laminated covers or even gold foiling is possible at Razz. We actually have several finishing processes at our disposal to give your book an extra boost.
If you have something out of the ordinary, get in touch with us as soon as you can. In many cases, it’s more economical for us to advise you on how it should be designed before it’s too far into the project.
Hard Cover Books
A hard cover book can either be glued, similar to perfect binding, or case bound, which is sewn sections.
Since this is an uncommon requirement, this is one of the few things that we don’t do in-house. We have a working partnership with New Zealand bookbinder to help us with this.
For the most part, this is a very expensive option. There is a lot of set-up for this process and that makes the price per book quite high. It is possible to lower the per unit price, but these days, most people don’t require enough copies to get this figure to a desirable amount.
Please get in touch with us if you think that you might have enough numbers or would like to have this option regardless.
Many people that would like a book printed have a good idea of what they want. If this sounds like you, ask for a quote. You can request more than one amount if you would like to compare quantity prices.