Ex Why Zed is a dynamic, independently-owned print company. We offer digital and litho booklet printing with a focus on quality and attention to detail to produce inspirational work. We specialise in creative booklets for illustrators and photographers, catalogues and yearbook printing for University art students, right through to luxury glossy brochures for household name companies.
How much does it cost to print a booklet?
Welcome to Ex Why Zed's comprehensive guide on booklet printing!
In this video, we delve deep into everything you need to know about creating stunning booklets. Whether you're a designer, photographer, illustrator, or SME owner, this guide is packed with valuable insights and practical tips to help you print the perfect booklet.
For short run booklets our market leading Indigo digital press offers exceptional quality printing at a cost effective price whilst our extensive litho department ensures you a competitive booklet printing quote for medium and longer print runs.
The only constraints on the size of your brochure printing is your imagination. We can staple bind (saddle stitch/wire stitch) or perfect bind booklets from smaller than A6 to larger than A3. If you’re feeling creative then choose a custom booklet size and we’ll probably able to print that too!
Booklets lend themselves to many possibilities. How about printing one of these…
Booklet Printing for Business:
Product Range Catalogues
Promotional Brochures
Brand Guidelines
Fashion Look Books
Annual Reports
Event Programmes
Local History Exhibitions
Creative Booklet Printing:
Beautiful Photography Booklets
Photography Zines
Art Gallery Catalogues
Degree Show Catalogues
Illustrated Comics and Graphic Novels
Promotional Portfolio
Colouring Booklets for Children and Adults
Notebooks
Newspapers - either Nested or Stapled
To help you make informed print choices when you embark on your exciting booklet printing journey, we have curated, analysed and dissected a series of recent projects to show you what can be achieved.
To create results that stand out, we give attention to paper weight, colour consistency, and purposeful design. Projects covering fashion and photography, like Je M’appelle or A Slick Summer to Remember, rely on precise black-and-white tones or vivid accents. Community-led pieces such as Made In Our One Square Mile or Danielle Dean's Hemel Hempstead: New Town from Old use understated layouts and wire stitching to present local stories with clarity. Meanwhile, Sustainable Printing – Stella McCartney Sport x Adidas Lookbooks prove that eco-friendly paper can still deliver vibrant images. If you would like to explore an A5 zine, a larger format showpiece, or a distinctive design of your own, get a Booklet Print Quote and let us bring your vision to print. We are here to show why Ex Why Zed is the number one choice for booklet printing.
Other examples of superb booklets where the combination of paper, size and finish choices has created an eye-catching aesthetic are A5 Booklet Printing Made Easy for Illustrator Ollie Hirst, Large Format Booklet Printing – Showcasing Tiwi Artistry at JGM Gallery, Programme Booklet Printing for What’s Happening at The Place, Our Tiny Bees Product Lookbooks, The Dyke Express, and Ashdown Forest: Through the Seasons by Craig Payne.
Staple Bound Booklets. Also know as Wire Stitching / Saddle Stitching
A printed document is saddle stitched by stapling its sheets at the fold of the spine over a mechanical ‘saddle’. This process is best for booklets up to 48 pages. If you have more than 40 pages then the thickness of the inside pages will cause the cover to ‘bounce’ open when laid flat rather than staying closed. Crucially, the number of pages needs to be a multiple of four to work as a wire stitched booklet.
Perfect Bound / PUR Bound
Perfect binding is the process of gluing the inside sheets to the cover. We align the left-hand edges of the inside pages and bind them with glue to an external cover, giving a square finish. If the spine is less than 3mm (32 pages in total) then you would need to go for wire stitching (stapling).
We also have a guide showing how the cover hinge works on a perfect bound book.
Getting a Quote
Please go ahead and jump on our Project Builder or email us with your spec directly to hello@exwhyzed.com taking into account the following factors and we will get a quote back to you asap: Size, number of pages, quantity, any preference on finish (silk, gloss or uncoated).
Enjoy examples of our recent booklet printing
We have done our best to give you a huge wealth of information on this page and in our guides but here are some frequently asked questions to help you get your work into print.
Here are some short snippet video guides on styling and designing a publication:
We will aim to deliver the finished booklets in 3-5 working days after receiving your print-ready artwork. If you are working to a crucial hand in deadline then we strongly advise leaving more time in case there are any artwork issues with your files or courier problems with delivery.
Additionally there can be a day or two of amends required to the artwork before it's print ready which we're more than happy to help with but you'll need to factor that in to timings.
Remember, we’ll need a hi res pdf file with 3mm bleed and crop marks on each edge to go ahead please. Sending it over correctly first time means we can go straight to print. Do have a last check through our file set up guides to make sure all the boxes are ticked.
There are almost infinite possibilities on size, finishing and papers. However, the three basic choices for paper finish are silk, gloss or uncoated. Your inside pages will be between 100 and 170gsm. For a thick cover choose 300gsm or 350gsm. The best thing to do is take a while to watch out video guides and look through our case study portfolio. We have listed the print spec of each book so if there is something that will work well for your publication, note down the spec and we can quote on like-for-like.
The max portrait size will be 420mm high x 297mm wide. The maximum square size is 297x297mm. The maximum landscape size is 210mm high x 297mm wide.
Wire stitching is a little bit of print jargon for ‘stapling’. If you have an A5 booklet then we print it onto A4 sheets, fold them in and put staples along the left-hand edge to bind the sheet together. In some quarters, this is also known as ‘saddle stitching’. Let’s stick with stapling though if that’s easier 🙂
The perfect bound method of binding will give your publication a square spine and professional looking finish.
For further advice follow our perfect binding set up guides.
Matt Lamination works best with silk and uncoated covers. We would suggest using gloss lamination if you are aiming for a super shiny, high impact cover. Soft-touch has a velvet, illustrious feel but does attract finger marks REALLY quickly so best not eat your lunch before reading!
The short answer: when paper is printed, the ink sits on the surface. When it is then folded to make your cover the ink can crack. While you should never judge a book by it’s cover, this cracking will look unprofessional. Lamination is a thin layer of protection which prevents the ink cracking. Win win. It comes in matt or gloss.
Absolutely! You can view our case study on Unlocking Creativity for Zoe Welch to see how we brought her project to life. This will give you an idea of the quality and attention to detail we bring to every zine we print.
We are dedicated to providing personalised service and high-quality printing solutions. Our experience with artists like Zoe Welch demonstrates our ability to support creatives in producing publications that truly reflect their work and engage their audience.
