Eye-Catching Booklet Printing. Accessible team and fair prices

Combine your creativity with our paper and ink

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.

Start Your Booklet Printing Journey!

➡️ exwhyzed.com/print-journey

Get Inspired

How much does it cost to print a booklet?

We are here to help

Preparing artwork for booklet printing

Placing an online booklet order

PUSH THE BOUNDARIES

Your print, tailored to your ideas

Challenge convention and print your booklet at a custom size that works best for your project.

The largest portrait size we can produce is an impressive A3 booklet printing (420mm high x 297mm wide). Our maximum square size is 297x297mm. The maximum landscape size is 210mm high x 297mm wide.

For cost-effective sizes keep your booklet printing within A4 portrait, A5 landscape or 210x210mm square – these are the cheapest sizes to print but do choose the size that best fits your publication.

Booklet Printing Sizes>>>

ABOUT EX WHY ZED

Our goal is to get your creative idea into print

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 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!

For the larger budget publications we offer a range of premium additional extras. Make your project jump out at the audience with the GF Smith, Antalis Creative, Fenner Paper and Fedrigoni range of papers or choose an ultra luxury cover finish like spot UV varnishing, embossing or foiling.

Booklets lend themselves to many possibilities. How about printing one of these…

For your business:
Product Range Catalogues
Promotional Brochures
Brand Guidelines
Fashion Lookbooks
Annual Reports
Product Pricelists

To promote your creativity:
Art Gallery Catalogues
Fine Art Books
Coffee Table Books
Creative Zines
Degree Show Catalogues
Illustrated Comics
Illustrated Diaries
Promotional Portfolio
Self Published Books
Sketch Books
Note Books
Graphic Novels

To showcase your photographic skills:
Beautiful Photo Books
Creative Photo Journals
Hard Back Photobooks
Annual of your best images

KEEP IT ALL TOGETHER

Booklet binding options

Wire Stitched / Saddle Stitched / Staple Binding

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.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?

Pricing

Booklet printing offers a huge number of variables and as a result it would be impossible to quote for every eventuality. We price competitively because we want to get your work into print and then if its a success and you’re happy with the quality, we hope you’ll come back for a second…third…..and fourth order.

Please email us with your spec to hello@exwhyzed.com taking into account the following factors and we will get a quote back to you asap.

• Quantity
• Finished Size
• Total Pages (see ‘Helpful Tips’ above)
• Cover Card/Paper Choice (silk, gloss or uncoated)
• Inside Pages Paper Choice (silk, gloss or uncoated)
• Binding Method
• Full Colour or Black Ink Printing
• Matt or Gloss Lamination are strongly recommended on covers printed onto 200gsm or more to prevent cracking on the fold.
• There are also a range of premium cover options we can add including Spot UV Varnishing, Silver and Gold foiling and Embossing however these start at £280 and can add a significant amount to the total cost of your booklet.

Or just go ahead and jump on our Project Builder – easy!

Get your print quote

THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING

Enjoy examples of our recent booklet printing

BBC Sport x Eric Fest

Brixton House

Ephemera Zine

Converse Footpatrol lookbooks

Jake Tilson Ninja Peanut

Dominic Marley

Michael Borchard

Stella Sport lookbooks

We Make London

See all our case studies

Get a Booklet Print quote

BENEFITS OF PRINTING WITH EX WHY ZED

When printing booklets with Ex Why Zed you get all of the following as standard...

Helpful Tips

Our ‘house’ papers are significantly more cost-effective than branded sheets. If you are unsure which finish and weight of paper will work best with your artwork then drop us an email with your address and we’ll happily send out a sample pack.

Print run length

If you are printing more than 700 copies then we will litho print your job and it is then good practice to ensure page quantities are multiples of 8 and 16 so 8/16/24/32/40 – makes it easier for us to print and cheaper for you!

Super Helpful Set Up Guides

Our file set up guides provide all the information you need to correctly set up artwork for print. This can take a while to work out at first but ultimately we’ll need you to supply us with hi res pdfs please saved as PDFx1a (choose this from the top drop down menu when you export to pdf) and then in the Marks and Bleeds menu tick crop marks and add ‘3mm’ into the four bleed boxes. For extensive help on setting up your booklet file for print have a look at our Resource section.

Great Customer Service

We will get back to you within a few hours, usually quicker. Sometimes, we’ll get back to you before it even feels like you pressed “Send” on the email. Look, we’re not sitting here twiddling our thumbs but we certainly won’t make you wait days for a response to a quote request or email.

File checking is standard

We understand that you might not be 100% confident in preparing artwork for print. When you send us your files, they are thoroughly checked and we always come back to you with recommendations for improvement if something doesn’t look right,

Environmentally friendly papers.

All of our papers are FSC Approved. These are arguably better than 100% recycled papers because there are less chemicals involved in making them. We also use vegetable inks on our litho press.

We are online company but with real people

We don’t believe that you should have to settle for the bare minimum from your print company. You have spent hours, weeks and months preparing your stunning artwork so why would you now go and give it to a printer where you can get an instant price, upload a pdf, then the files disappear and you have to keep your fingers crossed that what turns up is what you expected?

Free Sample Packs

While we’ve done our best on our paper choices page to make one sheet of white paper look different to another sheet of white paper, there’s nothing better than seeing them in reality so you can stroke, sniff and examine them in close up. Jump on our form and we will send out a pack out asap.

STILL HAVE QUESTIONS?

The complete glossary of 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:

Binding Options

Paper Choices

Paper Sizes

Styling a booklet for print

View all our FAQ's

How long does it take?

We will aim to deliver the finished books in 4/5 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. <link>

What paper can I print onto?

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.

What sizes do you print?

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.

What is wire stitching?

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 🙂

What is perfect binding?

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.

What is cover lamination?

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!

Do I need lamination on my cover?

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.

Booklet Printing in 2024