You can use your designs, illustrations or photos to personalise a notebook. How about running a promotional campaign to enhance your business brand by printing your company details onto notebooks and sending them out to regular customers. We let you choose from many finishes, sizes, binding options and even multiple cover designs for your notebook printing.
Think about it, you have created some brilliant designs maybe for wallpaper, greetings cards or icons now why not add them to the cover of a notebook? Everyone loves stationery! Simply supply your cover design, let us know how many blank leaves you would like inside (25 is a good number and will make the books around 4mm thick) and we’ll print then deliver within a week.
What an easy solution for repurposing your work! You’ve already spent the time creating some magnificent illustrations for your children’s book or art prints so why not drop them into illustrator, convert them to line art and bingo, you’ve got a colouring book or a notebook too!
Two revenue streams and publications for the time it took you to design one! Plus it’s a lot cheaper for us to print black and white inside pages so they can be sold for a nice cover price to your followers, online or in your gift shop.
Sit back and enjoy our ultimate guide which talks you through all the options at Ex Why Zed for printing the perfect notebook, journal or wellbeing publication.
We discuss the binding, size, premium and layout options to help you narrow down the choices for your upcoming project.
"It was just by the counter". The familiar refrain when you get home and realise you bought a notebook completely adhoc. Chances are you won't even use it but the cover design jumped out and everyone loves pretty stationery, right? with I am sure we have all been to a shop, tourist attraction or heritage site and been compelled to do exactly this.
There are no rules for Notebooks! You have creative freedom to put whatever you like on the cover and someone somewhere will love it! Choose from your favourite photos from a round the world trip, that one special illustration you’ve finally nailed or maybe some creative typography to entice and inspire.
Use the cover as a way of keeping your brand in the reader’s mind for the whole time they’re making notes. Add your logo on the back cover so they remember where it was brought from and come back for a new one when the pages are all filled up.
Why not produce a range of notebooks to sell as a set?
Dive into our dedicated page and start your Gratitude Journal Printing journey to help people's daily appreciation.
Let’s start with the size…the most common ones are A6, A5, A4 or 210x210mm. We do charge a little extra for bespoke sizes but feel free to choose any size between A6 and A3 that best suits your design.
Next up, the cover choices. 300gsm is a good weight for a notebook cover and you have the option of a silk, gloss or uncoated finish. Silk will make your images nice and vibrant as will gloss, while uncoated feels great and can be written on. Matt Laminating the outer cover will give your notebooks more longuevity against scuffing. Without lamination there is a high risk that the ink will crack when folded - notebooks are much loved and repeatedly handled so the cover lamination keeps the look new for longer.
The inside pages should really go onto uncoated stock so people can actually write on them! You can choose our ‘house’ uncoated FSC for a bright white smooth finish or Evolution Uncoated which is 100% recycled appearance and slightly off white. The recycled is more expensive whereas our house FSC paper is actually probably better for the environment. 115gsm up to 170gsm uncoated is your go-to choice for the inside pages. That is going to be the best solution to enable people to crayon, pencil or sketch on the pages. You can choose to have the pages printed with your own full colour design, as lined/graph paper or left completely blank for people to fill with their creative.
If you are not sure about what type of finish you’d like then ask for a free paper swatch pack.
We have been doing this a while now and have seen a lot of impressive publications come off our presses. To give you a head start with your notebooks printing, here are three print specifications which work well (and photos of them, see right). Each has its own characteristics which have proven to be winning combinations from a production perspective, cost per unit and most importantly, have buyer appeal.
If any of our showcase options would work for your project, take a note of the spec and jump on our quote form to receive your bespoke quotation. Or ping us an email on hello@exwhyzed.com if that is easier.
Showcase 1 - a stapled notebook to fit in your pocket:
A6 Wire Stitched Notebooks.
4pp Cover onto 300gsm Uncoated FSC.
Matt Lamination to outer.
Full colour double-sided.
32pp Text onto 120gsm Uncoated FSC.
Graph paper or lined all the way through.
As a guide, you could print 500 copies of this for 49p per notebook.
Showcase 2 - a professional perfect bound notebook with as many inside pages as you'd like:
A5 Notebooks.
4 page cover matt laminated to the outer.
Full colour print onto 350gsm Silk FSC.
80 lined inside pages onto 115gsm Uncoated FSC.
Perfect Bound.
As a guide, you could print 200 copies of this spec for £1.76 each.
Showcase 3 - a hardback notebook with blank inside pages for the user to fill creatively:
A5 Case Bound Notebooks
Cover onto 170gsm Silk.
Wrapped over greyboard case
Matt laminated to the outer.
2x 4pp End Papers Unprinted onto 170gsm Uncoated.
100 blank inside pages onto 115gsm Uncoated
Four colour print throughout
Tweaks you could consider to the print specs...
• Split the print run between 2, 4 or 8 different cover designs.
• Reducing the cover to 250gsm on the perfect bound notebook will make it easier to open.
• Switching to gloss lamination for a shiny aesthetic.
• Decrease the size to A6 to save you money and make the publication more ergonomic.
• OR increase to A4 for a larger area of content and so you command a higher sale price.
• Increase the weight of the inside pages to 170gsm making it more substantial and impressive for the writer.
• Pick out some content on the cover for Spot UV varnishing or Foiling to make it a premium range (this is an additional £280).
Enjoy looking through our extended showcase to see the solutions and ideas your peers came up with for their notebook range.
You might be wondering how much they cost? Well, the more copies you order, the lower the unit price. We understand you might want to sell the notebooks and also make a profit so we always quote for two or three quantity options to show you the possibilities if ordering more or less than first anticipated.
Yes, two or four cover designs work well with the number of pages we can print on a sheet. Maybe dip your toe in the water and then once you start selling the notebooks, you will know which are the popular colours.
For up to 40 pages we recommend stapling (wire stitching) but we can do this method for up to 72 pages as long as you don't mind some bounce.
Stapling is actually a really good binding method for notebooks because the pages will sit flat.
For 40 or more then perfect binding, with a glued square spine is a robust choice. This method has no top end so is great for 100,200,300 pages plus.
40,60 and 100 inside pages (which is 20,30 or 50 leaves) work well for notebooks. That gives a nice 3-8mm thickness and plenty of pages for the recipient to jot down their thoughts and doddles.
Yes we can! This is a really high end, super premium addition to really finish off your notebook in style. The set up costs are quite high so ribbon markers are best saved for print runs of 500 copies or more.
This is a process we can do but the set up costs are £500+ so not ideal for small print runs. They do look great though but we are not sure you will be able to add an extra £1-2 on your sale price just to cover the costs on the rounding? Maybe go for a coool design instead as a wow factor.
We can print hardback notebooks with a material cover. You could choose one of the leather-type finishes from Winter & Company or GF Smith. The gold corners, ribbons and elastic wrap arpund band or not solutions we offer at Ex Why Zed.
Lamination is a thin layer of transparent film that we apply to the cover of notebooks to prtoect the ink from cracking. It comes in a matt or gloss finish. You wouldn't really know it is there and it only costs a few pounds extra but without it, your ink is likely to crack, scuff and it will be the first thing people see. Lamination adds extra longuevity.
Unfortunately, they do. VAT (valkue addedd tax) in the UK is 20%. A weird HRMC quirk means that notebooks have vat but books, booklets and coloiuring books do not. Sorry, we don't make the rules 🙂
We have no minimum order so you can print just the one Notebook for a promotional piece to get people excited about you future product line. When you're ready to hit the market we have extensive litho printing capacity to fulfil a large order in the tens of thousands. So if you need just handful for family and friends or a massive print run for every department store in the land, then we have you covered.
For a perfect bound notebooks we will need your cover supplied as a spread. Your front cover should be on the right, spine through the centre and back cover on the left. It looks great having a pattern or design that goes right across the outer cover.
For more information have a read through our perfect binding set up guide.
If you’re going for a wire stitched notebook (under 40 pages) then we’ll just need a pdf with all the pages in reading order.
Always remember crop marks and 3mm bleed on each edge.
If the inside pages are blank (unprinted) then you don't need to worry about sending artwork for them. Easy!
