Hardback Binding: A Printer's Guide to Case Bound Books

Hardback binding is the moment a stack of printed pages becomes something people keep. Hardbacks go out to our customers every week (picture books, photobooks, theses, poetry collections, family histories), and whatever is inside, the first copy out of the box has the same effect on whoever is holding it. The weight does it. So does the soft clap the cover makes when it closes.

What follows is everything we'd tell you across the counter: how a case is put together, what each part of a hardback is for, the handful of decisions you actually get to make, where the page count starts, when the extra money over a paperback is well spent, and how to set up a cover file so it wraps the boards without a hitch.

Case binding means the cover is built on its own

The name gives the game away. In case binding the cover (the case) is made separately, from two boards and a spine strip wrapped in a covering material, while the pages are made into a book block at another station. The two only meet at the very end, when the endpapers are pasted down onto each board. The back of the block isn't glued to the inside of the case spine, which is why a well made hardback opens without cracking: the block sits in its case and the hinges do the bending.

Here are the parts you'll hear us talk about:

• Boards. Two panels of greyboard, a dense grey card, cut slightly larger than the page so they guard the edges. On our cases the boards stand 3mm proud of the pages at the head and at the foot.
• Case. The boards and spine strip, covered in printed paper or book cloth, with the covering folded 17mm over every edge and glued down inside. Binders call those folds turn ins.
• Spine. The strip across the back. Even our thinnest hardback, at 28 inside pages, has a 9mm spine, because the boards and endpapers take up room however slim the book.
• Hinge. The groove beside the spine where the cover flexes, sometimes called the joint. We allow 5mm each side, and they are the hardest working few millimetres in the whole book.
• Endpapers. A folded four page sheet at the front and another at the back. One half is pasted to the board; the other half becomes the first leaf you turn.
• Headbands. Little strips of striped cotton glued to each end of the spine. Binders once sewed them in as part of the structure; today they are glued on as a finishing flourish.
• Book block. The printed pages, trimmed, gathered in order and held together at the spine with glue or with thread.

For the full sequence, our walkthrough of how a hardback is case bound follows one book from flat sheets to finished copy. The complete spec sheet for our case bound books, including templates and spine widths, has a page of its own.

Glued or sewn: the choice you can't see from outside

Every hardback starts with a decision that is invisible once the book is closed, which is how the pages are held together.

A glued block is gathered, its spine edge is roughened so the adhesive can bite, and a strong binding glue is run along it, much as you would make a paperback. The block is then lined and cased in. It's quicker and cheaper than sewing, and it is the method behind our digital hardbacks.

A sewn block is printed in folded sections called signatures. Each signature is stitched through its fold and linked to its neighbours, so the pages hang on thread rather than on glue alone. Sewn books open more freely and shrug off decades of reading. Once a run reaches 700 copies or more we can section sew the inside pages on litho, and fit headbands while we're at it.

For a run of a few hundred copies, our advice is glue. A picture book, a photobook or a slim volume of poems gets opened carefully and often, and a properly glued and cased block copes with that for years. Thread pays its way on books that take a beating (cookbooks propped open beside the hob, reference books, fat journals) and on long runs where the litho route already makes sense. Sewing also starts back at the press, because the pages have to be imposed into signatures before they're folded. It's also why we ask for plain, unimposed pages and do the shuffling into signatures ourselves.

Printed and laminated, or cloth with a foiled title

This is the decision people enjoy most, and it changes the character of a book more than anything else on the spec.

A printed case is 170gsm silk paper printed in full colour, matt or gloss laminated, then wrapped over greyboard. Your artwork runs right round the book, across the back, over the spine and onto the front, so a photograph, an illustration or a bold typographic design all work. The lamination keeps scuffs and fingerprints at bay. Choose it whenever the cover has to sell the book: picture books, photobooks, anything a stranger will first meet as a thumbnail online. If you're designing for small readers, our thoughts on children's book covers are worth ten minutes.

A cloth case is wrapped in a bookbinding material from Winter & Company, who supply every covering we use. Cloth can't take print, so your title, author name or logo goes on in foil. Where a printed cover shouts, foil speaks softly and carries further. It belongs on a thesis, a monograph, an anniversary book, a numbered edition or a journal, anywhere the object matters more than the picture on its front.

Wibalin Natural is the easiest of the three to foil because its face is so smooth. Winter & Company make it as a 100% recyclable paper and list 50 colours in the range, including a deep blueberry.

Our verdict: if the book has to persuade somebody who has never heard of you, print it. If it's going onto a shelf to be kept, given or handed down, cloth and foil will still feel right in twenty years.

Endpapers carry the strain, so let them look good

Endpapers do the heavy lifting. Every time the cover swings open, the pull runs through that folded sheet where it meets the board, so a hardback is only ever as strong as its endpapers and the hinge beside them.

Our standard ends are plain: two four page sheets of 170gsm uncoated, unprinted. Plain ends look calm and bookish, and they suit text led books, theses and cloth editions where the cover already does the talking.

Printed endpapers are where a book gets to show off. A repeating pattern, a map, a full bleed photograph or a family tree greets the reader the second the cover opens. On picture books and photobooks we'd print them almost every time; on a novel or a dissertation, plain is usually the better taste.

Square back, rounded back, ribbons and bands

A square spine is flat across the back with crisp corners where it meets the boards. It looks modern, carries spine lettering neatly and suits the page counts most self-publishers print.

A rounded spine is shaped into a gentle curve before casing in, a process binders call rounding and backing. The curve isn't decoration. On a thick sewn book it stops the spine sagging into a hollow after years of opening, which makes it the traditional pick for long novels, bibles and reference books and an odd one on a forty page picture book. If you want one, mention it when you ask for a price so we can quote the right route.

Headbands are those striped cotton tabs peeping out at the top and bottom of the spine. On our longer section sewn runs we add head and tail bands as part of the finish, and they're the detail that makes a hardback look properly dressed.

A ribbon marker is glued into the head of the spine before the block meets its case. It earns its keep on any book read in sittings rather than in one go: journals, diaries, cookbooks, doorstop novels. For the Seize the Day journals we made for Better Day Studio, 196 pages of 100gsm Nautilus Classic were section sewn into Wibalin Buckram cases, foiled in matt gold front and back, with a gold ribbon marker to match.

Twenty eight pages and a 9mm spine is where hardbacks begin

We won't case anything shorter than 28 inside pages, and a book that size already wears a 9mm spine. Below that, a stapled booklet is the better book. A stapled book can run from as few as 8 pages up to 72, provided the count divides by four, and our guide to booklets and when to choose one explains the trade.

What surprises most people is how wide a thin hardback's spine turns out to be. On a paperback the spine is just paper, so 40 pages of 130gsm silk add up to a spine just 3mm wide (our paperback spine chart lists every combination). On a hardback the boards and endpapers add their own thickness and the same 40 pages give 9mm. So never take a hardback spine from that chart. The hardback set up guide walks through the case maths, or tell us your spec and we'll send you the exact cover dimensions. Either way, we check the width again when your files arrive.

Spine lettering starts to look comfortable from about 5mm, so a 9mm spine has plenty of space for a title and an author. Unlike a slim paperback, every hardback we make can wear its name on the shelf.

The paper inside changes both the feel of the book and the width of its spine. Three stocks cover most hardbacks:

Paper is far easier to judge in the hand than on a screen, so order our free paper samples before you commit. Our longer piece on choosing the right paper was written with zines in mind, but its logic carries straight over to a hardback's inside pages.

When hardback binding earns its extra cost over a paperback

Here's the arithmetic from our own price list. An A5 hardback with 84 inside pages and a printed case costs £614 for 100 copies, £6.14 each. The same book as a perfect bound paperback is £394, or £3.94 each, so the case adds £2.20 a copy. On a 210mm square book of 60 pages with printed endpapers, 100 hardbacks come to £826 against £424 for paperbacks. Our full breakdown of hardcover printing prices goes through every variable.

That extra money is well spent when:

• The book will be handled hard. Cookbooks, reference books and anything a family pulls off the shelf for years survive far better between boards.
• The book is the gift. Art books, wedding albums, special editions and photographers' portfolio books tell the person holding them that somebody cared.
• The book represents an organisation. Company histories and annual reports should still look the part on a boardroom shelf ten years from now.
• The page count is high. A fat paperback fans and creases at the spine; a case gives a big book the support it needs.
• You are selling at a higher cover price. Readers expect a hardback to cost more, so the extra print cost often comes back at the till.

Perfect binding wins when the book has to be light, cheap to post or sold at a low price, and when it will be read once and passed along. Most novels, magazines and zines that have outgrown their staples belong in paperback, which is the bread and butter of our book printing. A paperback can't go below 32 inside pages (a 3mm spine). Its glue grips roughly 7mm of every page beside the spine, which is why words and faces should sit no closer than 12mm to that fold. Our guide to setting up perfect bound files covers the rest.

Time matters too. Digital hardbacks under 500 copies are with you in 7 working days, delivered free by tracked courier anywhere in the UK. Litho hardbacks with section sewing or a premium cover take longer, and from September onwards we'd ask you to allow four to eight weeks. If your book is meant for Christmas, start in summer.

Setting up case artwork that folds round the boards

A hardback cover is one flat file: back cover, spine and front cover side by side, with extra all the way round to fold over the boards. This is how we'd build it.

1. Width: 17mm turn in, plus your page width, plus a 5mm hinge, plus the spine, plus another 5mm hinge, plus your page width again, plus 17mm.
2. Height: 17mm, plus 3mm of board overhang, plus your page height, plus another 3mm, plus 17mm.
3. For an A5 book (148 × 210mm) with a 9mm spine, that comes to 349mm wide by 250mm tall.
4. Run your background colour or image right through the turn ins and the hinges, but keep text, faces and logos out of them, because those areas fold or hide.
5. Supply each endpaper sheet as a two page PDF with 3mm bleed. At the front, page 1 is the reverse of the sheet, so leave its right hand half blank; at the back, leave the left hand half of page 1 blank.
6. For foil, add a further PDF at the same size as the cover, with everything to be foiled set in 100% black and ideally drawn as vectors.

Inside pages go as one PDF, each page on its own and running front to back, with 3mm bleed wherever colour touches the edge; we do the imposition. Keep text 6 to 8mm from the spine side of each page, and give it 10 to 12mm on the first and last inside pages, where the glue goes.

Somebody here opens and inspects every file you send before we print a sheet of it, so if a spine is a millimetre out or a page number has drifted into the hinge, we'll tell you before it costs anything. If you'd like to hold one before committing, we're happy to make one test book first and print the rest once you've given it the nod. When everything is ready, send your files and place your order.

What happens to your hardback after you approve the proof

Six stages turn your files into a hardback, and each one shows in the finished copy.

1. Print and trim. The inside pages are printed, folded if they're going to be sewn, and trimmed square.
2. Make the block. Pages are gathered in order and glued, or sewn signature by signature, then lined at the spine.
3. Build the case. Greyboard is cut for the boards and spine, the printed sheet or cloth is glued on, and the turn ins are folded over and rubbed down.
4. Case in. Paste goes onto the outer endpapers and the block drops into its case so the endpapers grip the boards.
5. Press. The book sits under pressure while the paste dries, so the boards stay flat and the hinges set.
6. Inspect. Alignment, hinges, corners and pages all get a look before the book is packed.

If you fancy binding one by hand at home, the kit is modest: a bone folder for creasing, a sharp knife and a cutting mat, a brush for PVA, some greyboard, and a press or a pile of heavy books. Your first attempt will teach you a great deal about patience. For an edition of fifty, or anything you plan to sell, hand it to a bindery.

Hardbacks we've bound, and where yours starts

We've gathered a gallery of recent hardback projects with the spec behind each one, so you can see printed cases, cloth, foil and printed endpapers on real books. If you'd rather watch than read, there's a short film of our hardback work on YouTube.

The quickest route to a price is the Printed Project Builder: twelve clicks and you'll see what your book costs. Sizes, finishes and real prices for our hardback book printing all sit on one page. And if you're torn between cloth and print, get in touch. Talking a book through is our favourite part of the job.