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A client of mine called me out of the blue this week and asked about options for 50,000 copies of a 4-color print book containing voting records from Capitol Hill. She needed the book to lie flat, though, and she knew this would drive up the price.
A Plethora of Choices
I told my client that most of the options would be expensive because of the handwork involved. These would include such mechanical bindings as Wire-O, Spiral Wire, Plastic Coil, and GBC (or comb binding). All of these methods are accomplished by hand with minimal automation, so a 50,000 press run would raise the price, beyond the extra cost of printing 4-color ink throughout the book text. But here’s what I told my client (which will also serve as a review for your own commercial printing work).
Spiral Wire
The bind edge of the book is drilled with little holes parallel to the trim and a coil of wire is fed into these holes. If you used a spiral notebook in school, you know what this is. You also know that the coil of wire can be inadvertently crushed. Spiral wire comes in a few different colors.
Another downside is that due to the nature of a coil, facing pages don’t align exactly when the print book is open and lying flat. In addition, the coils come only in standard sizes (widths) that accommodate standard page counts. If you choose this option, make sure your book printer offers spiral wire coils that will match your book length.
Plastic Coil
This is like spiral wire, but it is made out of plastic. Therefore, it has “memory.” It will squish up a little if squeezed, but it will come back immediately to its original form. This is a huge benefit. Again, it involves expensive handwork, it comes in only a handful of colors, and you need to make sure it will accommodate your print book page count.
Wire-O
Wire-O is metal (like spiral wire), but it is composed of double-wire loops that are parallel to one another and attached to a metal post running the length of the spine. The double wire makes the binding stronger than spiral wire, and the fact that the wire loops are parallel to one another (rather than in a spiral) makes the facing pages of an open print book align across the gutter. The same issues apply with the cost of handwork, page count, and color options.
GBC or Plastic-Comb Binding
If you completely unwind and flatten a GBC binding coil, it will look like a comb (hence the name). The tines of this comb are fed (i.e., handwork) through holes drilled in the book text block. When the coils jump back into place, you have a coil holding all the book pages together. What you also have (which is not available with Wire-O, Spiral Wire, or Plastic Coil binding) is a printable spine. Since the plastic has “memory,” it jumps back into place. You can therefore add or remove pages, but in my experience over the years the pages always seem to pull out, fall out, or tear out.
3-Ring Binder
This is an interesting option because you can easily add or remove pages. It’s the same as the binders you had in grade school. Binders come in numerous spine widths, so the page count of the print book need not be an issue. You can even print the text block, shrink wrap it, lay it inside the closed binder, and make the reader assemble the product.
Background vinyl colors are numerous, and some even have clear plastic pockets heat welded to the outside of the binder to allow you to insert slipsheets. That is, instead of custom screen printing art and text on the outside of the vinyl binder (which would be an expensive addition), you can print 4-color single sheets that you can slip into pockets on the front and back covers (and spine), embellishing the binder without paying for screen printing.
Layflat Perfect Binding
Somebody really earned their money when they invented this bindery method. Apparently it’s durable (I was worried, so I checked). And it really is much the same as case binding (hardcover, edition binding) in its approach.
Here’s how. On a perfect-bound book the stacked, printed press signatures are notched or ground off at the bind edge. Then glue is applied to the spine edge of the text block. Finally, a paper cover is wrapped around the text block, adhering to the spine and a slight bit of the front and back cover. Then the book printer trims the book.
In contrast, on a case-bound print book the text block is not attached to the spine. It is glued to a “crash,” (also called a “super” or “liner”), a piece of gauze running the length of the spine and extending slightly outward on both sides. In the case-bound book these gauze flaps are attached to the front and back (binder’s board) covers of the print book and then covered with the endsheets and flyleaves (end papers).
So the text block essentially hangs on the edge of the front and back covers and (in most cases) is not attached to the (inside of the) spine.
Layflat perfect binding works the same way, but instead of using thick binder’s boards (front, back, and spine covered with fabric or leather), the binder attaches the print book text block (all printed, gathered, and stacked press signatures) to a gauze strip, which he then attaches to the edges of the front and back (perfect binding) paper covers. Just a strip is enough (just like case binding).
The text block never touches the spine, so the book lies flat when open on the table. In fact, this option is often used for photo books (personally printed for you using your photos) in stores like Costco, because the open pages (which align perfectly with one another) make full-bleed photos seem to be connected at the spine as if they were one huge, double-page, full-bleed photo. The overall experience is breathtaking.
This does not involve that much handwork (when compared to the mechanical bindings noted above), so the overall cost per unit does not have to be prohibitive, even for longer press runs.
The process (only one of the variants of layflat binding) is called Otabind.
And here are more characteristics/features/benefits:
- The glue used in the process is a hot melt, exceptionally durable glue (EVA, PVA, or PUR glue). So the print books last a long time, and pages don’t easily pull out.
- The cover is scored a number of times (at the spine, and outward from the spine parallel to the bind edge). This scoring, along with the fact that the text is not actually attached to the spine, allows for an extremely flexible and durable book which will lie flat when open.
- This process, especially because of the specific glue used, when combined with deep “notching” (cutting notches into the bind edge of the folded press signatures to allow the glue to really seep in), provides surprising strength.
The Takeaway
No matter what you want to do in printing, there are usually a number of ways to do it.
That said, those methods requiring lots of handwork will be expensive (overall and on a unit-cost basis, because there are no economies of scale for handwork). With that in mind, such automated layflat options as Otabind can help make up for this.
If, on the other hand, you only need (as an arbitrary, small number) 200 copies, you might choose vinyl binders, Plastic Coil, Wire-O, Spiral Wire, or GBC comb binding. These are especially good for cookbooks and manuals, or anything else you need to refer to when you’re using both hands for something else.
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on Monday, December 11th, 2023 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Book Binding.
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