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What you include on a book cover in the way of graphic design, or creative, or imagery, is just one element of print book cover design. The physical presentation, including what materials you use and how you combine them, is equally important, and it sets the tone for the whole print book as well.
Stab Binding (from Japan, China, and Korea)
I know this sounds grisly (only the book pages and cover pages get stabbed), but it is actually an elegant and ancient Asian bookbinding technique. (I included a photo of this binding option at the top of this blog article.)
The process does not involve any glue (unlike perfect binding). All you do is stab holes into the cover and book pages and then lace up the book over the spine edge with string. If you Google this process, you’ll see that you can make a number of different geometric patterns with the string.
This might be a unique binding method for a writing journal or sketch book. You could even use special paper (maybe seed paper, with actual seeds in the paper stock, or paper containing flecks of flower petals—anything to make the finished product more tactile and organic).
Stab binding has a long history (centuries) as a binding method in China, Japan, and Korea.
Unfortunately, stab binding, which really is similar to the current method of side stitching (in which case you would use staples instead of string), will not allow the open book to lie flat. But if lying flat is not an essential characteristic of your print book, this may be a good option. Personally, I consider it a unique, aesthetically appealing option for a “hand-crafted” look.
A Few Options for Case Binding
I have a number of books from the late 1800s that were case bound. This option is very durable. But it also provides at least three variations that come to mind immediately.
Leather, fabric, or paper can be wrapped around the binder’s boards used in case binding a print book. Binder’s boards are thick chipboard (a kind of dense cardboard stock). A flexible spine is added to the book between the front and back covers, and the interior text block is actually suspended from this “casing,” allowing the pages to be turned, and allowing the print book to lie flat when open.
In terms of book decoration, the front cover image and title, for instance, might appear not on this paper, fabric, or leather book cover but rather on a separate dust jacket wrapped around the book.
Alternatively, you can use hot-foil stamping (heat and pressure applied to a roll of metallic foil) to punch out lettering for the book title and affix this to the book cover material. And then you can add a more elaborate dust jacket for a repeat of the cover text and an added cover photo.
The dust jacket, by the way, would be a large printed and perhaps UV coated or film laminated press sheet with flaps that fold around the book binding boards. In this way you can design a more intricate and complex cover than you can with the foil stamping on the main fabric, leather, or paper cover.
One thing to keep in mind with the foil-stamping process is that you will need to pay to have the printer’s subcontractor create a metal die for the foil stamping, and this can be expensive. It will also add to the overall book production time.
That was the first option. Another option is to print the book covers on flat press sheets and then laminate them directly to the binder’s boards and spine of the case-bound print book. If you think back to many of your high school or college textbooks, these were produced this way, with colorful covers but no separate dust jackets.
If you skip the dust jackets and print the book covers directly on press sheets that can then be laminated to the binder’s boards, you can avoid producing (and paying for) metal dies to cut the hot-stamp foil (noted in the prior book decoration option).
The third option for case binding is really a hybrid, mixing “Wire-O” binding with case binding. You may have seen these books in the cooking section of the bookstore. Metal wire loops are stacked parallel to one another and are affixed to a wire running parallel to the spine. This wire apparatus (with the text of the book attached to it like a spiral notebook) is looped into the cardboard spine of the case-bound book. (The loops are often visible from the outside of the spine.)
On the interior front and back covers of such a book, you can see that endsheets have been pasted onto the binder’s boards (as in case-binding work). With both the wire loops and the case binding, this is an especially durable option, which is probably why publishers often choose this method for cookbooks. The books also lie flat when open, which is useful when you’re using both hands to prepare food.
You can assume that this will be an expensive binding option, since the “Wire-O” portion of the binding involves handwork. But for the right product, it can be a very attractive and functional option.
The Usual Suspects: Saddle Stitching, Perfect Binding, and Mechanical Binding
To round out this discussion, I’d like to briefly mention the more traditional, and less expensive, methods you can choose to bind your books.
Saddle stitching involves nesting book signatures inside one another (when bound and trimmed, these would look like a stack of four-page signatures, one on top of the next, folded, with staples in the center). This is probably the cheapest option. It’s often used for magazines and journals. But the main downside is that you don’t have a spine on which to print the book title, and you have a size (page-count) limit of about 96 pages (three 32-page signatures) or less. I’ve seen pages fall off the center staples in magazines exceeding this length. Wherever you look online, you’ll find a different page number limit (because it all depends on how thick your paper is), but 96 pages is a good place to start discussing binding options with your printer.
Perfect binding is like case binding without the hard case (and binder’s boards). It’s for longer print books. Unlike case bound books, the text of the book is not suspended from the heavy cardboard book-cover boards with endsheets. Rather the paper cover (usually of a thicker stock than the text) is just wrapped around the text block (the stacked press signatures of the text, as opposed to the nested press signatures of saddle stitching). The paper cover is glued to the spine, and the book is then trimmed on three sides (top, bottom, and front or face margin).
Perfect bound books are durable, and they come at a reasonable price. Almost all of the paperbacks you’ll find (that aren’t saddle stitched) will be perfect bound. Ask that your printer use PUR binding glue. It’s flexible, and it doesn’t dry out and get brittle as it ages. It’s worth a little extra money.
The third option, mechanical binding, includes tape binding, spiral wire (like spiral notebooks), plastic coil (a plastic wire version of the spiral wire), Wire-O (mentioned above in the composite binding for the cookbook), Velo binding (a plastic strip on the top and bottom of the text block running parallel to the bind edge and attached to one another through holes drilled through the text), and GBC (or comb binding). The list goes on. I’m sure there are more.
What you need to remember is that mechanical binding almost always requires handwork. So the unit cost can be expensive. That said, if you are producing a handful of reports to distribute at a conference, this will save you the make-ready expense of perfect binding or saddle stitching your print book.
As to the design of saddle-stitched, perfect-bound, and mechanically bound books, these really aren’t very exotic—at least not like the Asian stab binding. So in these cases you’re pretty much dependent on the visual design of the covers rather than the intricacies of the binding itself for the “Wow” factor.
That said, a client of mine prints a number of 5.5” x 8.5” perfect-bound book titles each year. And they (husband and wife) always specify French flaps. This is a 3.5” extension to the front and back covers. The flaps fold inward over the interior front and back covers and make the book look like it has a dust jacket. This is more of a European approach (so it looks stylish), but it also provides space in the front and rear of the book for an author photo and bio and perhaps some marketing text.
So in this case it is possible to make a perfect-bound book look sexy.
The Takeaway
Consider both the creative design and the physical construction of all of your book binding options. Think about utility, price, length of the press run, and schedule (for instance, cookbooks that mix case binding and Wire-O binding cost more per unit and take longer overall to produce).
Look at printed samples, and think of not only the appearance but how the binding method will feel in the hands of the reader. Will he/she need four hands in order to both cook and refer to a cookbook that doesn’t lie flat?
Appearance and utility. These are two key concepts to keep at the top of your mind when selecting the perfect binding approach for your print book.
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