Bookbinding: Encyclopedia II - Bookbinding - Modern commercial binding

Bookbinding - Modern commercial binding

There are various commercial techniques in use today. Commercially-produced books today tend to be of one of four categories:

• A hardcover or hardbound book has rigid covers and is stitched in the spine. Looking from the top of the spine, the book can be seen to consist of a number of signatures bound together. When the book is opened in the middle of a signature, the binding threads are visible. The signatures in modern hardcover books are typically octavo (a single sheet folded three times), though they may also be folio, quarto, or 16mo. See the discussion below and book size. Unusually large and heavy books are sometimes bound with wire or cable.

• A paperback or soft cover book consists of a number of signatures or individual leaves between covers of much heavier paper, glued together at the spine with a strong flexible glue; this is sometimes called perfect binding. Mass market paperbacks and pulp paperbacks are small (16mo size), cheaply made and often fall apart after much handling or several years. Trade paperbacks are more sturdily made, usually larger, and more expensive.

• A cardboard article looks like a hardbound book at first sight, but it is really a paperback with hard covers. It is not as durable as a real hardbound; often the binding will fall apart after a little use. Many books that are sold as hardcover are actually of this type.

• A sewn book is constructed in the same way as a hardbound book, except that it lacks the hard covers. The binding is as durable as that of a hardbound book.

The rise of desktop publishing has brought a fifth form into the commercial market, as well.

• A comb-bound book is made of individual sheets, each with a line of slits punched near the bound edge. A curled plastic "comb" is fed through the slits to hold the sheets together. Comb binding allows a book to be disassembled and reassembled by hand without damage.

Magazines are considered more ephemeral than books, and less durable means of binding them are usual. In general, the cover papers of magazines will be the same as the inner pages (self-cover [1]) or only slightly heavier (soft cover).

• Perfect binding similar to paperback books is often used; National Geographic is perhaps the best known of this type.

• Stapling through the center fold, also called saddle-stitching, joins a set of nested folios into a single magazine issue; Playboy (before 1985) is a well-known example of this type, as are most American comic books.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Modern commercial binding", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki