Modern book covers offer a range of options for different purposes and sizes. Personal covers include smooth plastic, grain, and linen covers, while professional covers include softcover, Otabind, and hardback options. Binding choices include plastic combs, spool of thread, and VeloBind spine.
Gone are the days of printing on scrolls made from the pith of the papyrus plant, parchment made from animal skin and palm leaves that served as the binding material for ancient religious texts. Modern times have brought modern materials, resulting in myriad binding options.
The first consideration when selecting a book cover is the size and purpose of the book. Options range from inexpensive DIY systems for business or school projects, to professional hardbound options for the author publishing a book for public sale. Binding covers generally fall into two categories:
1. Personal: Suitable for unpublished work of less than 100 pages, such as home projects, student reports, and business documents. These include:
Smooth Plastic Covers: This durable material is waterproof and tear resistant. It comes in a variety of colors, including clear, and can be purchased as a printable or non-printable cover.
Grain Covers: These are sometimes referred to as leatherette, grain embossing, and leather embossing. They are made with an uncoated paper stock that is both durable and tear resistant, but not waterproof. Also printable, they are similar to the smooth plastic cover, but offer a texture that changes the look.
Linen Covers: Linen covers offer the most elegant look, with identical attributes to grain binding covers, but with a different texture resembling a high-quality heavy linen paper.
All of the above covers come in different weights, qualities and sizes. Binding choices include plastic combs, spool of thread, and a non-coiled VeloBind spine that resembles the teeth of a comb and allows for neat stacking, but doesn’t allow the book to lay open and flat. Inexpensive automatic binding machines can be purchased, or they can be prepared by almost any copy shop or printing shop.
Alternatively, another inexpensive method is to fold the pages and wrap them in a heavy cardstock cover that can then be placed on a saddle stitcher. This is easy and inexpensive, but it’s more difficult to add pages later, while the plastic combs, spool of thread and VeloBind combs can be easily removed and replaced with a larger version that takes more pages.
2. Professional: Suitable for published works to be purchased in a public market.
Softcover Covers: The most popular softcover uses a coated paper cover stock which is attached with the perfect binding method. The book pages are stacked into a book block, ground at the edges to roughen them, then adhesive is applied and they are glued into the cover. This method is the most popular and produces the least expensive binding cover, but these books are not flat and the spine can break.
Otabind binding covers offer another economical choice for binding with a soft cover. The advantage of Otabind is flexibility. The covers are still attached with adhesive, but the flexible spine allows paperbacks to lie open and flat. This is ideal for cookbooks or other reference materials that need to stay open while in use.
Hardback Binding Covers: Slipcover or edition binding covers are the higher-end and more expensive choice. The pages are assembled and stitched together or glued together with adhesive, then wrapped in cloth-covered cartons, coated paper, or occasionally leather. Stitching methods and adhesives vary, but the most common and long-lasting method is to sew first, apply the adhesive, and anchor the text block to the cover.
Once bound, a dustjacket may be printed on and wrapped around the book, or alternatively, a cloth-bound cover may be printed on the spine and cover and used without the dustjacket.
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