Bookbinding

Historical

The craft of bookbinding may have originated around the 1st century A.D. Romans of the time created a form of simple book called a codex by folding sheets of vellum or parchment in half and sewing them through the fold. Codices were a significant improvement over papyrus or vellum scrolls, in that they were easier to handle, allowed writing on both sides of the leaves, and could be searched through more quickly.

Later books were bound between hard covers, with pages made from paper, or parchment, but were still created by stitching folded sheets at the seam. Since early books were exclusively handwritten on handmade materials, sizes and styles varied considerably, and each book was a unique creation or a copy of it.

With the arrival (from the East) of rag paper manufacturing through Europe in the late Middle Ages and the use of the printing press beginning in the mid-15th century, bookbinding began to standardize somewhat. But page sizes still varied considerably.

Some books have even been bound in human skin. See anthropodermic bibliopegy.

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.

• 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.

• 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.

Modern hand binding

Hardbound book spine stitching.

When talking about bookbinding as a craft, hardbound books are most common. Any sewn book can be pulled apart and rebound into a hardbound book by adding a case. Cases are often cardboard and sometimes wooden squares adhered to paper or leather and formed around the text block. There are different methods of sewing, such as stab sewing. A traditional method which uses sashes allows the book to open flat and not break the spine.

Traditionally sewn book opened flat.

Halfbound book with leather and marble paper.

Books can be bound in many different materials. Some of the more common materials for covers are leather and cloth (see also: buckram). A common way to bind a book is as a halfbound book, which means that the spine and the corners of the cover are covered with leather or cloth, while the rest is covered with paper (normally marbled or otherwise decorated). When only the spine is covered with cloth or leather and the rest of the cover is covered in paper, the book is called quarterbound.

Terms and techniques

• A leaf is a single complete page, front and back, in a finished book.
• The recto side of a leaf faces left when the leaf is held straight up from the spine.
• The verso side of a leaf faces right when the leaf is held straight up from the spine.
• A folio is a single sheet folded in half to make two leaves.
• A codex is a set of folios nested together and sewn through the fold.
• A signature is a large sheet printed with several pages, intended to form four or more leaves in the finished book. The pages are arranged on the sheet so that all of the pages orient the same way and are in proper sequence after the sheet is folded. Arranging these pages correctly is called imposition. (Signature also refers to a sequence number or code printed on the sheet so that the several signatures that make a complete book may be properly sequenced; this signature is often trimmed off after binding.) The signature may be folded in several ways, depending on the number of leaves it will form; it is then stitched together down the last fold. See also paper size.
  • A sheet folded in quarto (also 4to or 4º) is folded in half twice at right angles to make four leaves. Also called: 4-page signature.
  • A sheet folded in octavo (also 8vo or 8º) is folded in half 3 times to make 8 leaves. Also called: 8-page signature.
  • A sheet folded in sextodecimo (also 16mo or 16º) is folded in half 4 times to make 16 leaves. Also called: 16-page signature.
  • Duodecimo or 12mo, 24mo, 32mo, and even 64mo are other foldings of a signature. Modern paper mills can produce very large sheets, so a modern printer will often print 64 or 128 pages on a single sheet.
• Folio, quarto, and so on may also refer to the size of the finished book, based on the size of sheet that an early paper maker could conveniently turn out with a manual press. Paper sizes could vary considerably, and the finished size was also affected by how the pages were trimmed, so the sizes given are rough values only.
  • A folio volume is typically 15" (38 cm) or more in height, the largest sort of regular book.
  • A quarto volume is typically about 9" (23 cm) by 12" (30 cm), roughly the size of most modern magazines.
  • An octavo volume is typically about 5 to 6" (13-15 cm) by 8-to-9" (20-23 cm), the size of most modern digest magazines or trade paperbacks.
  • A sextodecimo volume is about 4 1/2" (11.5 cm) by 6 3/4" (17 cm), the size of most mass market paperbacks.
• A quire is a set of leaves which are stitched together. This is most often a single signature, but may be several nested signatures. The quires for a single book are arranged in order and then stitched together as a set.
• Trimming allows the leaves of the bound book to be turned. A sheet folded in quarto will have folds at the spine and also across the top, so the top folds must be trimmed away before the leaves can be turned. A signature folded in octavo or greater may also require that the other two sides be trimmed. Deckle Edge, or Uncut books are untrimmed or incompletely trimmed, and may be of special interest to book collectors.

Spine conventions

In left-to-right read languages (like English), books are bound on the left side of the cover; looking from on top, the pages increase counter-clockwise. In right-to-left languages, books are bound on the right. In both cases, this is so the end of a page coincides with where you flip.

(As a side note, some English-language books are bound on the right side of the cover. By far the most common examples are English-language translations of Japanese comic books. Since the art is laid out to be read right-to-left, this allows the art to be published "unflipped".)

In Japanese, literary books are written top-to-bottom, right-to-left, and thus are bound on the right, while text books are written left-to-right, top-to-bottom, and thus are bound on the left.

The title of a book is traditionally written on the spine. In Chinese and similar languages, this is naturally written top-to-bottom (as the characters don't change orientation, and the language is generally written top-to-bottom), but in left-to-right (and right-to-left) languages, the spine is usually too narrow for the title to fit in its natural orientation, and conventions differ. In the United States and England, titles are written top-to-bottom; when placed face-up, the title is correctly oriented left-to-right.

This also underlies why multiple volume works are often shelved right-to-left: they're arranged "as if a stack".

In many European countries, the general convention is to write titles bottom-to-top on the spine. (But spines of books in Dutch are almost always written top-to-bottom; in Spain every publisher has his own preference.) This is unusual, in that no writing system goes bottom-to-top, and requires that the book be placed face-down for the title on the spine to be right-side up. However, it results in multivolume works being shelved (correctly) left-to-right.