Book Design for Beginners

In this age of PDF’s and e-books you would think the demand for physical books and booklets will have died. In fact, from what I have seen, the demand is as strong or stronger than what it was when I first working at Copy Express. From talking to clients who have printed books with us I’ve learnt that they have even more impact with their customers in this day in age.  This physical item is more tangible and has a physical cost to make so makes the customer feel more important as the business has invested money in them. 

There are many reasons to use books or booklets in your marketing toolkit – we talk about education-based marketing in our article ‘Getting your prospects to beg for you to sell’  but here I want to talk about how to best investment on printing books by giving you a few simple tips on how to setup your book or booklet design and which format you should choose..

Picking the right format for the job

There are lot of different binding options when it comes to making book and booklets. The number of pages, how it will be used, the type of contents, expected usable life, thesis and many other factors come into picking the right book format long before you worry about on how you are going to lay it out on a page. I would recommend you read ‘Book terms for the non bibliofile’  to get a better understanding of the book types types I will be talking about.

How many pages are you printing?

For up to 80 logical pages the Saddle Stapled is the more effective solution and works really well for booklets (this translates to 20 sheets of paper with 4 logical pages per sheet) as the entire process can be automated by our printers. Edge Stapled books can be up to 200 logical pages in size and can easily mix colour and black only pages making them great for lower volume runs. For over 200 logical pages then it’s a Comb or Ringbinder or Lever Arch Folder.  Perfect (or glue) binding is also viable from about 150 logical pages.

Short or long term use?

If it is a short term use then stick to the lower cost Saddle / Edge Stapled formats as the most economical solution. If you want a bit more class then use the Wrapped Cover Edge Staple for the paperback look. For the longer life books we recommend using Wire / Plastic Comb instead as they are harder wearing.

Constant use or occasional?

Edge bound books tend to hold together better than center bound or ring binder style books as the stress of being opened and closed will put wear on the binding points. Plastic combs can stretch open a little under constant use but with the correct size coil it’s never a problem.

Will it be sitting on a shelf?

Then you will need a book that has a printed spine for ease of reading, so go for the Wrapped Cover Edge Stapled or Wire Comb books, or at a pinch the Plastic Comb with a sticker on the spine.

Contains complex diagrams or plans?

These often need be on larger sheets of paper that are folded down to fit inside the book when not in use. This requirement best suits Wire / Plastic Comb binding or Ring / Lever Arch Folders as you can mix any media during the binding process more effectively.

Is it a reference or product guide?

Reference or product guides are not read from cover to cover but are searched for sections of information. Wire / Plastic Comb or Ring / Lever Arch Folders are the best bet for this sort of work as you can mix in tab cards and colour coded paper to make easy to search through sections. These type of products often get updated sections as product information changes so with Plastic Comb or Ring / Lever Arch Folders you can have printed the updated sections to send to clients instead of the whole book.

Formatting your document for binding

Setting up documents for binding is very simple process and if you follow these simple steps you can do quickly.

Centre Stapled books are counted in lots of 4

If you have 9 pages of content in a center stapled book you will be paying for 12 simply because each sheet hold 4 pages, and you are paying the same whether you have 1 or 4 pages on that sheet.  So think about how you can fill them with something even if it’s a section for notes as you will be paying for them anyway.

Use sections and page breaks

Unless you need to print the document as single sided pages, (which is often done on training manuals to give people space for note taking) you should be assuming your book size will be double-sided. Most common layouts will start all new sections on the right hand page of the book when you open it up and lay it flat. Make use of page breaks and section breaks to put the new section on the right hand page of the spread.

Set up your margins for reading order

Allowing for creep

Creep is an issue that centre stapled booklets have when you get to higher page counts (read Book terms for the non bibliofile for more information.) To allow for this problem make sure that you have set your your inner and outer margins to at least 1cm. This will give a visually consistent look for the margins as our print systems compensate for the issue.

Allowing for unreadable areas in edge binding

Edge, stapled or comb-bound books will leave part of the page covered to the binding process making it unreadable. As a general rule of thumb if you allow a inner margin (in addition to your desired margin) of at least 1.5cm.  This will give the appearance of a consistent margin (for example, if your outer margin is 1.5cm then your inner margin should be 3 cm as the first 1.5cm will be taken up with the bind).

Set your headers and footers to black only

If you want to mix black only with full colour pages to reduce production costs, make sure that your headers and footers are black only otherwise the change in look from a black only to a full colour page will be jarring to a reader.

Think about moving all colour images to one section

It’s a simple trick but effective one. If you have the flexibility to do so then why not move colour images to a single section or at a single location within a section so that the rest of the pages could black only printing which can save you dollars on a bigger books or larger runs.  Having said that, we usually can manage some pages being black, and some colour (without having to charge you for colour on every page) but because of the way that staple-bound books are printed this can become difficult (as the colour pages need to be on facing pages to avoid cost escalation).

You don’t need to create the printing pages for us

The rule for sending work for us to print is design it as you you want the finished product to look and let us worry about how to get it there. This is especially important for books and booklets as our printings have specialist software that will automatically lay the books out in the most readable format allowing for every issue that could arise for the binding style that you want to use.  As a rule, we prefer the PDF to be laid out as A4 pages in logical sequence – we will lay it up for facing pages at no charge.

Got stuck on how to do all of this?

Don’t worry if this confusing and you can’t seem to set things up right, you can just call on us. At Copy Express we are more than happy to consult on how to best set up your booklets. In fact if you call us in at the beginning stage we can help you configure the design before you go though the effort of creating the book or booklet so you get every dollars worth of value from them.