Q. What are perfect bound books?
A. Perfect bound books are created by hotmelt glueing the text pages to the spine of the book. Perfect bound books get their name from the process that they undergo: the pages and the cover of the book are all cut to be the exact same size and therefore they line up together perfectly.
Q. Where would you use perfect bound books?
A. Perfect bound printing is commonly used for Annual Reports, thick brochures, catalogues. This method binds your document together with hot melt adhesive along the spine to provide a smooth and stylish finish.
Q. What are the benefits of perfect binding?
A. Perfect bound books are professional in appearance, cost-effective even for low quantities and a great option for documents from 60 up to 700 printed pages. The binding glue is flexible and non-brittle, meaning that the books open flatter without cracking the spine or pages falling out.
Q. What is the difference between perfect bound and saddle-stitched?
A. Perfect bound and saddle-stitched are the two most common methods of booklet binding. Saddle-stitching involves binding multiple pages together along a fold (also known as the spine) with two staples. On the other hand, perfect bound books have a flat spine. The sheets of paper are gathered together and glue is applied to the binding edge, then the cover of the book is placed on the glue.
Q. What is the process for binding perfect bound books?
A. With perfect binding, all the printed pages are stacked in a block and squared off. Then the pages are glued together along the spine with extremely strong PUR adhesive. The printed cover is then wrapped around and glued on to the spine as well. The remaining three edges are then trimmed so that the edges of the block are perfectly neat.
Q. Can a perfect-bound book have printing on its spine?
A. n most cases, yes…but the book’s spine has to be wide enough to properly display the printing. We recommend that you don’t add text to your spine if it is thinner than 3mm. When you place your order you will be shown your spine thickness based on your selection.
Q. What glue do you use for your perfect bound books?
A. We only use PUR glue to perfect bind our books as it is much stronger than hot melt glue. PUR binding is more tolerant to higher and lower temperatures as is very flexible and non-brittle, meaning books open flat without cracking the spine or pages falling out.
Q. What paper options do you offer with perfect bound books?
A. Choose from silk, gloss or uncoated for your cover from 215gsm to 350gsm. Your inner (text) pages can be uncoated, silk or gloss, in weights ranging from 100gsm to 200gsm.
Q. Can any book be perfect bound?
A. No. The thickness of your inner paper type determines how many pages you can select. This is because the minimum spine thickness is 2mm. If you choose 100gsm uncoated then 28 pages will be the minimum page count. If you choose 170gsm uncoated then 20 pages will be the minimum page count. If your book contains less pages than the minimum page count then saddle-stitched or wiro-binding would be a more suitable option.
Q. What sizes are available for my perfect bound books?
A. Our perfect bound books are available in A4 portrait, 1/3 A4 portrait, A5 portrait or landscape or 210 x 210mm square.
Q. What finishes do you offer for perfect bound books?
A. Our perfect bound books are available in a number of finishes from single or double-sided lamination in gloss or matt finish or opt for no lamination. Matt lamination gives a soft, contemporary effect. Adding a gloss lamination gives a higher quality shine finish than printing on gloss paper alone. Lamination is most useful with solid colours or images to enhance their vibrancy or where you want to protect your printed documents. The most popular option is to matt laminate your cover.
Q. Do you have any templates that I could download?
A. We have a fantastic selection of design templates for perfect-bound book printing available in Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and PDF formats. View our Design Templates which are located on the product page.
Q. How do I supply my artwork?
A. Please supply perfect bound books as two multi-page PDFs consisting of a cover file and inners file. The cover PDF should be supplied as a spread including the spine. The inner PDF should contain only the inner pages in correct running order.
Q. Do I need bleed and crop marks on my artwork?
A. Yes, this is very important when providing artwork for perfect-bound books. When an image or colour on the page extends past the crop marks, it is regarded as bleed. As there is a degree of movement when printing on any press, you should always create at least 3mm bleed on all edges.
Q. Do I need to adhere to certain margins when designing my perfect bound book?
A. The cover is fixed to the spine and up to 7mm on the side of the perfect-bound book. With this in mind, we recommend that you use a margin of 12mm minimum from the bound edge of each page.
Q. Do I need to supply fonts?
A. If you supply us with a Print Ready PDF then fonts are embedded or converted to outlines. However, we may request the fonts if files are supplied in other formats.
