We can produce beautifully printed booklets and books in black only or full colour. The printing orientation of your Book or Booklet can be landscape (i.e. bound on the short edge) or portrait (i.e. bound on the long edge).
Book & Booklet Printing Sizes
Our standard booklet and book printing sizes are:
- 148mm x 105mm (A6 portrait)
- 105mm x 148mm (A6 landscape)
- 210mm x 99mm (1/3 A4 portrait)
- 99mm x 210mm (1/3 A4 landscape)
- 210mm x 148mm (A5 portrait)
- 148mm x 210mm (A5 landscape)
- 210mm x 210mm (210mm square)
- 297mm x 210mm (A4 portrait)
- 210mm x 297mm (A4 landscape)
Custom sizes:
We can produce any other size of book or booklet you may require from 99mm x 99mm up to a maximum of 297mm x 210mm or 210mm x 297mm.
Number of pages in a Book or Booklet
Some people who are unfamiliar with printing jargon get confused over the meaning of the word "pages" of a booklet (sometimes thinking it means "leaves"). If you imagine that you are reading a book with numbered pages starting at page number 1, then when you turn the page the other side is page number 2 and so on – this is what we (and the rest of the printing industry) mean by pages.
When printing and binding a book and booklet we need to have a number of pages which are divisible by four. The minimum number of pages for printing a booklet is eight – four pages of text and a four page cover. The cover can be on the same material as the text (this is known as a self-cover booklet printing).
When you are answering the questions on our price calculator page, please let us know the total number of pages in your Book or Booklet including the cover, and then tell us how many of the text pages need colour printing and/or black and white printing and/or spot colour printing. Finally, we need to know the colour for printing the cover, the material for printing the cover and whether you would like it to be unlaminated, gloss laminated or matt laminated.
Choice of paper and board for Books and Booklets
We offer a choice of printing on uncoated, gloss coated and silk coated materials in various weights ranging from 100gsm to 300gsm. The Executive materials are uncoated.
When you are using our price calculator to work out the printing price of your book or booklet, you first choose the paper (or board) for printing the text, and then choose the paper (or board) for printing the cover.
Colour of the printing of a Book or Booklet
Unlike most printing companies, if you choose to have a mixture of full colour and black only pages we do not mind where they fall in the book or booklet. We only require that the total number of each type of page we will be printing is divisible by four.
Our printing prices assume that the inside covers of the book or booklet are printed in the same colour as the outside covers – if the inside covers are not printed at all, it will not save any money.
Binding methods for Books and Booklets
There are two binding methods available for your Book or Booklet:
- Saddle stitched booklet – this means that after printing, they are stapled through the spine
- Perfect bound booklet – these have a square back and the pages are glued into the cover, like a paperback book
Production times for printing Books and Booklets
The following turnaround times are available for printing books and booklets on gloss art, silk art and Executive uncoated materials.
Express turnaround – your book or booklet printing order will be despatched in four working days.
Please note heavy ink coverage on Executive paper or Executive board sometimes dries slowly and may possibly delay the despatch of your order.
If you require Digital Embossing on your Book or Booklet cover, the number of working days will increase by two. The despatch time, including the time required for the Digital Embossing, will be shown in the Product Description.
For a day to be treated as the first working day, we require your printing order and payment along with print quality artwork before 10am. Alternatively, for an additional charge, you can delay the printing order, payment and print quality artwork cut-off time to 3.30pm.
Artwork and PDF requirements
- We operate a PDF workflow, so please supply your Book or Booklet artwork as a Press Quality PDF. If you prefer, we can create a PDF for you, in which case we will email a proof to you for approval. There is an additional charge for this PDF creation service of £20 plus VAT.
- If any print reaches the edge of your finished job, please add 3mm bleed to all sides of your artwork
- We need a "quiet area" to ensure nothing important is too near to the edge of the Book or Booklet; so please leave a 5mm inner margin for anything other than backgrounds. For a perfect bound book or booklet, please leave a quiet area of 15mm on the spine-side edge of your text pages and inside cover pages
- Supply files to us in Pantone colour for Spot Colour Books and Booklets or CMYK for Full Colour Books and Booklets, not RGB please
- Image resolution should be 300dpi or more
- Please embed fonts or convert all of your text to shapes