How books are made

Most hardcover books are printed in folded bundles of pages sewn along the fold, which is why they lie flat.

stations: 6
things upstream: 66
raw sources: 19
steps from the ground: 9

The short version

A printed book starts as big sheets covered in pages, printed on both sides. The sheets are folded into bundles called signatures, gathered in order and sewn or glued into a text block. A rigid case of board covered with cloth or paper is then fastened around it. Perfect-bound paperbacks skip the sewing and rely on glue.

Print large sheets

Presses print many pages at once on both sides of large sheets of paper. The pages are arranged so they will land in the right order after folding.

Goes in
Paper Ink
Fold into signatures

Folding machines fold each printed sheet down into a compact bundle, called a signature. When a hardcover is opened in the middle of a signature, the stitching is visible.
Gather and sew the stack

The signatures are collated in order. For the best binding they are stitched through the fold, a method called the gold standard. Machines then glue the sewn signatures at the spine to hold the text block together.

Goes in
Sewing thread Adhesive
Trim the edges

A guillotine shaves the other three sides of the text block so the pages are even and free to turn.
Cover the boards

Two stiff boards and a spine strip are wrapped in cloth, vinyl, leather or printed paper to make the case. Cotton-based book cloth became common in the nineteenth century.

Goes in
Cardboard Cotton fabric
Case the text block

Glued endpapers join the text block to the finished case, and the book is pressed while the glue sets. A paper dust jacket may go around it afterward.

Goes in
Adhesive

End of the lineBook

Worth repeating

Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in Europe around 1450, making books quicker and less expensive to produce.
The earliest surviving European bookbinding is the St Cuthbert Gospel of about 700, in red goatskin.