Books

Planning Your Book

Lumiere strives to make book making accessible and straightforward, while allowing a wide range of creative options to customize your finished product. To help to transform your vision into something tangible, we’ve created this checklist of considerations:

Characteristics | Layout & Design | Binding

Page Size
For books, there is no single standard but rather several typical formats. Some books are square, many are “portrait” shaped, meaning the book is longer in the spine direction than the cross-book dimension. In the fine art book realm, the “landscape” format is often used, in which the spine length is the shorter dimension. These three formats usually manifest themselves in sizes ranging from 6”x6” up to 11”x14” although we can accommodate other custom sizes.

Page Count
How many pages will the book have? Too few and you’re printing a booklet. Too many and you may find the costs beyond your budget or targeted selling price. When we refer to pages, we mean how many “page sides”, not the number of sheets of paper in the book. A 50-page book is usually printed on 25 sheets of paper, front and back.

Single or Double-sided
Do you want the text and photos to all be printed on the same side of each sheet (“simplex” printing), or do you want to take advantage of printing on both sides of the sheet (“duplex” printing)? Duplex printing is more economical, but sometimes the book looks better if printed simplex mode.

Paper Stock
Choice of stock for the printed page is especially important for the fine art or photographic book.

Finish
Whether it is gloss, matte, or textured should be related to the subject matter and “mood” the author wishes to convey.

Weight
Image rich books often incorporate heavier stocks than text only works to minimize image “show through”.

Color
Most book papers range from bright white to off-white to warm cream colors, but many other choices are available.

Cover style
Do you prefer a “hard cover” or “soft cover” book?

Beyond that decision, there are nearly as many attributes to the cover as there are to the interior of the book:

Content Characteristics

Color or B/W—Perhaps the most fundamental of all your decisions is whether to print in color or black and white. Much of the growth in short run book printing is attributable to affordable, high quality four-color output. But many fine art photographers choose to work in black and white. The wonder of today’s state of the art laser printing technology is that spectacular image making is possible in both domains, as well as other simulated “tones”.

Page Layout and Design

The appeal of any image-rich book is influenced first and foremost by the quality of the images themselves. But almost as significant is how the artwork are positioned on the page, how one image is juxtaposed on a facing page with another image, what type face(s) are used to convey the textual content, how the table of contents is laid out, whether or not to number the pages and where that number is positioned, along with countless other mini-decisions that can turn a good collection of imagery into an even better book presentation of your work. We can help you in several ways, ranging from doing the entire design for you, to consulting with you on doing your own design, to simply printing and binding the books from the print-ready files you prepared.

Binding Methods

Lumiere can recommend the appropriate binding method for you, based on cost, aesthetics, and durability considerations.

Two primary methods of attaching or “binding” the book pages to each other and to the book’s cover are:

Sewing
Pages are literally sewn together on a special sewing machine along with the end sheets, and this “book block” glued into the hard cover casing.

Gluing
Also known as “perfect binding”, this method uses specially formulated adhesives as the means of attaching the pages together and to the book’s spine.

Soft-cover options - Glossy papers, matte or textured finishes to imitation leather wraps.

Cover art and titling - Paper covers lend themselves to printed artwork and/or text. Adhesive labeling or a debossed photo on the cover are alternatives. (Debossing means to indent (a figure or design) into a surface.)

Finish - we recommend that printed soft covers be laminated or otherwise coated to protect the surface from abrasion.

Hard cover options

Cover material - Either paper or a variety of other materials, including bonded leathers.

End sheet - This is the paper that covers the interior sides of the front and back book boards and is an important element in the book’s construction. Selections range from plain white paper to heavy textured stocks.

Cover art and titling - Choices include printing the artwork onto a paper surface, or foil stamping the title onto the front and spine of the book. Adhesive labels and debossed photos can be “tipped in” or pasted-in originals.

Finish - Paper surfaces wear better if laminated or otherwise coated.

Dust Jackets - If you plan to sell your book, a dust jacket is often important for “shelf appeal”. We provide both design and printing services.