In my talk on the making of the modern book I will not attempt to tell you all that I know about book manufacturing. The video that you have seen this morning covers the major aspects of this complex subject very thoroughly. I do intend to share with you some of the reasons why I think that publishers[approx equal] bindings will never be as durable as you might wish them to be. Bear in mind that my company, Acme Bookbinding, manufactures bindings for libraries and for publishers. Two very different products for two very different markets. Drawing on my experience with the publishers[approx equal] binding market--commonly referred to as trade binding, I hope to give you an insight into the process that creates the product you purchase.

The most important point I wish to make is that publishers are almost always more interested in the aesthetics of a binding than the structure. Let me rephrase this. Publishers care about the appearance of a book because they believe that the design of the jacket, the cover and the printing have a great deal to do with the success of a book. In other words will it sell. Appearance catches the eye of the consumer and makes one book stand out relative to another.

Structure, on the other hand, is not something that the average consumer appreciates or even notices. This point is highlighted by the fact that good binding structure always adds to the cost of a binding. An intangible, like good binding structure, just does not get the attention of publishers who are driven by the desire to sell new books. Keep in mind that bad binding structure does not become apparent until the book has been used many times and has failed.

What does good binding structure mean for a trade binding? Well the answer is simpler than you might imagine. Most, if not all, trade bindings produced in the world are manufactured with equipment produced by a handful of companies located in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Hard cover binding lines made by Kolbus, Mueller Martini/VBF, and Nuovo Smyth can be found in most every trade bindery in the world. The technologies of these very automated binding lines are essentially the same. What differentiates a good binding from a fair binding can usually be attributed to materials used and processes omitted plus binder's skill.

Let Me Elaborate. After printing, the sheets that will make up a book are folded into signatures usually made up of 16, 32, or 64 page impositions. These signatures then are collated into complete books on gathering machines--big machines with many pockets that each feed one of the signatures that will make up a book. A 320-page book, for example, might be comprised of twenty 16-page signatures or ten 32-page signatures. The trim size of the book (the height and width of the finished book[approx equal]s pages) and the maximum sheet capacity of the printing press are limiting factors that affect the choice of printing imposition. In my example of a 320-page book, the press sheet would have to be twice as large to have a 32-page imposition as opposed to a 16-page imposition. This is important because the more pages in a signatures, the fewer signatures in a book, the lower the cost of folding, gathering, sewing and binding a book. On the other hand books with lower page count impositions, such as 16-pages, generally are considered to be of higher quality.

In my talk I will refer to the bones, the muscle and the skin of a binding. I hope that my analogy gives meaning to the difference in quality that subtle changes in manufacturing specifications can have.

I start with the bones of a binding--the building blocks that enable the binding to carry its own weight. Bones need to be strong yet they must also allow movement of the body. In my analogy leaf attachment is the bones of a binding. The two choices are sewing and adhesive binding.

Better quality books are sewn using a process called Smyth sewing. Smyth sewing, a process for sewing through-the-fold, gets its name from the Smyth Company once located in Hartford Connecticut. Smyth[approx equal]s workhorse #12 and #18 book sewing machines were the Kleenex and Frigidaire of their era. Today most trade books that are sewn through the fold are sewn using machines made by Aster or Nuovo Smyth, both Italian companies, or Mueller Martini, a Swiss company. These machines sew at speeds up to 200 signatures per minute. Smyth sewn books are flexible, strong and excellent candidates for rebinding. They are the books that one day might be selected for recasing. They are also equivalent in structure to the books that are National sewn in the library bindery.

Why then aren't all trade books Smyth sewn? Cost is the short answer. Smyth sewn books must be taken off the production line and be processed one signature at a time through a sewing machine. Granted, the machines sew at a very high speed, but the extra step of sewing adds to the production time and adds cost to the book directly proportional to the number of signatures it is comprised of. Keep in mind that the thicker a book, the more signatures it will have, the more time it will take to sew this book one signature at a time, the greater the cost. Also keep in mind that book manufacturers wish to keep their binding lines running at steady speeds of approximately 3000 books per hour. It takes quite a bit of sewing capacity to produce that many books. Consequently sewing is always a bottleneck in the bindery.

The alternative to Smyth sewing is adhesive binding on a machine called a perfect binder. While the process is far from perfect, the name has its origin with the Sheridan Company who gave that name to their machine. Perfect binders are usually linked to gathering machines. A perfect bound book can be adhesive bound with practically no additional cost. The gathered book is carried into one of many identical clamps on the perfect binder. The folds of the book are cut away, the spine is roughed up to expose the paper fibers and sometimes notching is employed to increase penetration of adhesive. Hot melt adhesive (EVA), cold adhesive (PVA), polyurethane adhesive (PUR) or a combination of two or three shots of different adhesives may be used to attach the leaves of the book before a "cap" of paper is applied. Perfect binders run at speeds of 6000 to 12,000 books per hour. It is not uncommon for a large bindery to feed several hard cover binding lines with a single perfect binder. Unlike the bottleneck of the sewing department, the perfect binder is a hungry monster chewing up work as fast as the pressroom can bring it out.

Perfect binding uses mechanical adhesion to bond the paper with hot melt adhesive. The adhesive, which is 100% solid, is liquefied by heating to a range of 2000 to 4000 F, and by hooking or clinging, surrounds the fibers or irregularities of the micro-surface of the paper. Within seconds the adhesive cools, shrinks down tightly around the paper fibers and returns to its solid plastic state.

Some perfect bound books do not have the folds of the spine milled away. Instead holes punched in the folding process are filled with adhesive during perfect binding. These bindings are often called burst or notched bindings. It might appear that burst bindings are stronger than perfect bindings because the folds of the signatures are left intact. That is true only for the outer pages of each signature. The inner pages are held in the binding only by the small amount of adhesive that is able to flow in through the holes burst through the binding edge fold. If there is any misalignment of folding or defect in gluing, then these books are subject to failure. Burst bindings are inexpensive to produce because sewing is omitted. They look like sewn bindings to most consumers since the folds are preserved. Burst bindings are not good candidates for rebinding and they often do not hold up well to repeated use and abuse.

It is important to remember that trade bindings, unlike library bindings, are not double-fanned. They do not get as much adhesive between the pages. Publisher[approx equal]s adhesive bound books are glued with a simple roller application of adhesive. Adhesive either is engineered to dry rapidly as with hot melt EVA adhesives that are not water based, or it is dried artificially with heat. All of these reasons explain why they do not achieve the high page pull values found in library bindings.

Unless they are Smyth sewn, trade bindings will not have the sturdy bones needed to survive library use, particularly if books are printed on coated, cross-grain paper or are heavily used.

You must be wondering how I am going to weave the muscle of the book into this narrative. In my opinion the most important part of a binding after its leaf attachment is the spine lining. Spine lining is the equivalent of muscle. It provides the support that enables the sewing or adhesive binding to withstand the stress of repeated flexing as a book is opened, read and copied. It also provides the connection between the textblock and the cover. One of the main reasons that library bindings are so durable is the high quality spine lining material that is used on all library bindings--they are muscular bindings.

Trade bindings do not share this desirable characteristic. As I said, virtually all trade bindings are manufactured using the same processes on machines made by a handful of companies. One of the compromises made by all of these manufacturers is in the area of spine lining. All hard cover binding lines are prevented from using a close-weave, high-strength reinforcing cloth. The problem is that the machines apply adhesive to the spine of the book only--not to the cloth. The open-weave reinforcing material is then placed dry onto the already glued-off spine of the book with flaps extending over the front and back endpaper. When glue is later applied to the endpapers of the book block before casing-in, some of that adhesive must be able to flow through the open weave of the reinforcing material to allow it to adhere the cloth to the endpapers and the endpapers to the boards of the cover. The tightly woven cloth used by library binders would never work on the binding lines that all trade binders use. It simply is not possible unless they are redesigned.

A small number of binders, like Acme Bookbinding, have found a solution to this problem. We put our reinforcing cloth on the book using a different machine before the casing-in operation occurs. The high thread count, tight weave cloth that meets our library binding specifications is glued off before it is applied to the book block. Machinery that we use for this purpose, manufactured by Sigloch, another German company, is relatively rare in the North America, is quite expensive and it adds to the cost of a binding as it does to the quality. Most buyers of trade bindings simply do not know that the option of a strong spine lining exists and probably would not pay for it if they did--even if it was available to them. Remember this is a structural element that no one will see or understand.

Strong muscle is possible in a trade binding, but for the foreseeable future it is not generally available and it does add to cost.

Finally we get to the skin. In this case I am referring to the covering material of a hard cover book. In years past I might have called this material cloth, but the unfortunate fact is that most modern books are covered with paper. In some cases a book might be full cloth, in others it will have a cloth spine and paper sides--commonly called a three-piece cover. Special machines have been built to efficiently produce covers using three pieces of material in one pass through the machine. The reason is that cloth is much more expensive than paper. It is not uncommon for the cover materials to be responsible for 50% of the cost of a hard cover binding. Using cheaper materials has a direct impact on the cost. It also has a bearing on the durability of the binding, particularly for large and heavy books. Keep in mind that one yard of Group F buckram costs approximately $5.00, and adds nearly $1.00 to the cost of a binding.

Sometimes cost is not a factor at all, as unbelievable as that might sound. Many art books are covered with a very expensive imported rayon fabric chosen because of the brilliant colors. This material is not particularly strong, abrasion resistant or water repellent, but it is pretty. Paper on the other hand can be all of the above as well as economical as a cover material. In this case I think that the important factor is building in enough strength for the weight of the book rather than simply saying that all books must be covered in cloth to meet library needs.

Publishers rarely specify cover materials for their books that match the quality of products endorsed by the library binding industry. The group F buckram and C grade cloth the library binders have used for generations are more expensive and less attractive than materials that publishers favor. Publishers typically chose 50 pound cover weight paper or 7 point saturated paper and in ever more rare cases A or B grade book cloth. Because this "Skin" does not match the body it protects, it often does not hold up to library use. Many books fail when the cover material tears at the joint where the book cover hinges on its boards.

To summarize, I have explained why trade books will inevitably be of lower quality than libraries require. They will have fragile bones, perfect bound rather than Smyth sewn through-the-fold. They will have weak muscles, reinforced with skimpy spine linings. They will have thin skin, covered in paper rather than in durable cloth. The economics of mass production is the culprit not the unscrupulous publisher.

It is possible to manufacture books that will meet library needs. The problem is that the publisher produces the books for the average consumer not for the library. Even if the book is intended for the library market, use patterns vary and books invariably get caught up in the routine production stream that the publisher is familiar with. There is no advocate for the economics of better quality that has sufficient clout with the publisher to get any results.

As I recall the title of my talk was the making of the modern book. It seems to me that the mass production techniques of past years were built around the paradigm that books are produced in the greatest quantity possible in order to get unit costs down. The problem is that these books have to be stored in a warehouse, shipped to the point of sale when orders are placed and often discounted or destroyed if they do not sell. Remember that publishers are truly risk takers since they allow book stores to send books back for full credit if they do not sell.

In today's digital world of the internet, the new paradigm is distribute the electronic files and print on demand rather that print, warehouse and distribute. Books that are printed digitally rather than on conventional offset or web presses are produced as single sheets rather than as signatures--much like pages off a copy machine. Demand printed books make it possible for publishers to keep books in print that could not have been produced economically using the old model. The demand model also enables publishers with limited resources or limited market appeal, such as university presses or scholarly societies, to produce books affordably in small quantity.

As this new model emerges, it seems clear to me that the logical industry to bind these small orders of single sheet books is the library binding industry. We should re-christen ourselves as On-Demand binders or Custom binders. Library binders are uniquely organized to manage a production line where every book on the line is different. Whatever quality, service or specification the customer requests is possible. Our production facilities are continuously assimilating new technology that streamlines our process without restricting our flexibility regarding quality. I envision a bright future for tomorrow[approx equal]s morphed library binders and for libraries that will be able to purchase books made to their specifications, capable of meeting their use requirements.

Efficiency will ultimately drive a product that better suits the needs of the consumer. Instead of libraries having to buy mass produced books intended for the average consumer that will either not read a book at all or certainly not treat it roughly, they will be able to custom order books bound with library specifications produced by an on-Demand binder. Publishers will get their revenue when you download the title, rather than when you buy the book. Most readers will not want to read on the screen, even if it is enhanced, or to read a pile of loose pages from their laser printer. They will need the service of a New Age Demand binder, ready to produce a book in an hour, or a day, or a week, in a simple or an elaborate binding, delivered to their dorm, office or home.

I cannot tell you how far into the future this reality will be. I honestly believe that the Internet is a marvelous tool--the Rosetta Stone that unlocks the literature of the world to the many. After all the mission of libraries is to provide access to information. Libraries have a responsibility to keep intellectual resources available for future generations as well as for today[approx equal]s clients. Libraries are the keepers of the works of popular, maverick, and unknown authors.

Ultimately readers will want to read from a paper-based medium because it is more comfortable and versatile. The aspects of the web that libraries must integrate are related to convenience. Information consumers want to get their hands on the best resources possible with the least effort. We live in an increasingly rushed and pampered world. Who would have ever projected the number of service industries that have arisen to cater to the affluent, time-starved citizens of our modern society.

The books of the future will have to meet the needs of a more demanding clientele or they will simply make do with a Head Line News, watered-down style of information delivery over the Web. I am confident that book manufacturers will pay attention to the possibilities of this powerful delivery system and will offer the services that will be necessary to keep printed, bound books competitive with alternate technologies. I hope for this because of the 150 families that get their livelihood binding books at Acme Bookbinding. My optimism about the viability of the printed book is mostly driven by the four young children that I have at home. I sincerely hope that they and their children can look forward to a lifetime of reading--exploring the wide world, nurturing their imaginations and sharing the experiences and dreams of generations past.

A great part of that experience is in the design of the book, the tactile connection to the feel of the paper, the richness of the printing and the structure of the binding. Yes, now I praise structure because good book structure, like good design, is important and valuable. You may not see it, but you know when it is absent. It adds to the experience and joy of reading. Quality is possible in a world of custom manufacturing, because you will not have to settle for the product that the mass-market average-consumer will accept. Strong bones, firm muscle and vibrant skin will be possible for the books of the future. Basic values never change, they simply must be reinvented every now and then.

Paul Parisi, President
Acme Bookbinding

First presented at:
New Direction in Library Binding
Los Angeles, March 11, 1999