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Planning a Soft Cover

When using card available in the standard assortment of the suppliers of copier & digital printing machinery it is better to design the print work to start from the corner of the page (not middle).

This allows you to make your nipping line for i.e. A4 format to stay in one place and allow Fastbind automatic nipping system to take care of the back cover nipping (scores according the size of the spine). You can bind thicknesses from 1 page to 40 mm and the paper can be up to A4+ size (320 mm).

Soft Cover Books Fastbind

Size of the stock cover sheet for A4 or Letter sized book

  • for A4 size: 297 x 457 mm (grain direction 297 mm)
  • for Letter size: 11 x 17.7" (grain direction 11")

Material

  • thickness of the paper 160 - 260 g/m² (e.g. Executive covers are 121 lbs index)
  • coating only on the outside

Positioning on the sheet for an A4 or Letter sized book

  • the place to fold the front page is 210 mm from the front edge in A4 and 8½ inch (216 mm) in Letter size
  • starting point is the top and front edge of the front page

Size of the cover sheet for A5 (148x210) or Statement sized book:

  • 210 x 260 mm (grain direction 210 mm)
  • in United States the Statement size is very close to the European A5: it is 5½ × 8½ inches which equals 140 × 216 mm. Therefore the height of the cover sheet must be accordingly bigger.

Positioning on the sheet for an A5 or Statement sized book:

  • the place to fold the frontpage is 148.5 mm from the front edge. Starting point is the top and front edge of the front page.
  • in Statement size the folding starts 5½" (140mm) from the front edge.

Visual appearance

The thickness of the pages grows after digital printing. This needs to be considered when designing the cover layout. In Fastbind system the automatic thickness registration helps the designer considerably.

Front cover registration depending whether spine text is necessary – in Fastbind system one scoring line is enough – as Fastbind automatic nipping takes care of thickness. Using spine text in very thin books, however, still requires concentration while binding.