Softback Books - Perfect Bound

You can choose any quantity you like from 1.

These are the size documents that you can choose from:

• A6 - 105 x 148mm
• A5 - 148 x 210mm
• 210 - 210 x 210
• A4 - 210 x 297mm
• A format - 178x110mm
• B format - 198x130mm
• C format - 216x135mm

We can do custom sizes where technically possible, but these will cost a small amount more. Please have a chat with the helpdesk on 01452 751900 to discuss.

Portrait means that the width is less than the height, landscape means that the width is greater than the height. Think of paintings on a wall, landscape paintings tend to be wider than they are tall, portraits tend to be narrower than they are tall.

You can choose from the following options:

• Full colour outside cover (front, spine and back), blank inside.
• Full colour outside and inside.
• Full colour outside and black&white inside.

This is Inky, where you get lots of choice!

Spoilt by too much choice? You can't go far wrong by leaving this option set to the default 250gsm white. It's the most popular cover because it's really very good for most books.

Don't forget. If you speak to the helpdesk, we'll put together a personalised information pack with paper swatches and other samples that are relevant to you. You can see physical samples of our paper before you buy.

These are the papers that we currently offer. Because we are a real physical UK commercial printer, we guarantee that this is the actual paper that we use. Your work does not go overseas to the lowest bidder using whatever cheapest paper they can find! Go ahead and Google the paper brands for more details.

• White matt. This is Edixion Offset. A good quality uncoated white matt paper with high opacity. Made from ECF (Elemental chlorine free) pulp and carries an EU Eco label. Because we're an ISO9001 UK manufacturer, we exhaustively test all new papers when we bring them into our product range. So when we refer to this as our "standard" paper, that's not faint praise. It's a good value, good quality white paper.
• Recycled white matt. This is Nautilus SuperWhite, a premium uncoated 100% recycled paper made from 100% Post Consumer Waste. It carries Blue Angel and EU Ecolabel Certification. Nautilus is one of the superstars of modern recycled papers, you can't tell it apart from paper made with virgin pulp.
• Recycled off white matt. This is Nautilus Classic, a premium uncoated 100% recycled paper made from 100% Post Consumer Waste. It carries Blue Angel and EU Ecolabel Certification. We love Classic! It is an authentic recycled shade. It doesn't try to hide the fact that it's recycled paper and carries a warmth and organic texture because of this that many of our customers love. Of course, everyone's tastes are different and different projects call for different papers, so that's why we also stock Nautilus SuperWhite. Although we get excellent results with both black & white and colour printing, you need to understand what the off white colour will do to the reproduction of your images. We have many customers who have printed and reprinted full colour graphic novels on this paper,so excellent results are achievable.
• Gloss and Silk. This is Galerie Art a superior quality coated paper. You will see this type of paper in higher quality magazines and illustrated "coffee table" books. The gloss is a mid gloss, not the same as the high gloss paper you may use for photographs in your inkjet printer. Silk paper is nearly matt, with a slight sheen.
• Kraft. Genuine Kraft board! This is a natural brown coloured board that has been especially produced to be able to take a good quality print. The organic style of this material must form part of your design. You are not dealing with smooth white paper! Make sure you read the artwork preparation guide.
• Sirio Pearl Oyster. Sirio Pearl is the name of the paper, Oyster the colour. Pulp-coloured papers and boards with a pearlescent surface. Made with ECF pulp. Pulp-dyed with light-fast pigments. This one always provokes a reaction with us! First of all the manufacturer is Fedrigoni, which has got to be one of the coolest names ever. Secondly it's one of the most outrageously expensive papers we use, it even has it's own little exclusive storage area in the factory! It does live up to it's Italian designer name though and looks fantastic.

We stock a wider range of papers that are not yet available through the online quote system. These include the Vanguard range of coloured papers from James Cropper (one of the last few remaining British paper mills), plus more specialised papers like ColorPlan, GMund and Crane's Lettra (pure cotton). So, please do ask the helpdesk if you need something different as we may be able to help.

This is the paper that your book block (the pages of your book) will be printed on.

This is Inky, where you get lots of choice!

Don't forget. If you speak to the helpdesk, we'll put together a personalised information pack with paper swatches and other samples that are relevant to you. You can see physical samples of our paper before you buy.

These are the papers that we currently offer. Because we are a real physical UK commercial printer, we guarantee that this is the actual paper that we use. Your work does not go overseas to the lowest bidder using whatever cheapest paper they can find! Go ahead and Google the paper brands for more details.

• White matt. This is Edixion Offset. A good quality uncoated white matt paper with high opacity. Made from ECF (Elemental chlorine free) pulp and carries an EU Eco label. Because we're an ISO9001 UK manufacturer, we exhaustively test all new papers when we bring them into our product range. So when we refer to this as our "standard" paper, that's not faint praise. It's a good value, good quality white paper.
• Recycled white matt. This is Nautilus SuperWhite, a premium uncoated 100% recycled paper made from 100% Post Consumer Waste. It carries Blue Angel and EU Ecolabel Certification. Nautilus is one of the superstars of modern recycled papers, you can't tell it apart from paper made with virgin pulp.
• Recycled off white matt. This is Nautilus Classic, a premium uncoated 100% recycled paper made from 100% Post Consumer Waste. It carries Blue Angel and EU Ecolabel Certification. We love Classic! It is an authentic recycled shade. It doesn't try to hide the fact that it's recycled paper and carries a warmth and organic texture because of this that many of our customers love. Of course, everyone's tastes are different and different projects call for different papers, so that's why we also stock Nautilus SuperWhite. Although we get excellent results with both black & white and colour printing, you need to understand what the off white colour will do to the reproduction of your images. We have many customers who have printed and reprinted full colour graphic novels on this paper,so excellent results are achievable.
• Gloss and Silk. This is Galerie Art a superior quality coated paper. You will see this type of paper in higher quality magazines and illustrated "coffee table" books. The gloss is a mid gloss, not the same as the high gloss paper you may use for photographs in your inkjet printer. Silk paper is nearly matt, with a slight sheen.
• Cream book wove. This is genuine Munken Print Cream 15 from Arctic Paper in Sweden. It is a very high quality cream shaded paper developed specifically for book printing.

We stock a wider range of papers that are not yet available through the online quote system. These include the Vanguard range of coloured papers from James Cropper (one of the last few remaining British paper mills), plus more specialised papers like ColorPlan, GMund and Crane's Lettra (pure cotton). So, please do ask the helpdesk if you need something different as we may be able to help.

We're sometimes asked about whether you can write easily on these papers. You can write easily on all types with a standard ball point pen. If you want to be able to write with a fountain pen, then we recommend sticking to the uncoated papers.

PDF (online soft proof). This is a technical process to check that your artwork is printable and to prepare it for printing as far as possible. We aim to provide your soft proof within 4 working hours and you will get an email notification when it is ready.

The PDF that you send us (your artwork) has a pre-flight check carried out and a number of automatic corrections may also be made if necessary. The resulting soft proof is a PDF that is viewable through your admin area of the web site. It is very important that you carefully review your soft proof and the pre-flight report that we send to you.

If your artwork fails our preflight checks you will not get a proof, but you will get a report letting you know what is wrong with your file. You can then fix the problem and resubmit your artwork.

We may warn you about potential problems with your artwork. In this case, your artwork CAN be printed and you will get a proof to check. You should carefully check the warnings in your report before deciding whether to proceed or submit new artwork.

Your first soft proof is included in the price of your order. If you find that you need to make alterations to your artwork and ask us to create another proof, we may make a small charge for each additional soft proof. Please contact the helpdesk to arrange payment if you need additional proofs.

Remember, this is a technical file check, we don't proof read or check your design!

If you want a hard copy proof, please just order a single book.

To read more about proofs, read the help section:

HELP > ARTWORK > PROOFS   (opens in a new window)

Hard copy proof. This is a single physical copy of your book. When you select this option, your artwork will go through exactly the same steps as with a soft copy proof and in fact you will also get a soft proof available to view through the web site. Do not approve this before you have examined your hard copy!

Please remember that you will have to pay for your order before we can manufacture your hard copy proof. You can cancel your order after recieving your hardcopy proof, but you will be charged at the rate for one book and the remainder of your payment will be refunded.

We will try to get your hardcopy proof out to you as soon as possible, but it can take up to 5 working days for us to despatch, depending on the options that you have selected. If you wish to expedite your hard copy proof, please call the helpdesk to discuss. They may be able to suggest ways to speed up this process, for instance you may wish to see only the printed sheets and not wait to see the cover laminated.

This option specifies a thin plastic laminate coating to the outside of your cover. You can choose from:

• Gloss laminate. A high gloss finish that gives the maximum protection.
• Matt. A nice flat matt finish.
• Soft touch. Nearly everyone's favourite, a matt finish with a soft tactile feel to it.

All options will significantly enhance the appearance and increase the durability of the book.

Please note that if you have heavy ink coverage (for example a solid colour) on the spine or hinges of your book cover, this will almost certainly crack unless your cover is laminated. Cracking means that you will be able to see the white paper beneath the printing.

Hot foil is a thin sheet that can be applied to paper, card, fabric and many other materials. In fact, the "metal" controls in your car are usually a hard plastic covered with a hot foil. In the context of printing book covers, the nature of hot foil and how we apply it allows for some very pleasing effects that can be used to embellish your book. For instance, we can print the title in shiny gold with a mirror like appearance.

If you are considering hot foiling, you really need to read the artwork preparation guide, where we go into detail about the kinds of effects and embellishments you can have and how to achieve them. Importantly, the guide also explains the limitations of the instant online quotation system and when you need to contact the helpdesk for a quote for your specific job.

When hot foiling spines, it is best to be realistic! Very thin spines are extremely difficult to print on and we recommend a spine of at least 10mm for best results.

We stock an extensive range of high quality foils manufactured by Kurz.

Please note that we offer a "descriptive" name for each foil colour, i.e. Cloud Grey. Foil manufacturers do not give a descriptive names, just numbers! So these descriptive names have been made up by us at Inky in order to help you differentiate between shades when you are ordering. After each name we give a reference in brackets, for instance L362. This gives the manufacturer's reference, in this case Luxor 362. You should ask for a foil swatch sample, especially if the exact colour of the foil is important to you.

If you have access to a Kurz swatch book, you can look the colours up yourself using the reference number in brackets. L stands for Luxor, C stands for Colorit, AF stands for Alufin.

If you request foil samples from us, we will send an Inky manufactured swatch of the foils that we currently stock as standard colours. We cannot supply Kurz swatch books, these must be ordered from Kurz directly.

You can select one foil colour using the instant online quotation. This is just to keep the instant quote generator as simple as possible. If your design requires multiple colours, we can foil as many different colours as you want. However you'll need to speak with the heldesk to get a quotation for multi-coloured hot foiling.

Clear gloss foil imparts no colour to the print, but it is often applied on top of a printed area, giving a highlighted, textured affect. It also looks fantastic with no print below and using a deep impression.

Pearl foil is translucent. If applied on top of a printed area, you can see the printing underneath, but the colour is changed with a the pearlescent lustre.

Matt foils are exactly that. They can look very much like traditional letterpress or lithographic inks. The main difference is that foils are completely opaque. This is a great advantage as it means you can print light colours onto dark coloured card. The foiled area will show bright and true, whereas the colour of inks will vary according to the colour of the card that they are printed onto.

Gloss foils have a high gloss shine.

We also usually carry dull gloss gold and silver foils. If you would like this type of finish for your project, please contact the helpdesk to discuss.

We can apply one foil colour on top of another. This does not behave the same as inks: if you print a red dot on top of a white area, you don't get a pink dot, you get a red dot as the foils are opaque. The only exceptions to this are where we note that the foil is translucent or clear.

Please bear in mind that hot foiling is not the same process as printing and what is achievable is different. For example, you cannot create a half tone screen with foiling. Please read the artwork preparation guide for more information.

In some circumstances, we can special order colours that we don't normally stock. Please contact the helpdesk if you'd like to discuss this.

While Kurz manufactures foil to an extremely high standard, there may be slight colour differences between different batches manufactured.

This type of foiling uses engraved copper or brass dies. It's absolutely the best way of hot foiling book covers, however the dies themselves are fairly expensive to make. If you are printing larger numbers this is a very small cost per book, but for very short runs (say less than 50 books), this can add a fair amount per book. That's why we give you the option of just foiling a smaller area and choosing whether to foil the front cover, spine and rear cover separately. That way you can get an instant price. However, we'd always recommend chatting to the helpdesk, especially if this is your first project using hot foiling. They are able to recommend, and quote, the best size and combination of dies for your project.

A few more notes:

• When hot foiling spines, it is best to be realistic! Very thin spines are extremely difficult to print on and we recommend a spine of at least 10mm for best results.
• Under all circumstances, we will recalculate your die size based on your actual artwork and adjust the price accordingly if necessary.
• A die is a physical object, a rectangular engraved slab of metal. If you have two small areas to foil, the size of the die must cover both areas and all of the area in between.
• If you plan to reprint your book, We MAY be able to keep your die for you and re-use it. We do not guarantee this and you will need to ask us to keep the die! If you reprint a book using the same die, there will be a modest cost saving. The bigger the die, the more expensive it is and the more incentive to try and re-use it. We cannot send you your die and we cannot accept a die made elsewhere.

This is a decorative option, where we use a special guillotine to round the two corners opposite the spine. We don't round corner the spine.

Gatefold flaps are also known as French flaps. This is an extended front and back cover, where the flaps fold in toward the book block (the book block is also known as the text of the book). This type of cover is generally used for more upmarket books and many people think this gives something of the look of a hardback book with a dust jacket. The flaps can be used as a bookmark by the reader and generally allow more print area on the cover. Please make sure that you read the artwork preparation guide very carefully for sizes and LIMITATIONS as this is usually an option chosen by experienced designers. It is not an option that you can choose without thinking it through thoroughly and usually chatting with us about it!

Elastic closures stop your book coming open, handy if it's often put into a bag. With softback books, the only option available is "With Eyelets" (more options are available for hardback and hard cover wire bound books). Coloured metal eyelets are inserted into the back cover and these eyelets hold the ends of the elastic closure securely in place.

These are all of our stock elastic colours. You are welcome to request samples before ordering. If your project requires a different elastic colour, we can also special order in some other colours, please have a chat with the helpdesk if this is of interest.

You can chose from silver (nickel), gold or black (gunmetal) colour for the eyelets.

Select this option if you would like us to generate a bar code from your ISBN number. You will still need to apply this to your cover, or ask us to add it to your cover during the proofing process.

Please note: Inky does not issue ISBN numbers, this option is for us to generate a bar code from an ISBN number that you've already been issued. You must purchase ISBN numbers from the organisation responsible for issuing them in your region. In the UK this is Nielsen. Please see the Artwork Preparation Guide for further help and information about this topic.

We normally generate your bar code and send it to you as a PDF within one working day.

We are happy to send out samples of our printing for you see before you order. Please call the helpdesk to discuss your requirements.

There are four different options available:

• All B&W (Standard quality). Standard quality black & white is printed on the latest generation Xerox Nuvera EA digital production printers at 4800x600dpi. The quality is excellent for this type of machine, giving crisp text and graphics and reasonable quality photographs at 150lpi. Do not attempt to print more than about 20-30% coverage with this type of print, it is not designed for it and will not give perfect results. Examples of this are solid black pages with reversed out writing.
• All B&W (High quality). High quality black and white is printed in black & white on a colour digital press for near photographic quality. These presses are used for photobook printing and you should choose this option if that is the type of finish you wish to achieve. This is high quality commercial printing, not a contone photographic process.
• A mixture of Colour and High Quality B&W. If you require some colour pages and some black and white pages, choose this option. Your book will be printed on a colour digital press. It is not possible to mix "standard" black & white and colour in the same book.
• Colour. Full colour printed on a colour digital press for near photographic reproduction. These presses are used for photobook printing and you should choose this option if that is the type of finish you wish to achieve. This is high quality commercial printing, not a contone photographic process.

Number of black & white pages.

Please note that this is pages, not sheets. For example: a book with 100 sheets of paper inside (leaves) is a 200 page book.

If you have any blank pages, for example before the start of a chapter, you must count the blank page as a black & white page.

Number of colour pages.

Please note that this is pages, not sheets. For example: a book with 100 sheets of paper inside (leaves) is a 200 page book.

If you have any blank pages, for example before the start of a chapter, you must count the blank page as a black & white page.

These are working days to print. Our standard print service for softback books is 5 working days to print. You can pay a premium if you want your order on the faster 2 day to print service.

Whilst the vast majority of all orders leave on time, Print Service time is an estimate, not a guarantee. If your order has a hard deadline, for example you are ordering for an event and there is no contingency built in to your schedule for delays, you must let the helpdesk know!

It is exceptionally rare for an express (2 day) service order not to leave on time, but sometimes events (for example flooding or power cuts) are outside of our control.

Please remember to add transit (delivery) time to this and remember that these are working days to print and do not include weekends or bank holidays.

Unless you approve your order by 10am, the day that you approve your proof does not count in the time to print.

We cannot schedule your job to print until you have approved your proof. If you do not have a credit account with us, you will also need to pay for your job before we can schedule your job to print

Delivery is normally the next working day AFTER the job is printed. If you want a Saturday delivery, call the helpdesk to get that cost added to your order. We classify Monday-Friday as working days, Bank Holidays are not working days.

Fill in the full postcode of where this is being sent to so that we can work out a price and check whether we deliver to this area. You'll fill in the full delivery address later once you've placed your order. Remember, this is only for the UK Mainland, if you would like us to send your printing elsewhere, please call the Helpdesk for a price. We do not ship to the USA.

You must upload your files as PDFs.

Please make sure that you read the artwork preparation guide before sending us your artwork.

If you need help with your artwork, we have experienced artworkers and very reasonable rates. Please call the helpdesk on 01452 751900 for a chat to discuss this.