Company News About Hardcover Book: Square Back vs. Round Back
Hardcover Book: Square Back vs. Round Back
2024-06-20
Despite their higher cost, avid readers everywhere continue to purchase hardcover books. Hardback books show reviewers and booksellers that a book is high-quality and worth paying attention to. They’re also easier to display on a shelf and are more eye-catching.
The spines of offset printed books come in two different styles: hardcover square back vs round back. If you’re new to the book publishing industry, telling the difference between the two might be confusing.
This guide will discuss everything you need to know about the two backing options.
Square Back:
In a square back book, the spine is flat and squared off. This design is often used for hardcover books. It provides a crisp, modern look and allows the book to stand upright on a shelf without bending - utilizing a board down the spine.
A Square back is a binding option that gives books a rigid spine and a flat appearance when it’s closed. The cover has a spine strip made from the same weight board as the rest of the case boards, but the spine is a bit wider than the text. This creates the “square” look this binding option is known for.
Generally, slimmer books are ideal for square backing. You typically see square back books with trade editions, children’s books, and side sewn books that don’t have dust jackets.
A round back book features a rounded spine. This style is commonly seen in traditional hardcover books and some paperbacks. The rounded shape helps to distribute the stress of opening the book, making it easier to read and reducing wear on the spine (due to a boardless spine). It often gives the book a classic, elegant appearance.
Rounded back books are made with a soft spine. The rounding machine produces a small curvature in the book’s spine edge, enabling thicker books to open more easily. Thinner spines might not be suitable for round-back book printing.
With a rounded back book, your book will have a classic shape. It’s an older style of bookbinding that could allow room for hand-sewn signatures. Modern round back books are used more for aesthetic purposes.
Whether you go with square back or round back book binding depends upon the type of book you’re having printed. The size of the book also plays a part in whether square back or round back is the better choice.
hardcover book
What Do Tight-Back and Loose-Back Mean?
Some other terms you might see in your bookbinding research are tight-back and loose-back. If you look at a book’s spine as it’s lying on a table, you can see a small space between the signatures and the cover. The term for this is “loose-back.”
With a “tight-back” book, the text block has been flued to the interior part of the cover where the spine is. This type of book is more durable than a loose-back book, but won’t lie flat on a table.
Round-back books typically have are loose-back. Tight-back books have a flat spine, making them pair well with square back bindings.
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