Choosing paper for your book project

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Choosing paper for your book project

Approximately 20% of the cost of your book is the paper. The type of paper you select can affect the price but more importantly it will affect the perception of its value to your customers. This article will give you a better idea how paper is classified in North America and should make talking with your printer a little easier.

There are a great many types of paper. Some are acid free archival quality. Some are made in part of recycled paper. Some reproduce photographs better than others due to the coatings applied. Here is where you might save a little money. If you are publishing novel or other book with few illustrations consider an uncoated archival paper. It might also be a little heavier which will add thickness to your book and reduce show-through. (If the paper is not opaque enough the text on the other side can show through.) Unless you've written a modern War and Peace, a little extra thickness can be a good thing.

Your paper decision will depend to a great extent on the printer and her presses since some presses work best with specific types of papers. And you don’t want any surprises when the book goes to press so it’s usually best to use a paper that your printer is familiar with.

I usually ask the printer for several samples that meet the project requirements and that she is familiar with. This way I'm not married to any particular paper and the printer will know what to expect from the paper on her press. Make your concerns known to the printer when she does the quote and listen to her recommendations.

Don’t be surprised if the samples you get are few. Generally a printer has a couple of business options. They can offer lots of paper choices and charge a higher price or a couple of choices and a very competitive price. Face it, choice costs more no matter what business you’re in.

Graphic designers will talk endlessly about lovely paper that they have seen and used. As a group we like to think of ourselves as paper experts, but the truth is very few are. Although I don’t consider myself an expert I love the feel of fine paper and appreciate its use in books. For novels I like paper that has an interesting texture. Text without pictures is best with an off white matt paper. The colour is a little less jarring than a bright white sheet and it will usually show pictures acceptably so long as great detail isn’t required. Paper for colour printing needs to be smoother to take the ink properly and whiter for better colour reproduction.

Now it will make life much simpler to go with whatever the printer recommends but it's also nice to know what your printer is talking about. So let’s take a quick tour of common terms in the paper industry.

Paper comes in seemingly unending, confusing variety. Not only is the paper coated, uncoated, sized on one or both sides; it is matt, cover, offset, antique, text or newsprint and comes in a cacophony of weights and measures. Let's try to make things a little simpler.

Paper in North America is usually divided into four broad types, newsprint, offset, matt and gloss. Newsprint is the paper used in newspapers; cheap, thin and short-lived. It does come in a variety of grades depending on how white it is and how heavy (thick). Offset is an average quality paper commonly used for printing of all sorts. Matt is a higher quality paper, usually smoother so it will take the ink more consistently. Gloss is exactly what it says. The very smooth surface takes ink very accurately and produces more vibrant colours. Each type is subdivided into grades normally referred to as book, coated and cover, depending on quality and thickness. There is quite a bit of overlap in these terms and you could easily find an offset-gloss that is better for your project than a matt coated. The industry isn't consistent in using the terms and often dispense with them entirely in order to market a paper with a more or less descriptive brand name. You won't find all grades in each type, for example there is no point in a cover stock for newsprint

Paper can also be classified based on the manufacturing method. Paper that has not been heavily calendered (this is a process of smoothing and flattening on large machine rollers) has more of a textured surface. It is usually thicker and is commonly referred to as antique. Machine finish papers are calendered to give a smoother surface and are usually thinner. The smoothest finishes are attained by coating the paper with a mixture of clay and glue then callendering. Depending on the type of calendering and the clay mix they can have a matt or gloss finish.

OK so you should now be thoroughly confused, but at least you have heard some of the industry terms even if they don't have the meaning you might expect. Here are some examples of paper that might be used for various projects.
Letterhead: 50 lb offset (approximately the same as 20 LB bond, commonly referred to as book weight)

Flyer printed on one side in 4 colours: 45 LB gloss

Flyer printed on both sides in 4 colours: 60 LB gloss

Book jacket printed one side in 4 colours: 60 - 70 LB gloss

These examples show weight in pounds, unfortunately in North America text and cover paper is weighed differently. For example, a manufacturer might have an 80 LB text and an 80 LB cover stock. The cover stock is much thicker than the text because the standard sheet size that is being weighed is smaller. The 80 Lbs. refers to the weight of a standard number of sheets of a given size (this quantity is usually called a ream). Some manufacturers now show European measurements in addition to North American, so the 80 LB text might have a weight of 118 grams per square meter and the 80 LB cover a weight of 216 g/m2. It's obvious from the European weights that the cover stock must be almost double the thickness of the text stock.

I’ve heard a number of different reasons why paper weights were based on different sizes of paper. I think the most likely is that the machines designed to print the inside pages were different that those designed to print covers. As a result what we think of as cover stock was supplied in a size that worked well for whatever manufacturing process or machine was used and it was simply weighed in the same way as text paper. Sheet size may also have something to do with the paper manufacturing process. If you are a fan of ‘which came first’ arguments then the paper came first and the press came later. However the press came before widespread use of machines for paper making so I still vote for the press size as the dominating factor.

The weight per square meter is a European standard. You can see a very concise article in Wikipedia on paper size. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size) The system is based on a sheet of paper one square meter in area with an aspect ratio based on the square root of two (longer on one side than the other). Various paper sizes are obtained by halving the sheet on the long side to create subsequently smaller paper sizes of the same ratio. It’s been around since early in the twentieth century (actually conceived in the eighteenth century) and it’s a much better system. Only Canada and the US have not adopted it. (Insert your snide remark here.)

Don't get stuck on a particular make of paper. A printer might quote a particular make of paper for a job because she knows it will work and has the stock or knows it's available. It's quite possible that another printer would have to special order the same paper and be unable to get it in a reasonable time. Printers are the paper experts and unless you have something very special in mind, go with your printer’s recommendation.

I've said earlier that gloss paper takes ink more accurately and gives more vibrant colours, but don't discount using a non-glossy paper for your book cover. I've seen some wonderful colour work done on uncoated and matt paper and it might give you the perfect feel for your book.

I strongly recommend that you use archival acid free paper. There is a greater variety of this type of paper available today than at any time in the last 50 years. Books made in the late 19th century and onward are generally poor in paper quality. This is one area where technology has failed us. While supplying enormous quantities of inexpensive paper to feed the information age, we limited the information's life span to a few years. Books made two and three hundred years ago can be in wonderful shape where books made just 50 to 80 years ago are almost universally yellowing and growing brittle with age. Many books printed from 1850–1900 are beyond repair.

I hope this article helps a little. Paper is a complex subject, not because it’s difficult but because it has a long and distinguished history.

About the Author

Michael Dyer has been a full time graphic designer for over 15 years. He has designed all manner of communication but his first love is a good book finely bound. Michael Dyer Graphic Designer http://www.mocabookdesign.com/

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