Last week we went over the different types of binding we offer here at Village Copier, but not all books are created equally! This week we’re going to delve into the proper way to set up a saddle stitch book, so you can print your zine, comics, and booklets with ease!

Saddle Stitch Basics

A Saddle Stitch book is spread printed then folded and stapled in the middle to create a book. If you were to take apart a saddle stitch book, it would look something like this:

As you can see from this little diagram, each half of the sheet is 1-page of your book with the first and last pages being next to each other. The middle of the book will be the only pages of the book in which two consecutive pages will be next to each other on the same sheet of paper.

An Important thing to remember about saddle stitched books is that they must be divisible by four. This is because there are four sides to one folded sheet of paper. If we were to print a saddle stitch book with 7 pages instead of 8, you would have one blank page at the beginning or end of your book.

NOTE: If you want your cover to be on a separate stock, your inside pages still have to be divisible by four!!

Setting up a Saddle Stitch Book to Print

Setting up a saddle stitch book can be confusing as the set up for the production is quite different from how one would design the book. Most people design books in spreads. A spread is simply two pages next to each other in a book.

 However, when submitting a book to print, make sure to send it as single pages!

We can put your books in the correct format to ensure that they print properly. It’s easy to get turned around when trying to figure out what pages should go next to each other, so letting us do it will save time and much unneeded stress. It’s easy to send your spreads as single pages. When you’re exporting your high resolution pdf, the dialogue will have an option to export your file as spread or pages. Just click pages and you’re good to go!

The only time you want to send a file in a spread when created a saddle stitch is when you cover will be in a different stock.

Printing a saddle stitch book can be confusing, but with these helpful hints you’ll be able to create lots of great book that look professional at a low cost! Before submitting a file to print fill out this check list here to make sure you’re set up for Success!