Printing a Board Book? Here's what you need to know.
We do not print board books in Australia due to higher pricing and lower quality.
A board book printed in China can come at lower cost and higher quality, with all the extras including options of hardback, gold, silver and holographic foiling, textured materials, pop-outs and sliders, flaps and page spacers!
Two main types of board books
You can print either a hardback board book or a self-covering board book.
The hardback will have a case that extends out beyond the size of the internal pages, offering extra protection for your book’s interior. The cover and internal pages of a self-covering board book will all be the same size, making your book easy to handle.
Most of the information on this page, including videos and book designer templates deals with self-covering board books.
What makes a quality board book
1. Quality board book production is characterised as having a hinged spine and a score on the back cover. This technique ensures your book will hold up against regular wear and tear, stand the test of time and simply looks better.
Beware of printers who won’t do this – they most likely don’t have the proper machinery or expertise. The book should ‘hinge’ at the score, as shown in the images here.
A tell-tale sign that the binding of the board book is second-rate is where if scored, the score is in the wrong position. A ‘back-yard’ produced Australian childrens board book will often have a rhombus shape when opened flat face-down. That means its sloppily hand-bound.
Quality. Which is superior – China or Australia?
2. A feature of quality board books is perfectly rounded corners. By ’rounded’, we mean neat, smoothly-cut curves. If your ’rounded corners’ are crudely done it usually means the printer’s cutting dies were too small or even blunt. This is common with Australian printers that try to do an occasional board book. If the corners have burs it can mean a poorly maintained or blunt cutting die or the printer is trying to cut too many pages at once. Australian printers might be trying to beat a low China print price without the scale of machinery or expert dexterous labour where the components need to be hand assembled.
And because board books are read by children, pages should be gloss laminated to avoid scuffing and deterioration over time. Our Chinese board book printers are also very good at adding ‘spacers’ cheaply to each page spread so little kids with little fingers, can actually open the book easily.
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Australia's book design and pre-press experts.
Do you need help setting your book artwork up for print?
Does book printing seem too complicated?
Are you
- an author who has asked a graphic designer to produce artwork for a book and they don't seem to know how to do it; or
- a graphic designer who has been asked by an author to arrange printing of a book
and it seems confusing? Help is at hand. Our trusted design and pre-press associates can make sure the book is expertly prepared for printing. This can include specifications like bleed, spine width, image resolution, spot colour, varnishes, foils, gutter width, print methods (digital or offset), paper choice and digital. Childrens board book set-up can be especially tricky.
Green Hill's service starts at just $175 - a small price to pay for piece of mind regarding you board book printing project. If it's a small issue, remediating your files for print will be free! See more details: Artwork triage
Green Hill's service starts at just $175 - a small price to pay for piece of mind regarding you board book printing project. If it's a small issue, remediating your files for print will be free!
Call the Green Hill help-line on
1300 810 131
For these reasons (and because of affordability) our board books are non-apologetically 100% quality manufactured in China.
Video guide for understanding self covering childrens board book layout and printing terms.
It can be a little confusing so here’s your definitive guide!
This example book has:
COVER
- FRONT COVER: 1pp (printed pages)
- BACK COVER: 1pp (printed pages)
INTERIOR
- SPREADS: 11 – where there are 2 printed pages displayed per opening
- LEAVES: 10 – the physical pages that are turnable (excluding the cover pages) – think about a two sided tree leaf.
- PRINTED PAGES (internal ones): 22 – includes the inside of front cover and the inside of the back cover (2pp) plus the 10 leaves (printed both sides ) 10×2 = 20pp Total pp are 2 (cover pages) + 20 (internal pages) = 22 printed pages
A mathematical explanation…
If you are good with numbers, this is another way to explain board books. Below is how you can calculate.
COVER: Every board book has a cover composed of 2 pp (printed pages ) one front and one back
INTERIOR: A board book of 11 spreads, 10 leaves = 22pp. This can be calculated using the following formulae:
- CONVERT LEAVES to PRINTED PAGES
(x leaves x 2) + 2 = printed pages In our example: 10 leaves = (10 x 2) + 2. This translates to 10 leaves = 22 printed pages.
- CONVERT SPREADS to PRINTED PAGES
x spreads x 2 = printed pages In our example: 11 spreads x 2 This translates to 11 spreads = 22 printed pages.
Especially for book designers – instructions and resources
Guide to setting up artwork for a self-covering board book
Get the Indesign templates for a self-covering board book
Here we’ve provided a zip file with two Indesign templates – one for the cover and one for the interior.
You can use these to prepare artwork for your print project.
When using the templates, you’ll need to resize them so they are suitable for your design.
We recommend a 3mm bleed of artwork.