Recycled Book & Booklet Printing

Here is further information about our Recycled Book and Booklet printing, including sizes, FSC recycled material options and turnaround times. When you are ready to calculate a price, please use the price calculator on the Recycled Book and Booklet Prices page.

Digital Embossing available on this product

Our beautifully printed Recycled Books and Booklets are printed on either 120gsm 9lives Uncoated Offset or 150gsm 9lives 80 Silk. If you require a heavier cover, you can choose either 250gsm 9lives 80 Silk or 350gsm 9lives 80 Silk – the cover can be gloss laminated, matt laminated or Digitally Embossed.

If you would prefer a heavier recycled uncoated cover (200gsm, 250gsm, 300gsm and 350gsm are available), please contact us for a "bespoke quote".

The minimum quantity is 250; you can any exact quantity above this e.g. 251.

Recycled Books & Booklets Sizes

Our standard sizes are:

  • 148mm x 105mm (A6 portrait)
  • 105mm x 148mm (A6 landscape)
  • 210mm x 99mm (1/3 A4 portrait)
  • 99mm x 210mm (1/3 A4 landscape)
  • 210mm x 148mm (A5 portrait)
  • 148mm x 210mm (A5 landscape)
  • 210mm x 210mm (210mm square)
  • 297mm x 210mm (A4 portrait)
  • 210mm x 297mm (A4 landscape)

Custom sizes:

We can produce any other size of Recycled Book or Booklet you may require from 99mm x 99mm up to a maximum of 297mm x 210mm or 210mm x 297mm.

Number of pages

Some people who are unfamiliar with printing jargon get confused over the meaning of the word "pages" (sometimes thinking it means "leaves"). If you imagine that you are reading a book with numbered pages starting at page number 1, then when you turn the page the other side is page number 2 and so on – this is what we (and the rest of the printing industry) mean by pages.

Books and booklets need to have a number of pages which are divisible by four. The minimum number of pages that a booklet could have is eight – four pages of text and a four page cover. The cover can be on the same material as the text (this is known as a self-cover booklet).

When you are answering the questions on our price calculator page, please let us know the total number of pages including the cover, then tell us how many of the text pages are in colour and/or black and white and/or spot colour. Finally, we need to know the colour of the cover, the material for the cover and whether you would like it to be unlaminated, gloss laminated or matt laminated.

Choice of recycled paper and board

We offer a choice of recycled 120gsm uncoated or 150gsm silk coated materials for the book or booklet text pages. You can use a heavier 250gsm or 350gsm recycled silk for the cover if you wish.

When you are using our price calculator to work out your price, you first choose the paper for the text, and then choose the paper (or board) for the cover.

If you would prefer a heavier recycled uncoated cover (200gsm, 250gsm, 300gsm and 350gsm are available), please contact us for a "bespoke quote".

Colour of the printing

Unlike most printing companies, if you choose to have a mixture of full colour, spot colour and/or black only pages we do not mind where they fall in the book or booklet. We only require that the total number of each type of page is divisible by four.

Our prices assume that the inside covers are printed in the same colour as the outside covers – if the inside covers are not printed at all, it will not save any money.

Binding methods

There are three binding methods available:

  1. Saddle stitched – this means they are stapled through the spine
  2. Loop stitched – similar to saddle stitched, but with hooks on the wires to enable the booklets to be held in a ring binder without drilling the booklet
  3. Perfect bound – these have a square back and the pages are glued into the cover, like a paperback book

Production times for printing Recycled Books and Booklets

The following choices of turnaround times are available for printing Books and Booklets on Recycled 9lives paper and board.

Express turnaround – your Recycled Book or Booklet printing order will be despatched in four working days.

Economy turnaround – your Recycled Book or Booklet printing order will be despatched in eight working days.

Super Economy turnaround – your Recycled Book or Booklet printing order will be despatched in sixteen working days.

The despatch time will be shown in the Product Description.

For a day to be treated as the first working day, we require your printing order and payment along with print quality artwork before 10am. Alternatively, for an additional charge, you can delay the printing order, payment and print quality artwork cut-off time to 3.30pm.

Artwork and PDF requirements

  • We operate a PDF workflow, so please supply your artwork as a Press Quality PDF. If you prefer, we can create a PDF for you, in which case we will email a proof to you for approval. There is an additional charge for this PDF creation service of £20 plus VAT.
  • If any print reaches the edge of your finished job, please add 3mm bleed to all sides of your artwork
  • We need a "quiet area" to ensure nothing important is too near to the edge of the finished item; so please leave a 5mm inner margin for anything other than backgrounds. For perfect bound books, please leave a quiet area of 15mm on the spine-side edge of your text pages and inside cover pages
  • Supply files to us in CMYK, not RGB please
  • Image resolution should be 300dpi or more
  • Please embed fonts or convert all of your text to shapes