Print top-quality, perfect-bound books.
If you’re looking to print a perfect-bound book, then you’ve come to the right place. At Bookmundo, you can print any number perfect-bound of books you want—be it a single copy or thousands. By not having a minimum order quantity and offering progressive bulk discounts, we aim to make it as convenient for you as possible to get your books printed. Here you’ll find an overview of the book-printing process.
Our book-binding service
We work with perfect binding for both softcover and hardcover books. There’s also a wide range of other specs to choose from, ranging from book format to paper types, which you can explore using our pricing calculator. This tool will also let you calculate how much printing and binding your book is going to cost. It’ll also give you an overview of the bulk discounts and when they’ll kick in. You can have any number of books bound – there’s no minimum order quantity.
What is perfect binding?
The term ‘perfect binding’ refers to a book-binding method where the pages (also known as the book block) of a book are attached to the cover using a special thermal glue. The edges of the book are trimmed off for a cleaner appearance. Most paperbacks you see in bookshops have been made use the perfect binding method.
The benefits of perfect binding
A perfect-bound book has a clean, professional-looking silhouette, is cost-efficient to produce, and stacks well, making it easy to ship and store. This allows us to provide you with a low-cost binding service without compromising on quality. We realise this sounds like soulless sales copy, but it’s a real win-win situation, we promise. As an added bonus, all our books are printed and bound in the UK.
Difference between book binding and book printing?
Book binding is the act of joining the pages of the book together and attaching them to a cover. Before you can do any of that however, you obviously need to print out the book and the cover that you’re going to bind. So in short, you need to print to be able to bind. Self-evident? Maybe. We just thought we’d make that clear up front. Besides, we do both the printing and the binding for you, so there’s nothing to worry about. In fact, these days it’s hard to find a company that focusses purely on book binding. The printers that print books (us included) will bind the books for you as well.
How to get your book printed and bound
To print and bind your book, simply create an account, select your specs, and upload the contents of your book as a Word or PDF document. You’ll also be able to upload a cover, or create one from scratch using our fantastic cover designer, if you prefer. You’ll also be presented with the option of setting a sales price for your book, should you wish to publish and sell it, but this is by no means required. If your book is meant for private use only, you can simply print it without completing the pricing and publishing steps.
We strongly recommend ordering a proof copy of your book, to make sure the binding, colours, and layout are to your liking. Once you’re happy with the result, you can place a larger order. We’ll print your books on demand and ship them to an address of your choice.
Create an account
In order to use our platform to print your perfect-bound book, you’ll need to create an account. It’s quick and doesn’t cost anything. You can always delete your account if you decide it’s not for you, of course.
1. General
In this first section, you’ll determine various book specs, including:
- The cover type: paperback or hardback. The books will always be perfect bound.
- The size/format of your book. We currently have 16 different formats available
- The paper type. You can choose between 3 different paper types: cream, white and semi-gloss.
- The colour settings. You can print in B&W, full colour, or partial colour. The more colour pages your book contains, the more expensive it’ll be to print
- The title and the name of the author.
2. Manuscript
Next up is the manuscript. You can upload your manuscript as a Word document or as a PDF. We don’t make any changes to the actual contents of your manuscript, so make sure that your uploaded files are ready to print! Once uploaded, we’ll convert your file into a print-ready PDF. Check this file thoroughly to make sure the conversion went well. What you see in this converted PDF is what we’ll be printing.
Having trouble? We suggest consulting the manuscript page in our help centre. If that doesn’t help, you can always email us.
3. Cover
You have two options when it comes to designing a cover. Either you use our built-in cover designer to create a cover directly on our platform, or you design a cover using the software of your choice and upload it as a PDF, JPG, or PNG file.
If you decide to make your cover outside of our platform, please make sure that the dimensions of your cover match those of your book; you can use our cover calculator to get the right measurements.
4. Check and order your book!
In this final step, you’ll be able to check your files one more time before printing your book. We strongly recommend ordering at least one proof copy before placing a larger order. This lets you review a hard copy of your book, which is useful for catching lingering errors and generally making sure that you’re 100% happy with the final product.
There’s nothing more annoying than ordering 100 copies of your book only to realize that the colours don’t look quite as vibrant as they did on your screen, or that there’s a silly typo somewhere. So trust please: trust us, and order a proof copy first!
Some extra info about the printing process
We’re currently working on restructuring the printing process. The overview you’ve just read is the new and improved process, which is going to be fully implemented within the next few months. In the meantime, you may come the following steps:
ISBN: in this step, you’ll be asked whether or not you’d like to purchase an ISBN for your book. You only need an ISBN if you’re planning on selling your books via third-party sales channels, such as Amazon or Kobo. If you’re just looking to print your book without selling it, you can skip this step entirely.
Information: In this step you’ll be asked to fill in a few keywords, along with a short description of your book and the blurb. These texts are used to provide product information about your book in webshops, and the blurb will of course be placed on the back of your cover. Again, if you simply want to print your book, you can speed through this step by simply filling in one word in each field.
Pricing: This step allows people who want to sell their books to fill in their desired retail price and select their preferred sales channels. Naturally, you don’t have to fill this in unless you want to sell your book. If not, you can skip this step by clicking the dropdown menu labelled ‘Reach’ and selecting ‘Private’.
Want to print more than 400 books?
If you want to place a large order of around 400 books or more, we’ll arrange an offset print run for you. This will result in slightly longer delivery times (2-3 weeks), but the cost per book will be much lower. Naturally, the books will still be perfect bound. If you want to print 400 copies or more, contact us for a quote.