Modern commercial binding

There are various commercial techniques in use today. Commercially-produced books today tend to be of one of four categories:

Hardcover binding

A hardcover, hardbound book has rigid covers and is stitched in the spine. When the book is opened in the middle of a signature, the binding threads are visible. Unusually large and heavy books are sometimes bound with wire or cable.

Until the mid-20th century, those of mass-produced books were covered in cloth, but from that period onwards, most publishers adopted clothette, a kind of textured paper which vaguely resembles cloth but is easily differentiated on close inspection. The covers of modern hardback books are made of thick cardboard. A variation of the hardcover which is more durable is the calf-binding, where the cover is either half or fully clad in leather, usually from a calf. This is also called full-bound or, simply, leather bound.

Punch and Bind

Different types of the punch and bind binding include:

Double wire binding or Twin loop binding is the type of binding that involves the use of a "C" shaped wire spine that is squeezed into a round shape using a wire closing device. Comb Binding uses a curled plastic "comb" fed through the slits to hold the sheets together. Comb binding allows a book to be disassembled and reassembled by hand without damage. VeloBind is used to permanently rivet pages together using a plastic strip on the front and back of the document. VeloBind provides a more permanent bind than comb-binding, but is primarily used for business and legal presentations and small publications. Spiral binding is the most economical form of mechanical binding when using plastic or metal. It is commonly used for atlases and other publications where it is necessary or desirable to be able to open the publication back on itself without breaking the spine.

Thermally activated binding

Thermal Binding uses a one piece cover with a strong flexible glue down the spine to quickly and easily bind documents without the need for punching. Paperback or soft cover books are also normally bound using thermally activated binding. Unibind is a variety of thermal binding that uses a special steel channel with resin rather than glue inside of it to give it a more sturdy bind to hold the pages in place.

Stitched or Sewn Binding

A sewn book is constructed in the same way as a hardbound book, except that it lacks the hard covers. Stapling through the centerfold, also called saddle-stitching, joins a set of nested folios into a single magazine issue.

Bindery

Bindery refers to a studio, workshop or factory where sheets of (usually) paper are fastened together to make books, but also where gold and other decorative elements are added to the exterior of books, where boxes or slipcases for books are made and where the restoration of books is carried out.

A large traditional hand bookbinding studio or workshop may be divided into areas for different tasks such as sewing, rounding and backing the spine, attaching the boards to the book and covering the book with cloth or leather. These processes are collectively called forwarding and would be carried out in the forwarding department. This area of the bindery would typically have equipment such as sewing frames, guillotines, board choppers for cutting boards used as covers, laying presses for holding books when being worked on and nipping presses for flattening paper, board, etc.

The process of decorating or titling a book with gold or other metals, and/or different colored pieces of leather, is called finishing and is carried out in the finishing room or department. In a hand bookbindery this area would house the dozens or hundreds of brass hand tools that are used to impress gold patterns and figures onto leather one at a time, as well as the finishing stoves needed to heat these tools. In a more modern or commercial bindery, many decorative elements or letters are stamped onto a book's cover or case at the same time by use of a hot press.

Modern, commercial, bookbinding outfits range in size from the local "copy shop" book binder, using techniques such as coil binding, comb binding and velo binding to factories producing tens of thousands of volumes a day using such processes as perfect binding. The term, bindery, especially in copy and print shops, has expanded to include other forms of paper finishing, such as paper drilling, lamination, and foamcore mounting.