Full-Size Booklet Printing (Gloss & Matte)

Your total page count has to be a multiple of 4 — so 8, 12, 16, 20, 24 pages and so on. This isn't a rule we made up; it's how saddle-stitched booklets physically work. Each folded sheet of paper creates four pages (front and back, left and right of the fold), so pages always come in groups of four.

If your content lands on 14 pages, you'd add two blank or filler pages to reach 16. Saddle stitching works well up to roughly 60–80 pages.

Yes. This trips up almost every first-timer. The front cover is page 1, the inside front cover is page 2, the inside back cover is second-to-last, and the back cover is the final page. A "16-page booklet" means 16 total pages, including all four cover pages — not 16 pages of content plus a cover.

If you don't want anything printed on the inside covers, that's fine — just leave those pages blank in your file so the count stays correct.

A page is one side of the paper. A sheet is a piece of paper with two sides. A 24-page booklet uses 6 sheets of paper, folded and stapled. When you're ordering, always think in pages, not sheets.

Saddle stitching is the industry term for stapling through the fold. Sheets are nested inside one another, folded in half, and stapled along the spine — the same construction you'd see in a comic book, a magazine, or an event program.

It lies reasonably flat, it's durable, and it's by far the most cost-effective binding for booklets under about 80 pages. There's no printed spine, since the spine is just the fold.

Send a single PDF with your pages as individual 8.5" × 11" pages (8.75" x 11.25" with bleed area), in reading order, starting with the front cover. Do not send reader spreads (two pages side by side on one 17" × 11" sheet) and do not try to impose the pages yourself — we handle the imposition so the pages land in the right physical order after folding.

Export at 300 DPI, flatten transparency if you're unsure, and embed or outline your fonts.

If any color, photo, or background runs to the edge of the page, yes. Extend that artwork 0.125" past the trim on all four sides, so your document is 8.75" × 11.25" with the extra area getting trimmed.

Also, keep text and anything important at least 0.25" inside the trim line. Booklets shift slightly during folding and trimming, so type sitting right at the edge is at risk.

When sheets nest inside each other, the inner pages stick out slightly further than the outer ones and get trimmed a hair more. That's creep. On thin booklets, it's negligible. On thicker booklets, it can nudge inner-page content toward the edge.

You don't need to compensate for it yourself — we account for it. Just keep your margins generous and avoid putting page numbers or text right at the outer edge.

Gloss makes colors pop and gives photos more contrast and saturation — a good pick for catalogs, lookbooks, comics, and anything image-heavy. It does show fingerprints and reflects light, which can make it harder to read under bright overhead lighting.

Matte has a softer, non-reflective surface that's easier on the eyes for long stretches of text. Choose it for manuals, handbooks, educational materials, and anything someone will actually sit and read. Matte is also the friendlier choice if people will be writing on the pages.

Close, but not identical. Screens emit light and use RGB; print uses CMYK ink on paper. Very bright, saturated blues, greens, and neons are the usual culprits — they can look duller in print than they do backlit on a monitor.

To get the closest match, build your file in CMYK, and if a specific color is critical to your brand, tell us, and we'll flag it during file review. Ordering a single copy first is the surest way to see exactly what you'll get.

300 DPI at the size the image will actually appear on the page. An image pulled from a website is usually 72 DPI and will look soft or pixelated once printed, even if it looks fine on screen. Scaling a low-resolution image up in your design software doesn't add detail back.

Yes — a real person reviews every booklet file before it goes on press. We're looking for page count issues, missing bleed, low-resolution images, and content sitting too close to the trim. If something looks off, we contact you rather than printing a run you'll be unhappy with.

We also compare printed samples against your digital file as part of our quality check.

Yes. We work with many artists, self-publishers, and small businesses who don't need hundreds of copies. Ordering a single copy first is a smart way to check your layout, colors, and page order before committing to a full run.

Volume discounts kick in at 25, 50, and 100 copies if you do need quantity.

Production time for this product is listed on the product page below, and shipping time is added on top of that. Production starts after your file passes review, so submitting a correctly set-up PDF keeps things moving.

If you're printing for a specific event date, tell us the date when you order. We will let you know whether it's realistic.

Absolutely. Blank pages are common and often intentional — inside covers, section breaks, or a note page at the back. Just include them in your PDF as actual blank pages so the page count and page order stay correct. \We can add blank pages if you require our help.