- Ondrea Keigh
- Sep 15, 2023
- 4 min read
According to Statista.com, over 700 million print books are sold per year. We print book lovers are still going strong! But how are these portals to other worlds made? The process of printing books has been around for a long time. Books were once handwritten, painted, and bound (for example, the book of Kells and medieval prayer books called “Books of Hours”). Books weren’t widely “printed” until the 1400s (reference 2). Since then, the process of printing books has improved even more. Now, mass-produced books can be printed much faster, making it easy to produce thousands of books a day. This also makes it possible to do what is called MOD printing. MOD stands for “Make On Demand” and means that the book is not made until a customer puts in an order for one. But how is this possible? There are many printers around the world that offer this printing strategy, one of which is Amazon. But I wanted to find out exactly how books like my print proof are printed. So, I searched YouTube and found a great video of how this is done. Let’s take a look at how MOD books are made at Amazon printing sites.
Note: All the information on how Amazon prints its books can be found on YouTube! If you want to watch the video I found that explains all of this, click the third link in my resources list!
InkJet Printing
Amazon uses two types of printing, “Inkjet Printing” and cut sheet printing. In Inkjet printing, the text is printed onto one continuous sheet of paper that is fed into a printer. The massive printer prints text onto the paper, then folds it, following these steps:
Step 1: The paper is fed into a printer that prints the text and images onto the paper.
Step 2: Next, that paper is fed into the folding machine. This machine folds the paper so the pages are in order and ready to be bound. This is done for multiple books in one stack, identified by barcodes.
Step 3: Once the paper is folded, the machine identifies each barcode, separating the books from the pile. Then, each barcode is scanned and sent to the next step in the process.
Cut Sheet Printing
The second kind of printing that Amazon uses is called “Cut Sheet Printing.” This type of printing uses individual sheets that form two pages of a book. The text is printed onto each sheet in the order they will appear in the book, following these steps:
Step 1: The book text and images are printed onto individual sheets and stacked, ready to be folded.
Step 2: The sheets of paper are cut (into two pages) and stacked rather than folded.
Cover Creation
Next, the covers are created. Once again, there is a machine for that! With cover files submitted to Amazon, the covers are printed using a color-printing machine that follows these steps:
Step 1: The covers are printed and identified by what lamination they will have, matte or glossy.
Step 2: The covers are put through a lamination machine that applies the glossy or matte finish. These are inspected by an operator who ensures there are no defects before moving them on to the next stage.
Step 3: These laminated covers are then matched with their book interiors and sent off to the binding department.
Book Binding
Bookbinding was once done by hand. Monks and bookmakers used animal skins, which they painted, then sewed, and sometimes glued to book interiors. Though the art of hand-binding books is not dead, now, Amazon uses binding machines that do most of the work. How? Their large machines apparently follow this simple process:
Step 1: The covers are interested in the machine.
Step 2: Each book interior is scanned and then inserted into the machine.
Step 3: The machine glues the binding to the outside of the book.
Trimming
With the book interior now printed, cut, stacked (or folded), and bound, it awaits one more step in construction. Next, the books are trimmed down to the correct dimensions. The extra paper called “bleed” needs to be trimmed off to ensure the book is the correct size based on the measurements the publisher requested. The trimming machine works quite fast, following these two steps:
Step 1: The books are sent from the binding machine, now with their covers on them, to the trimmer machines, where they are scanned and inserted into the machine.
Step 2: The trimmer machines (which can cut up to 2,000 books an hour) trim off the extra paper and spit out the trimmed and finished product.
Inspection
Once the book is finished being built, it is inspected by a person to ensure it is of good quality. Though this inspection at Amazon is only about six to nine seconds per book, each book is looked over from every angle before being placed in a yellow tote and sent off to be prepped for shipping and delivery.
Closing Thoughts
Being able to print books using machines means that books of all lengths and sizes can be printed within a day. Even with the use of the Gutenberg printing press, only very small books could be printed in short periods of time. Today, printed masterpieces are not quite as ornate as hand-built, written, and painted books, but they can get to people much faster. While I hope that the art of hand-built and painted books never goes extinct, I am very pleased that technology allows us to print books as quickly as we can today.
Are you happy book printing goes faster these days? Or would you prefer to see more hand-crafted books? Please leave a comment and let me know!
Resources:
Resource 2: https://www.museumofthebible.org/book-minute/the-gutenberg-press-an-invention-that-changed-the-world
Resource 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KjPcw64Izg
