The book as a thing you hold: its edges and cover, its size, how its pages are folded and bound, and the paper they are printed on.
The three cut edges of the pages: the head at the top, the tail at the bottom, and the fore-edge opposite the spine. Margins, trims and page finishes are named after them.
The edge opposite the spine, where the reader’s thumb turns the pages. A guidebook can print coloured tabs here, one for each section.
The bound edge of the book, and all of it a reader sees on a shelf. The direction its title runs is a convention: top to bottom in English-language books.
British and American books run the spine top to bottom: on a shelf you tilt your head right, and a book lying face up reads the right way.
Also: front cover, back cover, flaps
The outside of the book: front cover, spine and back cover, printed as one piece on heavier paper and wrapped round the pages. Some covers have flaps that fold inside.
The designer delivers the cover as one flat piece: back, spine and front. The spine’s width comes from the page count and the paper.
Also: format, page size
The size of a finished page after the printer cuts it, given width first. It decides how much fits on a page, what the book costs to print and how it feels in the hand.
A common size for general non-fiction, like A Short History of the Bicycle: room for a picture beside the text.
A portrait page is taller than it is wide; a landscape page is wider than it is tall. A landscape book is bound on its short side, so it opens very wide.
Wider than tall, bound on the short side. Open, the spread is very wide: room for a picture book’s sea to stretch out.
A leaf is one piece of paper in the book; a page is one side of it. Every leaf carries two pages, a recto on the front and a verso on the back.
Page 5 is one side of one leaf. Its back is page 6.
Also: section, gathering
A large printed sheet folded down into a booklet of pages, most often 16 or 32. A book is a stack of signatures, which is why printers want page counts in multiples of 16.
One sheet, printed on both sides: eight pages here and eight on the back, the top row upside down. Printers underline 6 and 9 so they can’t be mistaken.
Also: page count
The number of pages in the book, counting every page whether it is numbered, blank or a picture, but not the cover. Printers price the book on it, and publishers fix it before the writing is finished.
Printers work in whole signatures, so the extent rounds up to the next 16. Plan the content to fill it, or the leftover pages print blank.
Also: saddle stitch, perfect binding, case binding, wiro
How the pages are held together and fixed into the cover. It decides whether the book lies open on a desk, how long it lasts and what it costs.
The folds are cut off and the loose leaves glued into a wrap-around cover. The usual paperback; it won’t lie flat, so keep text out of the gutter.
Also: endsheets
The folded sheets at the front and back of a hardback that join the pages to the cover. One half is glued to the inside of the board, the pastedown; the other is the free endpaper, the first leaf the reader turns.
Picture books often print their endpapers, here with the waves from Otto Finds the Sea. One sheet makes both halves, so the pattern runs across the fold.
Also: gsm, grammage
How heavy the paper is, in grams per square metre (gsm). Heavier paper is usually thicker and more opaque, so less of the other side shows through.
The clock on the landing had stopped at ten past three, and Nell was the only one who noticed. She sat on the bottom stair in her coat, listening to the house breathe: the boiler ticking, the fridge humming to itself, her father turning over in his sleep above her. Outside, the street lamps had gone amber and the snow had stopped pretending it would settle. She had been awake at this hour every night since November, and she had begun to think of it as hers.
70 gsm is thin: many paperback novels. On thin paper the other side shows through and the page looks grey; heavier paper hides it but makes the book thicker and dearer.
Also: gloss, silk, matt
Coated paper has a smooth mineral surface that keeps the ink on top, for sharp photos. Uncoated paper is bare fibre, like office paper: softer pictures, but easy to read under a lamp and to write on.
Start this on Saturday night and the house will smell of it by ten. It asks for nothing but time and a hot oven.
The coating holds the ink on the surface, so the loaf prints sharp and its crust glows. Gloss shines under a kitchen light; silk and matt coatings cut the glare.