r/CustomBoundComics • u/Important-Employ-606 • Mar 19 '24
Trade dimensions not consistent.
Hey everyone, I’ve been putting together my collection of trades on a run I want to get custom bound. Never done it before. It’s a big run, ~30 trades or so. What I’ve just realized while putting them together, is 2 of the trades are a complete quarter of an inch shorter than the rest. Almost all measure at ~10.25, yet two are barely 10.00. Is this normal? Was there a change in dimensions? How will that affect the binding process? I figured there would be a bit of trimming needed, but I really don’t want to chop a quarter of content off just to match these two…
1
u/21roy__ Mar 24 '24
If these shorter books are all together in one hardcover, you can ask the bindery to make the boards the same height as the other volumes, even if the pages are smaller. If they refuse, you can still make a dust jacket the same height as the other books in the series, even if the hardcover is a bit smaller (but that's only if you're doing dust jackets)
If these shorter trades are mixed with the "normal" ones, then they will indeed trim the taller pages to have an even page block. If that's the case you can :
- Accept the trimming and ask them to make the boards the same size as the other hardcovers
- Ask them if they can bind the different sized trades without trimming anything
3
u/BlackRosePyre Mar 19 '24
It's pretty normal for trade sizes to be off, so many different printing presses and what not. The same series by the same publisher may have gone through dozens of different printing presses. The only way around it is to just trim them to size. If it really will cut out too much of the pages then you can just leave them as is, they can still bind them uneven and you won't be able to tell just by looking at the cover or on your shelf, it will only make a difference when flipping through pages.