We're Drawing a Blank Here
DTP: Numbering Pages, Part 8: We're Drawing A Blank Here.
The previous installments in this series explained how desktop publishers lay out, number, and print pages in booklets in order to save money.
Click here for the previous installment in this series, which explained some problems of page layout.
We will now deal with a corollary of the previous section: The possibility for a publisher to save money by reducing the number of blank pages.
Some publishers go to extreme lengths to assure that the final number of pages in any booklet or book is a multiple of 8, 16, 32 or 64 pages. The larger the number of pages in each signature, the happier our penny-pinching publisher will be. Those page numbers include the introductory pages with Roman numerals in the beginning of the book, any appendixes that appear with a different numbering sequence in the back, and the extra blank pages in the front and the back that attach the physical book to the book jacket.
You might think that it is possible to avoid those blank pages by creating several 64-page signatures (which are the most cost-effective) and then another signature with 32, 16, 8, or 4 pages. However, most printers will stare at you in shock and horror for making such an improper suggestion. They won't deign to explain why it would be out of the question.
Whether it's an issue of professional pride, weight, or other factors, all of the signatures in your book will have to be of the same length.
That means that the publisher is likely to request that the book be edited down in size, in order to avoid wasted blank pages at the end of the book. The number of pages is thus determined by the number of signatures that the book can or will have.
Click here for the next installment in this series, which explains other aspects of the blank page quandary.
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