If you have never worked on a book before, the hardest part of talking to a printer or a designer often is not the design itself — it is not knowing what to call things. Point to the right part by name and you speed up the design, cut down on costly misunderstandings on press, and stop talking at cross-purposes. This glossary walks through the terms you will meet in book printing and layout, so you can speak the same language as your print shop and your designer.
Front cover (the cover)
The front cover is the most visible face of a book and the very first surface a reader sees. It normally carries the title, the source, the translator's name and the publisher's name. The cover is the most important part of the book, because it decides whether a browsing reader stops and picks it up — a strong cover genuinely sells more copies.
Physically, the cover of a hardcover book — and of a paperback too — is thicker than the inside pages, which protects the interior from damage.
Back cover
The back cover is the last surface once the book is closed. On a published title it carries the ISBN, the price and the publisher. On an ordinary book the back cover usually shows the details of whoever produced it: company logo, company name, company address.
Inside front cover / inside back cover
The inside front cover is the reverse of the front cover, and the inside back cover is the reverse of the back cover. In a text-only book these two surfaces are usually left blank. Picture-heavy books, however — story books, magazines and journals — often choose to print on the inside front and inside back covers.
Printing artwork or blocks of colour on these inside surfaces makes a book more attractive and more enjoyable to look through, provided the design is handled well.
Spine
The spine is the edge that joins the front cover to the back cover. Its width depends on how many inside pages there are — the more pages, the thicker the spine. The spine usually carries the title, mainly so the book is easy to find on a shelf. Of course, if your book has too few pages or is bound with saddle stitching, there is simply no spine to print on.
Page, sheet and side
"Page", "sheet" and "side" are three words that constantly trip people up. From a printing point of view, one sheet of paper is two pages — that is, two sides. The English word "page" bears this out: P.1, P.2, page one, page two, which again shows that one sheet equals two pages. "Side" and "page" are the same unit.
Belly band
The belly band is a strip of paper wrapped around the cover. Its main job is to decorate the book or to add information the cover leaves out — an author's best-known work, sales figures and other eye-catching lines. The belly band is a design many readers dislike, because it gets in the way of handling the book, and plenty of them carry nothing but marketing copy.
Dust jacket
The dust jacket is a removable outer cover. It originated in Japan, where its first purpose was to protect the cover and the reader's privacy. Today the dust jacket is mostly about decoration and looks: some designers choose a richly textured paper for it to make the whole book feel more premium.
Like the belly band, the dust jacket is not universally loved — when you pick the book up to read, the jacket slides off easily.
Front flap / back flap
Flaps usually appear only on paperbacks. Their main job is to thicken the cover so the book stands upright more easily and the cover does not curl outward. If a book is going to use a dust jacket or a belly band, it will always have front and back flaps — they stop the wrap from coming loose around the inner cover.
The front flap is used for the author's or translator's biography, while the back flap carries other extra information: other titles, the highlights of this book, endorsements and so on.
Fold-out
A fold-out is a separately printed page that runs beyond the trim size of the book. For example, if a normal page inside the book is 297 x 210 mm, a fold-out might be 297 x 420 mm. This approach is used when the design content is wider than two facing pages, so the reader can take it in without flipping back and forth. Fold-outs only suit perfect-bound (softcover) books and perfect-bound hardcovers; other binding methods struggle to handle them.
Know the terms, communicate more easily
Getting a firm grasp of these book-structure terms is a big part of saving time and working efficiently. If you would rather not turn a wrong word into a big misunderstanding, it is worth digesting this article properly. If anything here is unclear, we are always happy to help — message us on WhatsApp at +852 3001 5678 (English is fine) and we will walk you through it. We print and deliver books across Hong Kong and Macau.