NEWS

Posted on 27 March, 2023

If you’ve ever wondered what goes into making a physical book, come with us as we head to CPI Books for a behind the scenes look. Grab your hi-vis vest and take a tour along their production line as they produce our Ian Fleming Bond paperback collection.

CPI are a large firm who print around 450 million books a year in sixteen sites around the world. A big delivery of paper has just been delivered when we arrive and we review different weights, densities and colour options. Together we choose a paper which has good opacity, excellent ink absorption and is thick enough to feel substantial but not too heavy as to slow the fast pace of Bond’s adventures!

The paper is now fed in ready to receive the iconic words of Ian Fleming. Hundreds of text pages are printed per minute and the entire first run of Casino Royale is completed in less than two hours.

The interior text pages are assembled in sets of two, with both books printed simultaneously on the same sheet of paper. Books are printed in sections – called ‘signatures – of eight, twelve or sixteen. Our paperbacks are printed in signatures of eight.

Next: our book covers. CPI produces these at their specialist cover printing site and ships them to the page print site to be collated into books. To achieve the modern vibrant effect we want, CPI use a high level of ink density and finish the paper with a soft touch matt lamination. There’s also a wide range of metallic effects on offer, in a dazzling spectrum of colours. This is just one of the many options CPI give to make a book look extra special, including embossing, debossing, spot varnish and sprayed edges. Metallic printing requires special rolls of foil and we use one of the golds for one of our Bond covers – can you guess which one?

As with the text pages, two covers are printed on one sheet, with the front side of one cover opposite the back inside of the other.

The paperbacks need to be glued together and to do this, individual plugs of dry glue are melted in a vat and applied to the spines

Next we watch the book take shape with the cover applied. Glue and ink need time to dry and the factory floor is designed so that by the time the books have travelled to the next part of the assembly line they are cool enough for the next stage.

The assembled books are stacked with their covers cut to size and are checked for quality. Now to trim the inside text pages.

Books are now completely cut to size and approved by Quality Control. All that’s left is to box them up and ship out to our retailers, ready to go on their shelves!