iffy about bindings

I wrote before about the possibility of getting Water from a Skull done in hardcover here in Korea, but I'm having second thoughts. I decided to take a closer look at the hardcover books I already have; I've got three or four of them lying around. The books were given to me as gifts by coworkers who had completed their MA programs. This gift-giving seems to be a common practice; graduates order copies of their thesis in batches of thirty and distribute them to friends, relatives, etc.

So I looked closely at my hardcover copies to see what sort of binding the copy service, CopyZone, was using-- simple glue? A more respectable stitching method? I took one of the books and deliberately bent the cover far backward, hyperextending it.

Thee was the small sound of something giving out. The spine was fine, but I could see that the pages were now ever-so-slightly misaligned.

Glue.

Padding compound.

Essentially the same binding process used on my softcovers, though arguably not as tough.

Makes sense, I suppose: there had to be some reason why those hardcovers were so cheap to manufacture.

So now I'm hesitating. CopyZone might not be the right place to get this done. I'm once again thinking about Lulu.com, which allows manuscripts to be printed in hardcover form.

More news on this as it happens.


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