Saddle Stitch Booklet Printing

The term “saddle-stitching” comes from the way the booklet is bound. During production, the pages of the booklet are placed over a device that looks like a saddle. The name stuck—and today, any bookbinding process that uses wire staples is usually called saddle-stitching.

Saddle-stitch binding uses two staples to hold the book together, while perfect bound books use glue.

Saddle stitch binding involves folding sheets of paper in half and stapling them along the fold, creating a booklet with a smooth, curved spine. Square saddle binding, a variation of saddle stitching, adds a squared-off spine for a more polished, book-like appearance and improved stackability. Square saddle binding also accommodates more pages than conventional saddle stitch binding.

Saddle-stitch booklets are printed on long sheets of paper that are folded and stapled in the middle. So for every long paper used in the process, four pages are created in the final booklet—with the original sheet folded into two halves and each of those halves having two sides.

This means that adding or removing a single long sheet will increase or decrease your page count by four. If your booklet has a page count that is not a multiple of four, we can integrate blank pages in the front or back of your design to make it bindable.

Saddle stitching works best for booklets with 64 pages or less. If your book has 68-144 pages, it may not lie flat and could require more than the typical two staples used in binding. Booklets that are more than 120 pages thick have paper stock options of: 60 lb. Uncoated Text Paper, 70 lb. Uncoated Text Paper, 80 lb. Matte Text Paper, or 80 lb. Gloss Text Paper. If you try to order a booklet with more than 120 pages and request a paper type that’s not supported for the square saddle-stitch method of that size, you may receive an error message that prompts you to choose a different paper weight or finish.

Nope—the spines on a saddle-stitched book are not flat, so printing on them isn’t possible. If you do want to print on your booklet’s spine, consider our perfect bound books or our PUR perfect bound books.

Delivery dates vary depending on the quantity and page count of your order, but our standard turnaround time is typically 4 days.

For faster turnarounds, select a delivery date in your cart.