Have you ever wondered why Landmark Books almost always advertise 192 pages but when you actually see the page count, there are perhaps 172 numbered pages? Did the reader get cheated? Not really. The answer lies in the way books were printed in the 1960's. If you stand up a Landmark book and peer down the inside of the spine, you can see that the pages are gathered in bunches. To see this best, you have to look where the pages butt up against the spine. Look at the image associated with this post for an example. On most Landmarks, there are 6 bunches. On some, there are 7 bunches. Each of these bunches is called a signature. A signature begins life as a single large piece of paper. During the printing of a book, a block of pages (a group linked together in a single printing plate) are used to print multiple pages at the same time in a single ink transfer operation onto a single piece of paper. Both sides of the page are printed on, each using a different page block. The large piece of paper, now printed on both sides, is folded several times and then three edges are cut apart and the uncut edge is the edge that is snugged up against the spine and this bunch (a signature) is combined with other signatures and bound into the book.
As already noted, most landmarks have 6 signatures. 192 pages divided by 6 signatures equals 32 pages per signature. So one side of the large printed sheet that Random House was using had room for 16 pages, matched by 16 pages on the other side of the sheet. This meant the large sheet was folded in half 4 times, 3 of the edges cut, and the result was a signature containing 32 pages. If you don’t believe me, take an ordinary piece of paper, fold it in half 4 times, cut three edges, and see how many pages that result. If you cut the correct 3 edges, the uncut edge will form a nested sequence of pages that can be sewn together by a couple of stitches. In a Landmark book, these pages account for every printed surface inside the covers, to include the title page, index, blank pages, maps, photographs etc. And all that adds up to 192 pages, the number that Random House advertised. In most cases, the 4 leaves (2 in front, 2 in back) that make up the end papers did not count towards this total. They were printed separately. When the book was produced, after printing and gathering of the required signatures into the body of the book and any sewing completed, a piece of binding tape was glued to the spine of the gathered signatures along their length. This piece of binding tape extended beyond the width of the spine by about 1/2 inch on each side. The inside end papers (not the ones eventually glued to the covers) were then glued to this 1/2 inch extension at the front and back of the book. See the image above for a view of the end paper where it is glued to the binding tape. In reality that joining is difficult to see (the binding tape starts 1/2 inch below the tops of the pages) unless you take a Landmark and disassemble it (which is what I did to understand the construction practices being used). At this point the cover assembly was ready to be joined to the completed contents.
In a few cases, 192 pages was not enough. When that happened, Random House added a 7th signature. An example of this is the World Landmark title W-60, “Flying Aces of World War I.” However the 7th signature, in the case of this volume the one at the back of the book, is not 32 pages long. It is only 16 pages long. The first 6 signatures are the expected 32 pages in length. Thus Flying Aces contains 208 pages. Other books used whatever arrangement worked for reaching the desired page count. For example in Schweitzer (W-33), the 7th (undersized) signature is in the middle of the book between what are usually the 3rd and 4th signatures.
Given the information we have gathered, it is easy to figure out the size of the paper sheet that Random House used for a full 32-page signature. Each page in a Landmark is 5.5 inches wide by 6.25 inches long. Since 16 pages went on one side of the sheet, the full area required was 5.5 x 6.25 x 16, for a total of 550 square inches. This conveniently resolves into a 4-page wide and 4-page long layout, or a 22 inch by 25 inch sheet of paper.
It should be obvious if you did the page folding exercise mentioned above that to end up with a signature in which all the pages are in proper order and proper orientation, the layout of pages in the printing block is going to very strange indeed. I leave it to you to figure out how the printing blocks should be set up. Hint: Fold your piece of paper, then unfold it and mark each page area with a number and an arrow pointing up. On the other side of the sheet use letters of the alphabet and an arrow pointing up. Now refold and cut three edges. For each page, see what page order and orientation resulted from your experiment. That will tell where actual book pages 1, 2, 3 etc. need to laid out in each of the two required printing blocks, and whether the page should right side up or upside down.
PS – I left this for you to do because I didn’t. Just lazy, I guess.
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