A series of professional operations including editing, designing, typography, platemaking, printing, and binding to transform a manuscript and its related illustrations into book form.

Books follow a distinctive technique in assembling and binding pages in sequential order and in fitting and sealing the pages into a separate cover. Those designed for relatively permanent usage are sealed into rigid or semirigid covers (called edition, case, or hardback binding), and those designed for less permanent usage are sealed into paper covers (called soft or paperback binding).

The basic cell of a book's construction is called a signature or section and is composed of multiples of 4 pages. The folding of signatures printed on a web press is integrated with the printing units. In sheet-fed printing, folding is separate from presswork and is performed on special machines located in a book bindery.

Folding a sheet of paper once produces 4 pages, and each additional fold doubles the number of pages. A sheet folded three times yields a 16-page signature, the first page being the lowest numbered (a page number is called a folio). All right-hand pages are odd numbered, and left-hand pages are even numbered. A book of 160 pages has ten 16-page signatures, the first being folioed 1–16 and the last 145–160.

Signatures, assembled in sequence, are mechanically held together along one folded edge, called the binding edge or spine, by continuous thread sewing through the fold of each signature; or by thread stitching through the side of the book from front to back; or by wire stapling; or by cutting off the binding-edge folds and applying a coating of strong flexible adhesive, sometimes adding an additional locking device of wide mesh textiles or stretch papers.

Purely decorative features include colorful bits of textiles added to the head and tail of the spine (called headbands) and tinted or gilded edges. One spectacular technical breakthrough was the mechanical gilding of book edges; for centuries this had been a closely guarded handicraft process.

The book cover serves to protect the pages against disintegration, to announce the title of the book, and to stimulate the visual interest of the prospective buyer. The degree of usage and permanency influences the selection of raw materials for a book cover (as in reference sets and text and library books), and visual appeal is influenced by the book's price and marketability. Permanent-type covers are made on special equipment in which the cover material and pulp-boards are assembled and joined with special adhesives. In embellishing the cover, the designer has numerous choices of special equipment and processes, such as flat ink, pigment or metal-foil stampings, embossing, silk-screening, and multicolor printing.

Preceding the final assembly of the book into its cover (called “casing in”), strong 4-page front and back end-sheets and one or more kinds of hinges (of textiles or paper) have been applied to strengthen the interlocking between book and cover (called “lining up”). The book also has acquired a concave and convex edge and a pair of ridges or joints along the binding edge (called “backing”). These features are added by special equipment and are specifically engineered to securely lock the book into its cover and to transmit the strains of opening the book throughout the entire body instead of only to the first and last pages.

For shelf display, a book is often wrapped in a colorful, eyecatching jacket (called dust wrapper), or in a transparent synthetic if the cover is highly decorative.

Books reach their markets packaged in many different ways. Single copies are packaged and mailed directly to the consumer; sets are assembled into cartons, one set per carton; textbooks and other single titles are bulk-cartoned or skid-packed and shipped to central warehouses. See also Printing.