hardcover

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An example of the modern hardcover book with dust jacket: The first edition of William Faulkner's 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury

A hardcover, hardback or hardbound is a book bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth, heavy paper, or sometimes leather). They may have flexible sewn spines which allow the book to lie flat on a surface when opened, although most modern commercial hardcover books have glued spines.

Hardcover books are often printed on acid-free paper, and are much more durable than paperbacks, which have flexible, easily damaged paper covers and glued spines. Hardcover books are also marginally more expensive to manufacture and usually much more to purchase. Hardcovers frequently come with artistic dust jackets.

Marketing

If brisk sales are anticipated, a hardcover edition of a book is typically released first, followed by a "trade" paperback edition (same format as hardcover) the next year. For very popular books these sales cycles may be extended, and followed by a mass market paperback edition typeset in a more compact size and printed on thinner, less durable paper. This is intended to, in part, prolong the life of the immediate buying boom that occurs for some best sellers. After the attention to the book has subsided, a lower cost version, the paperback, is released to entice further sales.

Costs

Hardcover books tend to cost more than paperback versions of the book. This is due to price discrimination by booksellers who observe that consumers are willing to pay a premium for hardcover editions over paperbacks beyond the extra costs in materials and production. Hardcover editions are usually reserved for authors who are (or are expected to be) successful.

Differences in structure

Old book bindings at the Merton College library.

Hardcovers generally consist of pages, two boards and a cloth covering them. Their pages are glued into a flexible piece between the boards, and it too is covered by the cloth. A paper covering, usually artistic in nature, is put over the cloth, folding over each horizonal end of the boards. On the folded part over the front cover is generally a blurb, or a summary of the book. On the back folded part is where the biography of the author and/or illustrator can be found. Reviews are often placed on the back of the jacket.

See also

• Paperback

External links

• How to make a simple Hardcover book