Definition
Saddle stitch
Saddle stitching folds nested sheets and staples them through the spine fold. It suits booklets up to roughly 48–64 pages and produces no flat spine to print on.
Because sheets nest inside one another, the page count is always a multiple of four, and the innermost pages creep outward as the bundle thickens — so thicker booklets need their outer margins adjusted or the inner pages trim short. It is the right binding for a chapbook, programme or zine, and the wrong one for anything that needs a printed spine or a long shelf life.
Related tools & guides
A print-ready interior, checked
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