Hardcover books are the most durable style of book because of the sturdy binder board used for the covers, along with a strong sewn binding. The book construction includes two covers, spine board (optional) and 8 pages of endsheets glued to the front and back of the covers, concealing the edge of the cover material and gluing the cover itself to the book block. Head and tail bands are added to conceal the top of the folded signatures and to strengthen the spine.
Case bound book have many names – hardbound, hardcover, hardback, bound book ,edition bound book– but they all share the same meaning: quality presentation.
Most often, a case bound book has five distinctives:
- Cover is hard or stiff
- Covers are “wrapped”
- Smythe sewn sections
- Two end papers (inside the covers)
- Divided by the spine forms, there are square spine and round spine
There are two exceptions:
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Pages are perfect bound rather than Smythe sewn and then bound into a hard cover
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Some covers—but very few—may be flexible rather than hard
