What determines if a FS book is paper or cloth bound?

They still seem to use both but leaning increasingly towards paperbound. I imagine it's a cost issue but I also can't imagine the cost difference is so big that I wouldn't choose cloth bound every time.

It often ends up being the deciding factor when I'm on the fence about a book.

Besides the cost factor I can imagine there might be a desire to increase the distinction between the same book in different states. Moving "up" from paper to cloth is an easy way to accomplish that, increasing the perceived value even if the material cost difference is trivial.

There are also some artistic intent to take into account. With paper you can get some more diverse textures (e.g. Original Clockwork orange) which is important for how to book will feel and look. Also you get much more detailed printing on paper and I can imagine some printing methods do not work with book cloth. I recently received The Diversity of Life which is paper bound. The printing if extremely sharp and the iridescent effect is very nice. I don't think you could get that result with book cloth.

>3 David_Mauduit: Agreed, the fidelity of paper for certain styles of artwork (notably the type FS seems to favor of late) can be superior. And the variety of textures and finishes do give more creative options.

Is it possible that by offering some paper-bound covers they are able to commission more titles than they would if they stuck to a cloth-bound-only strategy? I'm wondering if there is a capacity limitation on cloth-binding print houses. Seems unlikely but who knows?

>3 David_Mauduit: yeah there are some cases where the design concept works better with full paper over boards (I'd add Jurassic Park to that list).

But generally I think the main force at work here is as described by >2 Shadekeep: (in service of vertical product differentiation for customer segmentation by disposable income level).

I'd add that the traditional approach for cloth bindings to the either/or of crisp impression versus durable hinges is to attach a label to the spine, which can be printed in whatever manner.

I guess people care more about crisp cover visuals than I thought. Personally, I find a lot of the FS covers a bit garish. I much prefer the quality and tactile sensation of a subdued clothbound cover than the paper ones.

If nothing else, the cloth covers have forced some much more tastefully designed cover graphics than the paper ones in my opinions.

>5 treereader:

Seems highly improbable. Any mainstream printer/binder can work with either and cloth is readily available in commercial quantities.

I would imagine it is to (a) allow for some variation in price points, and (b) to allow for stylistic variation, given cloth is somewhat more limited than paper in terms of what you can do with it (though not much more in reality, since you can get white cloth and print anything you want on it).

>7 snottlebocket: I agree! If you want crisp cover visuals, buy a hardcover in a bookstore with a printed dust jacket.

I prefer cloth every time. (Or even better, leather!)

I don’t mind paper-bound books, if the choice is artistically dictated (Clockwork Orange as mentioned by >3 David_Mauduit:, also Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected from earlier titles). But in many of the recent ones, the paper binding just feels a bit cheap and a weakness point – the Chrestomanci series and The Turn of the Screw, for example, with visible rubbing after a single read-through.

Piranesi, Neuromancer, Invisible Cities, The Book Thief – all dream titles for me, but I keep hesitating because of the binding. It’s a futile thought, but I’d really wish FS would go back to cloth / buckram as their basic binding material.

>7 snottlebocket: I'm not convinced that cover visuals are the dominant reason for FS choosing paper over cloth.

If visuals at the quality of Folio's The King of Elfland’s Daughter, Rebecca, Something Wicked This Way Comes, or even the popular Dune books can be achieved with blocked cloth or buckram, that's already a high degree of visual fidelity for a book cover. I don't think anyone remotely considers these to be low quality cover visuals.

I'd personally always choose the durability of blocked cloth over whatever improved cover artwork paper may provide. The more detailed artwork can always be used for the interior/endpapers.

I'm leaning towards more pedestrian reasons like product segmentation or the ever-present cost considerations (though I'm not even sure there's any significant cost savings going with paper).

>10 BorisG: It's frustrating to see Folio go all the way to publish these titles, only to choose paper-covered boards for the binding.

I would always settle for simpler cover art if that's the price for a cloth or buckram binding, though Folio has published quite beautiful art on cloth-covered boards. The current 3-volume Shakespeare's The Complete Plays is an excellent example among many.

Neuromancer, Piranesi and The Book Thief are still sitting on my wish list primarily because of the paper-covered boards.

I'd definitely prefer good-quality cloth, too. But I assume that paper is cheaper and that's the main consideration.