What’s the right art book paper for your title? It’s a good question, and of course, there’s not an easy answer—it depends on your artwork, your personal taste, and your budget. At Bookmobile, we offer a range of 15 interior stocks to choose from, so we’re confident you’ll find the perfect stock to showcase your artwork.
As a short-run printer, Bookmobile has a set selection of stocks on our floor. We know these papers will run reliably on our digital printers (which in turns gives us the most consistent and best printing possible from our equipment) and we know the costs (so we can offer competitive pricing). We don’t special order stocks for particular print runs, because with short runs (25 to 3,000 copies), special-order stocks can create production inefficiencies and increase costs.
Art Book Paper: Coated Stock
White coated stock is the most popular and traditional choice for an art book—we carry it in gloss or matte at 80- and 100-lb. The smooth surface of a coated stock is a plus for reproducing art with a lot of detail. A coated stock is a less porous substrate than an uncoated paper. That means it has improved ink/toner opacity, which in turn slightly increases the color gamut (allowing richer colors and darker blacks). A coated stock also gives a luster to the areas of the substrate with less ink/toner coverage, which gives the impression of a wider spectrum of light and dark.
Day and Night, an exhibition catalog for the photographers Kevin Horn and Kevin O’Meara, with an 80-lb. gloss-coated interior.
EVA binding glues will not adhere well to a coated stock, so we perfect bind these runs on our PUR binder. Our PUR glue is a stronger and more flexible bind for coated papers.
Art Book Paper: Uncoated Stock
Color printing on uncoated stock is gaining in popularity! For instance, we frequently print color interiors on on 80-lb. white opaque smooth. It’s a good weight with a good opacity, and for an uncoated stock, the surface is relatively smooth. Uncoated stock also provides a nice contrast to our color printers’ characteristics: we use Xerox printers, and with heavy coverage the result is rich tones, which stand out on an uncoated paper.
Lost, a poetry and photography book by Kirby Bryce, with an 80-lb. white uncoated stock interior.
We’ve seen art books print on our uncoated natural or vanilla stocks, too!
En Route to Find an Armchair by Lindsay Buchman, with an 80-lb. vanilla interior.
Art Book Paper Tools
Find a full list of our paper stocks here.
Calculate your spine width here.
Convert GSM to basis weight (lb.) here.
Why Bookmobile to Print an Art Book?
Our short-run print quality is excellent, our pricing is affordable, and we offer many options. Customize your paperbacks with a square trim size, translucent vellum insert, foil stamping on a paperback cover, and more. Browse our Gallery to see the full breadth of what we offer! Bookmobile can perfect-bind as few as 16 pages and we offer PUR binding for a durable bind for coated interior stocks. And with a minimum run quantity of just 25 copies, artists can print short runs and order reprints as needed—which means no worries about storing inventory or cash flow complications.