What kind of paper should you use for your book?
Before you can print your book, you’ll need to decide what paper type to use in it. We have three different paper types you can choose from: cream, white, and semi-gloss white. All three paper types are high-quality, FSC-certified options, so the question is, which paper type is best suited for your book? Let’s go over each paper type in detail.
Three different paper types
Cream paper (Bookwove, 90 g)
This paper type is the perfect choice for novels and other literary works. Cream paper is the most commonly used paper type today, and it’s well-suited for any kind of fiction or poetry. As its name implies, it’s an off-white colour. It’s quite sturdy and provides a warm reading experience. This is our thickest paper type.
White paper (Offset, 80 g)
This paper type is very similar to what you’d use in a home printer. Our white paper is of higher quality than you’d have at home however and comes in giant rolls (think of a toilet paper roll) that we then feed into the printers. White paper is a great option for academic literature, handbooks and manuals, and narrative nonfiction like biographies.
Semigloss white paper (115 g)
As the name suggests, this paper type has a slight shine to it. Despite its weight (115 g per square meter), it’s the thinnest paper type we work with. Supple and elegant, our semigloss paper will give your book a classy, polished look. We decided to work with semigloss to maximise legibility (under lamps or other strong light sources). This paper is best suited for cookbooks, photo books, and other book types that include a lot of high-quality photos or images.
Pricing of the different paper types
The difference in price between these three paper types is negligible. Curious about what it would cost to print your book with a certain paper type? Check out our price calculator!
Sustainability
We only use FSC-certified paper when printing books. This means that our paper comes from sustainably managed forests. This, in addition to the fact that we work primarily with print-on-demand techniques, means that we’re not only using responsibly sourced paper but also minimising the wastage of that paper. We’re not perfect by any means, but we’re doing our best to be as environmentally conscious as possible.