Saddle Stitch Booklets

Saddle stitch booklets, also called stapled booklets, are a fast, affordable binding method that creates 4 printed pages out of each individual sheet of paper. For a standard-size booklet, 2 pages are printed on each side of an 11x17 sheet, creating 4 - 8.5x11 pages out of each. The finishing unit stacks the sheets in order, folds them in the middle to create the "saddle," then staples — or stitches — them together. The edge of the pages are face-trimmed to create a smooth book edge, and the booklets come off the press ready to box and ship out.

Because there is little (if any) hand finishing involved, saddle stitched booklets are typically the most affordable way to bind your book, catalog or newsletter.

Saddle stitch binding is incredibly popular because it delivers a professional product at the lowest price possible. Because the folding and stapling is done by machine, this keeps the costs low. This makes saddle stitch booklets ideal for material such as product catalogs, magazines, newsletters, student publications, event guides and more.

Cheap booklets don't have to look cheap. While stapling is the most economical printing and binding method, you may want to consider our other book binding options depending on the needs of your project.

See All Book Binding Options

This is because of the way saddle stitch booklets are constructed.

Picture an 8-page stapled booklet which is sized 8.5x11. If you were to open to the center spread and pull out the staples, you would see that the booklet is actually only made from 2 - 11x17 sheets. Because each 11x17 sheet produces 4 - 8.5x11 pages (2 on each side), this is the only way pages can be counted.

If your booklet page count doesn't quite reach a multiple of 4, you can add more content or just add blank pages to get there.

Because a 4-page booklet is only 1 sheet folded in half, we categorize this product under Newsletters and Brochures:

4-Page Half Fold Newsletters

To absolutely avoid show-through in your printed booklet, we recommend either of the 32/80# Text options or heavier. In our experience this is a safe choice for booklets printed with photos, graphics and text alike.

For booklets where most of the content is text, most people are happy with the 28/70# Text Smooth. This is a mid-weight paper and has minimal show-through, which is much less noticeable with text-oriented pages where the text is more or less aligned back-to-back.

In most cases, we do not automatically send a digital proof. If you do want a digital proof first, no problem! Just request this in the Job Notes. The reason for this is that the vast majority of files are setup correctly and require no reformatting or proofing. Most customers also want their job as fast as possible. Unfortunately with email, there is always the risk that the digital proof could end up in the Spam, Junk or Promotions folder, which is more likely to cause a delay in production than it is to stop a misprint from occurring.

But there are some cases in which we must receive proof approval before we can print. This includes:

• Files which are not uploaded as JPG, PNG or PDF
• Any time we make file edits at your request
• If we happen to notice something that looks "wrong" but aren't sure

Because of the way saddle stitch booklets are created, there are page-count limitations due to the thickness of the paper and length of the staples. The page limit for your booklets will depend on the paper you select.

Our thinnest paper for cheap booklets is the 20/50# Bond, which will allow up to 180 pages printed in your saddle stitch booklets.

Higher quality paper like the 32/80# Gloss is capped at 48 pages, while middle-weight papers fall in between.

Yes we can. Select a Bulk Mailing option on the order form and upload your mailing list (Excel or CSV) with your files. If you need them folded in half and tabbed closed, this requires a custom quote: please fill in your job details to the best of your ability (including Bulk Mailing) and click "Save as Quote." Then you can email us and let us know you need pricing for folding and tabbing.