Tools & Options
Cover Options
Hard cover or soft cover? Matte or glossy finish, or another specialized treatment? There are a lot of options available to you! Design the cover yourself or have one of our designers work with you to create it; from there, your design can be printed in ink, foil stamped, embossed, or laminated into the cover. In your Friesens History Book kit, you’ll find a sample swatch booklet of cover materials to help you envision the final product. Discuss your options with your representative!
Binding
As important as the content of your book is, so is the binding; a history book must be well-bound because it’s going to see much use over the years! All hard-cover history books produced by Friesens have sewn-bindings, meaning the pages are sewn together with nylon thread. There are options as well for soft-cover books, and your representative can help you understand the pros and cons of all of them.
Paper
All Friesens books are printed on high-quality book paper. We can discuss all of the options with you, so you understand the difference. If your book is less than 200 pages, a heavier weight of paper would be used to give the look and feel of a larger book. If your book is primarily text, a non-gloss paper is used to make readability easier.
Custom Sizes
This is important to choose even before you think about covers, paper stock, and binding. Will it be 6×9? 8.5×11? Landscape? Portrait? A smaller book is easier to handle, but limits the amount of photos that can be added and the more pages that are added, the bulkier the book becomes. Generally an 8.5×11 book is the most popular size for history books, as the pages are larger and are both easier to work with in the design and to read. It is possible to create a history book outside of these sizes, and your representative can help you decide on the best one.
History Book Guide
So you want to publish a history book. That’s great! But you don’t know where to start. That’s okay, we can help with our History Book Guide. Whether your book is about your community, family, church, organization, or business, your history is important to us, and we’re here to help you share your best story with the world!