Had a customer bring in a stack of spiral notebooks to get bound yesterday

This woman comes into my shop with like 15 spiral notebooks filled with handwritten recipes, wants me to turn them into proper hardcovers. I told her it would be about $200 to take them all apart, trim the paper, and rebind them. She flipped out and said I was trying to rip her off because her nephew could do it for free with a stapler. I tried to explain how the margins would get cut off and the pages would fall apart but she just walked out. Has anyone else had people compare your work to some random relative who doesn't even know what a signature is?

3 comments

3 Comments

mitchell.lee3d ago

That $200 price tag was actually fair when you break down the labor and materials involved. People don't realize that binding isn't just punching holes and slapping a cover on it, it's trimming, gluing, and making sure everything lines up so it actually lasts. I've noticed more and more folks expect professional work to cost the same as something their nephew could hack together in an afternoon.

the_stella3d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah I read a post by a book conservator once who was ranting about how much goes into proper binding that people just don't see. They said a lot of cheap work falls apart in a year or two because the glue is wrong or the spine isn't reinforced properly. Makes you wonder if people would rather pay $50 twice than $200 once.

sarah_hart3d ago

Tbh you're pretty much spot on except for one thing. The trimming and gluing part is actually the easy bit. The real skill is in the sewing and how the sections are put together before any glue even touches it. I've watched @the_stella break down some of those cheap paperback rebinds and the spine just crumbles because there's no proper thread holding the signatures. You can have the nicest cover in the world but if the stitch work is garbage, that book is toast in six months. Most people don't realize binding is closer to surgery than craft, you're literally rebuilding the structure from the inside out. And ngl that's the part that takes the most time and where the real cost comes from, not the materials.