Self cover explained in under a minute

What does self cover mean?

When you’re ordering multi-page printing for a magazine, brochure, or any sort of booklet your printer can either treat it all as a single job, or they can split it so that the covers are handled separately to the main printing job. If it’s all handled as a single job, with the covers being printed on the same paper and in the same colour space as the interior pages, then you’ve got a self cover project. If you’re looking for a stiffer cover, or a full colour cover on an otherwise black and white project, then you’ve got a separate cover.

Getting printing quotes.

When you contact printers to ask for a quote you’ll need to let them know how many pages you want. If it’s a self cover then you’ll need to tell them the total number of pages including covers (so a 32 page booklet would be “36 pages, self cover”). If you want the cover to be printed separately you’ll need to specify the number of interior pages and specify the cover separately (so the 32 page booklet would be “32 pages + 4 page cover”). Each of these bits of information will need to be matched with specifications for colour options and paper weight as well.