If you are planning a publication that is not made up of sheets that are stitched or sewn together after folding, but is bound from separate leaves cut apart – for example a spiral-bound or perfect-bound book, a hardcover board book or a leporello book –, then the final page count must always be even, that is, divisible by 2.
How is a publication like this built up?
With these products, the inside pages are made up not of folded sheets, but of separate leaves. We hold these leaves together with the binding technology in question:
– with spiral binding (as with notebooks),
– with gluing (as with brochures or books),
– in the case of a hardcover board book or a leporello children's book, with mounting and gluing.
Every single leaf means two pages: one on the front, one on the back. That is why the final publication can consist only of an even number of pages – otherwise a spread would be missing or would remain blank.
This is why the page count has to be divisible by 2
If, for example, you want 18 pages:
✔️ that means exactly 9 separate leaves – all good.
If, however, you are planning 17 pages:
❌ it cannot be produced, for lack of a leaf – one page must be added in any case (either with content or blank) to get the even number.
What should you do if it doesn't come out to a multiple of 2?
If your content is one page short of the required even number, you can choose from these:
– Fill out the last page with, for example, an author's note, an illustration or extra information.
– Leave it blank on purpose – a blank closing page is natural in many printed pieces.
– Check whether the product type is really the right one – for example, if you would rather have a folded, saddle-stitched booklet after all, you will need a page count divisible by 4 there.
