I read a lot of nonfiction and biographies, many of which include sections with photos. More often than not, these photo sections are stuck at a random place in the book. Wouldn't it make more sense to place them in either the very front or back? Most of them aren't even at the halfway point.
Sometimes they interrupt the flow of things because they are in the middle of a chapter rather than at the end so a paragraph that goes from one page and continues to another is broken up. Sometimes captions on the photos spoil information that comes later in the book.
by SimoneToastCrunch
16 Comments
My guess is because of how the weight of the pictures affects the binding. The pictures need to be in certain spots in order for the binding to hold together.
Usually a function of printing/binding costs and systems. You can’t just shove them anywhere unless they’re printed directly onto the book’s regular paper, which makes them lower-quality. Glossy stock requires specific placement.
Most books are printed on a very large piece if paper that is folded down to 16 or 32 book pages. The photo section is typically different paper that is fitted somewhere after or before one of these 32 page sections/booklets.
If the pictures are printed on a different paper, then they will be printed and bind together.
If they are printed on the same paper as the rest of the book, then it has to do with the design. Whenever I worked on a book, the author usually says, to which part of the book the picture belongs too. Then, as a designer, you have to make it work in the best possible way. Also the captions have effect on the text flow.
The thing I have a problem with is when the pics are all grouped together in the center. They should be put at least near the scene they show 🤦🏻♂️
Only a guess but it might be due to construction method, at least sometimes. Particularly likely if the photos in question are printed on a different type of paper
So, a book is made up of many individual sections, blocks of pages, called signatures. These signatures themselves are made up of several sheets of paper folded in half, called a folio, and nestled one within the other. [A stack of signatures, pre binding, to illustrate](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vlsdDy-k6_Y/Tgzv-q2LkYI/AAAAAAAAAE4/cwM2IMzq8g4/s1600/1.jpg). In a signature the outer leaf (single sheet before folded into a folio) may have page 1-2-7-8 printed on it so that 1-2 appear at the start of the signature and 7-8 appears at the end. This isn’t something you will generally notice as once the book is assembled all the pages are in order. But, if you have a few sheets of a different kind of paper, say some nice expensive semigloss photo paper, it’s going to become much more obvious as your going to have that paper appear in at least two places even if you might prefer only one. They could just print text on the other half of the paper so that the pictures always appear in the right place, but the nice paper is expensive. So they’d rather print pictures on every scrap of it they can and have the text say something like “refer to pg 78 diagram 2B” or some such rather than waste half the expensive paper on text that will just fine on much cheaper paper. Random note, signature construction is why you sometimes run in to books with a seemingly random ass chunk of pages in the middle that are upside down or a repeat or otherwise fucked in some manner, somebody somewhere accidentally scrambled the signatures before they went in to the binding machine. I’ve even done it myself with hand bound books a time or two 😩🙄
Now, if your book is perfect bound? Fuck knows lol. Might just be a ‘tradition’ thing
It’s typically either the middle or the thirds. I’ve never seen it placed randomly.
They’re in the center of each binding because they’re on a different type of paper or are printed in color and books are formed by folding paper in half. Try making a simple book yourself with a stapler and you’ll see why.
Really long books have multiple bindings.
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Different printer/paper
My 2005 book was printed in four languages. It had a lot of photos in two photo sections. The publisher printed the photo sections for all four languages in one long run. They printed the text, which also had some photos, in separate runs for each language. The photo sections had no text, just photos and page numbers.
The book was a coffee table book for a museum exhibit. The paper was the same across both photo and text sections. The strategy was all about getting the one long run of the photo sections.
It’s cheaper in the printing process to put them all together, and since they can’t be sprinkled, wherever you put them is going to break continuity.
If you look at the luxurious ‘olden days’ when printing was still affordable and publishers cared more for quality than profit, you’ll see them printed appropriately, with tissue protected and so on.
I’ve seen a lot of the seemingly random photo page placement and the other commenters’ info makes total sense.
I recently read a book where the photo pages were placed between parts 1 and 2 of a nonfiction work, with part 1 detailing events and introducing people and part 2 talking about an investigation of the events that occurred in the first part. It struck me as excellent placement, seeing as it was about 40% of the way through the book and yet didn’t spoil anything via photos, nor did it show up out of nowhere. I thought it was super cool
One section of photos or images is an indication that the book was published the old-fashioned way–with the publisher paying its printer to put together a book from separate elements–photos printed on different paper incorporated into the book’s interior, with a choice of cover.
With the current dominance of Print-on-Demand (POD), such books are dinosaurs compared to what can be produced today.
Choeofpleirn Press, for instance, publishes four annual literary journals, and we take full advantage of the flexibility of POD printing, so that we have great art intermingled with the literature, instead of stuck in just one section.
Our newest magazine, *Coneflower Cafe*, Spring 2024, which will be published by April 1st, even features a special section this time that has poems written to accompany particular works of art. We even encourage writers who submit nonfiction pieces to include artworks in those to illustrate their essay topics.
Good point!
i just finished the Wordsworth Classic edition of Persuasion of Jane Austen and it had these random ass illustrations for what were seemingly the most insignificant lines in the book……things like “he put a letter in front of her” and then the illustration would be like….on the page after the line itself. it was the craziest thing i’ve ever experienced and the illustrations were NOT good and added nothing to the overall story 😭