How to choose book paper: coated, uncoated, cream or white.
Readers rarely notice paper, which is exactly the point: the right sheet disappears into the reading, and the wrong one interrupts it on every page. Here is how we walk clients through the choice, in the order the decisions actually matter.
Paper is the largest single material cost in most books and the least discussed line on most quotes. Clients arrive with strong opinions about covers and vague ones about the four hundred pages inside. Yet three questions settle almost every interior: coated or uncoated, cream or white, and how thick the sheet really is. Take them in that order and the paper nearly chooses itself.
Coated or uncoated: what is the page for?
Coated paper — the gloss or matt art paper of catalogs and photo books, typically 105 to 200gsm — carries a mineral surface that keeps ink sitting up where it lands. Fine detail stays fine; saturated color stays saturated. If your book lives on its images — an art book, a catalog, a photo-heavy children's book — coated stock is the correct default, and the only real debate is gloss versus matt.
Uncoated paper — the offset and woodfree stocks of 70 to 120gsm — absorbs ink slightly and softens everything a little, which is precisely why long-form text reads so comfortably on it. It has no glare, takes handwriting without smearing, and feels like a book rather than a brochure. Novels, workbooks and journals belong here. The choice is not about quality grades; it is about what the page is for. Ink held sharply on the surface serves an image. Ink settled quietly into the sheet serves a sentence.
Cream or white: what should the eye believe?
Uncoated stocks come in shades, and the shade does real work. Cream lowers contrast and glare over a long reading session and carries an unmistakably literary feel — it is the default for fiction for good reason. White renders color and contrast accurately, which is what reference books and illustrated titles need: a diagram on cream is a diagram seen through weak tea. Our shorthand: if the book is read for hours, lean cream; if it is consulted and compared, lean white.
The number on the quote is not the thickness
Paper is specified in grams per square meter, but gsm measures weight, not thickness. Two 80gsm papers can differ noticeably in caliper, because what matters is bulk — the ratio of thickness to weight, expressed in cc/g. A high-bulk 80gsm sheet makes a fatter, more substantial book than a dense one of identical weight; it decides your spine width, and with it your cover artwork, and with it a good part of how the book feels lifted from a shelf. When comparing quotes, compare bulk as well as gsm, or two identical-sounding specifications will produce two different books.
Defaults by genre
Every project is its own case, but these are the starting points we reach for on the factory floor.
| Book | Typical paper | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Novel | 70–80gsm cream uncoated | Comfortable reading, modest weight, literary tone |
| Textbook | 60–80gsm high-opacity | Many pages, no show-through, manageable in a bag |
| Art book | 128–200gsm coated | Detail and color fidelity above all |
| Bible / reference | 22–50gsm thin paper | Enormous page counts in a holdable block |
| Notebook | 80–120gsm writing paper | Takes pen and pencil without bleed or ghosting |
The thin-paper end of that table is a craft of its own — opacity, strength and printability at weights most presses never touch — and we wrote about it separately in Bible paper, explained. FSC-certified equivalents are available on request across these grades; for many publishers that certification is now simply part of the specification.
Ask for a dummy before you decide anything
Our last piece of advice is the one we give most often: ask for a paper dummy — a blank book made up in your exact size, paper and page count. It costs little and answers the questions no specification sheet can: how the spine reads, how the pages fall open, what the book weighs in one hand. We have made paper decisions with clients since 1995, and the pattern has never changed. Weight and feel in hand beat any description, including everything written above.