Is text crossing pages doable in saddle stitched printing?

Hi Chris

I wouldn't put body text across a spread like this.

Printing is a mechanical process and is printed on oversized sheets that are later trimmed down to the finished size. 

Printing is done in batches of either 4, 8, 16 or 32. 

Your pages will be printed in printers pairs

If done in singatures of 16

16|1

2|15

14|3

4|13

12|5

6|11

10|7

8|9

So for example if your spread is page 8 and 9 would it work perfectly

If your spread is on page 2 and 3 - they likely won't 'meet' each other in finishing production.

https://www.formaxprinting.com/blog/2018/01/book-printing-lingo-what-is-a-signature/

As you can see from this sample signature - page 2 and 3 are not particularly close.

There's a lot that goes to get page 2 to be beside page 3, trimming, folding etc.

As it's mechanical process - and machines run by human beings - there's likely to be marginal misalignment (even though there shouldn't be).

Most printers handle this very well - but it's not uncommon for things to go wrong. 

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For all those reasons - I wouldn't put body text across a spread - unless I spoke directly to the printers first and get consensus that they handle this. 

You have to realise there are different types of printing companies. You have specialists printers who have great equipment and take on tasks on a one on one basis. 

Then you have other printers who 'gang run' printing - which is where a printer is trying to save money, so they load up the machine with common paper, and just print a run, then swap the plates, print another run, and are doing this as a quick process. They might even line up your project on the same sheet as another project to save costs. 

And then you have printers with older antiquated systems, non-calibrated machines, who are just churning out print after print and haven't updated their processes in a quarter of a century. 

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I'm not saying it can't be done - but you'll need to research your printers and talk to them to ensure that you are going to get the best results. 

It's a brave decision - and most printers will curse you for doing it 😛 

Good luck - looks like a nice project you're working on. 

On the bottom left there is enough negative space (empty space) where you could put your text. It might also be more graphically pleasing putting it there and leave the room between the two cyclists? as it is.

Also, in the imposition most of the spread pages will not be next to each other, and for saddle stitch the imposition would allow for some paper "creep" in the folding, so there’s a very good chance you will have some misalignment, or some of the text characters being hidden depending on the accuracy of the creep amount. You eye will notice that happening with text, but not with an image crossover.

For eample a simple 2-up 16 page imposition would have page 4 across from page 13, and page 12 across from 5:

If it's on the innermost spread, the alignment would be perfect, of course.

Whether a printer can hold printing and then binding sheet alignment to the small tolerance needed to align body text is up to them and the exact processes used. I would avoid doing two-page spreads with anything but fairly forgiving graphics like rules and shaded blocks, avoid it on images and not try to do it with text at all.

Only on what will be the center spread, and even then it's not a freat idea for text size type.