Exercise Books, Pack of 6

Details

Six A4 exercise books, 172 pages each, in a 70 GSM sheet, sewn rather than pinned or glued. The page count on an exercise book is where the whole category is dishonest, and the mechanism is worth understanding because it explains why so many books are short. A bindery works in signatures, and a signature is sixteen pages. 172 does not divide by 16, so a book of 172 pages needs eleven sections: ten full ones and a short one of twelve pages. Making that short section costs money, so the common answer is to bind ten full signatures, which is 160 pages, and print 172 on the cover anyway. Nobody counts a bound book. We do, on a sample from every lot. The second cut is grammage: 70 GSM printed and 52 to 58 supplied, which is why a child writing with a gel pen can only use one side and the book is quietly half the size you paid for.

• 172 pages, which is 86 leaves and 172 writable sides. On this store a page is always one side and the leaf count is printed beside it
• Eleven sewn sections: ten of sixteen pages and one of twelve. Counted against the cover figure per lot, and a short book is a rejected lot rather than a discount
• Sewn through the fold in sections, then drawn on. It opens flat, which is what lets a child write into the gutter of a left-hand page without lifting the book off the desk
• Sheet measures 70 GSM to ISO 536 on a disc cut from the bound book, tolerance plus or minus 3 percent
• Opacity 92 percent, ISO 2471. A 0.5 mm gel pen or a school fountain pen writes on both sides without the reverse becoming unusable, which is the difference between a 172-page book and an 86-page one
• No staples anywhere. A wire staple in a school bag through a Bihar monsoon rusts and marks the pages either side of the fold
• Cover 250 GSM, unlaminated, with a plain name, class and subject block. No cartoon licence, no film lamination and nothing on it that dates
• Size A4, 210 mm by 297 mm, ISO 216
• Single ruled is 8 mm with a red margin. Four ruled is the standard handwriting ruling for junior classes. Square ruled is 1 cm. Plain is plain
• Acid free to ISO 9706, elemental chlorine free with AOX under 0.2 kg per tonne of pulp. ECF is not chlorine free and this store does not round it up on any paper item
• Rs 55 a book. About Rs 137 a kilogram of paper, against about Rs 156 a kilogram for the copier ream on the Gaya quick shelf, which is the ruling, the sewing and the cover accounted for