Glueing, sewing or stapling pages together and placing them within a cover is called binding. Several pieces of card and paper are required to bind a hardback book. It is also possible to add bookmark ribbons and little pieces of fabric called headbands at the top and bottom of the spine (back) of the book.
A hardcover or hardback (also known as hardbound, and sometimes as case-bound) book is one bound with rigid protective covers (typically of binder’s board or heavy paperboard covered with buckram or other cloth, heavy paper, or occasionally leather). It has a flexible, sewn spine which allows the book to lie flat on a surface when opened. Following the ISBN sequence numbers, books of this type may be identified by the abbreviation Hbk.
Hardcover books are often printed on acid-free paper, and they are much more durable than paperbacks, which have flexible, easily damaged paper covers. Hardcover books are marginally more costly to manufacture. Hardcovers are frequently protected by artistic dust jackets, but a “jacketless” alternative has increased in popularity: these “paper-over-board” or “jacketless hardcover” bindings forgo the dust jacket in favor of printing the cover design directly onto the board binding.
Hardcovers typically consist of a page block, two boards, and a cloth or heavy paper covering. The pages are sewn together and glued onto a flexible spine between the boards, and it too is covered by the cloth. A paper wrapper, or dust jacket, is usually put over the binding, folding over each horizontal end of the boards. Dust jackets serve to protect the underlying cover from wear. On the folded part, or flap, over the front cover is generally a blurb, or a summary of the book. The back flap is where the biography of the author can be found. Reviews are often placed on the back of the jacket. Many modern bestselling hardcover books use a partial cloth cover, with cloth covered board on the spine only, and only boards covering the rest of the book.
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