Pop-Up Books?
A Quick Introduction to the World of Pop-Up Books!
Pop-Up Books: What Are They? ★ Pop-Up Books: Special Books ★ Storage, Care & Handling
Who Makes Them? ★ Collecting Pop-Up Books
★ Pop-Up Books: What Are They?
Pop-up books are special kinds of books.
They are part of the large family of movable books, or, more largely still, of that of complex books.
Complex books may include a wide range of books with non-standard, non-traditional binding, page spreads, mechanisms or contraptions, like tunnel books, carousel books, leporellos / accordion books, books with movable flaps, pull-tabs, wheels, or stricto sensu pop-ups , in which 3D designs take form when opening a page spread.
They have been around since the XIIth century, first as scientific calculus and educational tools, become entertainment in the XIXth century, when the mechanisms have diversified, up to modern-day and contemporary pop-ups. Learn more about the amazing of pop-up books in this video.
★ Pop-Up Books are Special Books.
They are special because *all of them*, after being printed, scored and die- or laser-cut, are assembled by hand.
The assembling factories are mostly located in lower-revenue countries, historically and mainly Colombia, Ecuador, Vietnam, China, Thailand, Malaysia… Assembling cannot be improvised and requires discipline, speed and know-how.
Being all hand-assembled, their production cost is drastically higher than regular books, including the fixed costs (all the preparatory steps). It all depends on the book complexity and the print run (the more books you order the lower the cost per copy), but they are about ten times more expensive to manufacture (if a regular book costs USD 1.00 to craft, ship and store, then a pop-up book may cost USD 10.00 or far more).
They are thus essentially luxury items, whatever mainstream publishers may want you to believe by bringing the sale price down at all costs (i.e. at the expense of the authors and artists’ fees, most of the time ; ).
Accordingly, they should be treated with care.
★ Pop-Up Books: Storage, Care and Handling.
Books in general hate fire, water, sunlight. Fire and water will destroy your book beyond repair. Humidity within reason (e.g. seaside) is OK, although wide hygrometry variations may damage books. Sunlight will eventually make colors fade (sunning) and should not be underestimated, even if sunlight never directly hits the books: I have seen entire collections ruined because the books were facing a window.
Consequently, storage conditions are important. Ideally, they should be placed vertically (as they are meant to be) on shelves in a well-ventilated room with low temperature and humidity variations and little sunlight.
Pop-up books in particular must be handled with care.
This is unrelated to the reader’s age: children, fascinated by the pop-ups and duly instructed about handling, can take better care of movable books than the average adult.
They also must be handled properly.
There is a correct way to open pop-up books (hold firmly the parts not to be opened by page edges, and open the page spread); never use force; if something is stuck and the opening prevented, inspect carefully to see what is wrong. Sometimes there are some assembly mistakes; sometimes the mechanisms are so complex (and the paper or glueing possibly not on par) that some different part will inevitably break every time you open the book.
★ Pop-Up Books: Who Makes Them?
The art of creating pop-ups and getting them into files ready for production is bombastically called “paper engineering” and the artists “paper engineers”. The vast majority of paper engineers do not have an engineer degree, and “paper engineer” is a proper technical job in the printing industry, but this is the term that has emerged and has now imposed itself in most countries by way of an anglicism (ingénieur papier, ingeniero de papel, etc.).
If you want to learn how to make pop-ups, Duncan Birmingham has made many educational videos that explain how to craft a wide variety of paper mechanisms. Matthew Reinhart also hosts many crafting sessions. Here is a mega playlist that gathers them all: Learn How to Make Pop-Up Books Tutorials.
I have also published many assembling videos, as I hand-assemble all of my artist’s pop-up books, a few video tutorials, and videos that show pop-up experiments and variations, for example.
Evidently, the artists and authors are not (although they may indeed be, with artist’s books for example) the only actors in the book business: publishers, packagers, printers, assemblers, distributors, booksellers, etc. are also part of it.
★ Collecting Pop-Up Books
There is no collection identical to another, because collectors enter the collection world due to specific circumstances and interests and, well, because no one can collect everything either! All collectors are a bit crazy too (just look at the faces of “normal” people when talking about your collection, haha) and the world is all the better for it.
Collecting pop-up books in good condition is a challenge. Most of them were meant to be played with and suffer both from the loving but rough treatment of small (or not so small) hands and from the disregard of most adults. This is a trait shared with children’s book collections, and because of this, some books originally printed in relatively great numbers have totally or nearly disappeared from the face of the earth. Additionally, since movable books entail paper mechanisms, some parts suffer from inevitable mechanical wear, multiplied by the relative fragility of their main materials, paper and glue, and the most complex mechanisms will most likely break somewhere every time they are handled. It is possible, to some extend, to mend pop-up books yourself if you are skilled enough and knowledgeable enough about mechanisms; there also are professional bookbinders specialized in movable book mending but it is evidently a very expensive treatment (several hundreds of $/€) reserved for the equally expensive pieces of a collection.
There is no collection identical to another, so there shouldn’t be any advice to give. A collection is a living thing, and yours will change over the years as your taste and interests sharpen and evolve. Still, there are a couple of guidelines any collector should heed (and here I speak also as a former antiquarian bookseller): collect for yourself, not for profit, not for legacy, and choose carefully, e.g. don’t be tempted by cheap copies in bad condition (unless it’s for spare parts for your main copy, haha) — or you’ll most likely regret it at some point or another along the way. And ultimately, a collection is a work of passion and knowledge, to be enjoyed and maybe shared: have fun!
