About Origin Books
We help you make the right book before you make any books.
Ready to find out if your book is ready?
A clear, honest assessment of your project — with a written verdict and next steps.
#Since 1920, we have been making books. Now we help you make the right ones.
The Short Version
Origin Books is a book production consultancy backed by four generations of manufacturing expertise. We help authors, designers, publishers, and organizations make smarter decisions about how their books get made — before a single sheet hits the press.
We’re not a printer. We’re not a publisher. We’re the people you talk to before you talk to a printer — so that when you do, you’re asking for the right thing.
Where We Come From
Origin Books grew out of Puget Bindery, a commercial bookbinding facility that has operated in the Pacific Northwest for over a century. The bindery was founded in 1920, and for four generations my family has been cutting, folding, sewing, gluing, and trimming books — first by hand, then by machine, and always with an obsessive attention to how a book is built.
That’s more than 100 years of watching book projects succeed and fail. We’ve seen what happens when paper stock is wrong for the page count. When a binding method can’t survive shipping. When a trim size that seemed perfect on screen adds 40% to the production cost. When a beautiful cover design gets butchered by a printer who didn’t understand the specs.
After decades of fixing problems that should have been caught earlier, I realized something: the most valuable thing we offer isn’t binding. It’s judgment. The ability to look at a book project and know — before any money is committed — whether it’s going to work.
That’s what Origin Books is. The judgment comes first. The printing comes after.
The Problem We Solve
Printing a book is the last irreversible step in the publishing process. Once ink hits paper, you can’t unbind a book. You can’t un-choose the wrong paper. You can’t get back the months and thousands of dollars spent printing something that doesn’t represent your work the way it should.
Most authors, organizations, and even experienced designers go into print production without an independent assessment of whether their project is ready. They rely on the printer to tell them — but printers are in the business of printing, not advising. A printer will quote whatever you ask for, even if what you’re asking for is wrong.
We’ve seen the cost of that gap: books that warp because the paper weight couldn’t support the binding. Covers that crack at the spine because nobody checked the grain direction. Print runs of 2,000 copies when 500 would have tested the market. Beautiful photo books printed on stock that muddies the color. Tens of thousands of dollars in preventable mistakes — not because the printer did anything wrong, but because nobody asked the right questions before pressing “print.”
Origin Books exists to ask those questions.
How We Work
Every engagement starts with a diagnostic — a structured assessment of your book project’s readiness for production. We look at your specifications, your budget, your timeline, your goals, and your files. Then we give you a verdict: go, hold, or don’t print yet.
If your project is ready, we’ll tell you exactly how to proceed — what to specify, which production methods fit your goals, and what to watch for. If it’s not ready, we’ll tell you that too, and we’ll tell you what needs to change. We’d rather lose the job than watch you waste the money.
For clients who want us to manage the production process, we handle everything from final specifications to printer selection, proofing, quality control, and delivery. Our vetted network of commercial printers and specialty binderies means your project gets placed with the right manufacturer for the job — not just the cheapest or the most convenient.
The Facility
Puget Bindery operates a 30,000-square-foot production facility in the Pacific Northwest, equipped for commercial binding, specialty finishing, and short-run production. It’s not a showroom — it’s a working shop with guillotine cutters, perfect binders, saddle stitchers, case-making equipment, and the accumulated knowledge of a century of bookmaking.
This facility is where our expertise lives. When we assess your project, we’re not working from theory — we’re drawing on hands-on experience with every binding method, paper type, and production process in the industry. It’s why our diagnostic catches things that other consultants miss: we’ve physically made the mistakes we’re helping you avoid.
[ Photo: Professional shot in the bindery — founder with equipment, facility interior, or detail of binding work ]
Who We Work With
Authors who are publishing a book that matters to their career, their business, or their legacy — and who want to get the production right on the first try.
Book designers who want a production partner they can trust to manufacture what they’ve designed — without surprises, compromises, or client callbacks.
Organizations — nonprofits, universities, foundations, and cultural institutions — producing commemorative, archival, or mission-critical volumes where quality is non-negotiable.
Independent publishers who need offset-quality production for short and medium runs without managing printer relationships themselves.
Why “Origin”
Every book has an origin — the moment it goes from idea to object. That moment is the most consequential decision in the entire publishing process, and it’s the one that gets the least professional attention. We named this company to put that moment at the center, because if you get the origin right, everything downstream follows.
A hundred years of bookmaking taught us that the best way to build a great book is to make the right decisions before production begins. That’s not a slogan — it’s a hundred years of evidence.
Ready to find out if your book is ready to print?
Take the free Readiness Check to get an instant assessment of your project — or explore the Book Diagnostic for a comprehensive expert review of your book’s production plan.
[Take the Readiness Check] · [Learn About the Diagnostic]