Which parts of a book, or steps in the manufacturing of books, could be non-vegetarian or non-vegan?
A leather cover would be an obvious example. I also read that animal glue gets used. Anything else? Ink? Paper treatment?
Which parts of a book, or steps in the manufacturing of books, could be non-vegetarian or non-vegan?
A leather cover would be an obvious example. I also read that animal glue gets used. Anything else? Ink? Paper treatment?
Only in rare cases will you find a book that contains any animal components. Things you might encounter would be leather and vellum in bindings, and extremely rare gimmic inks.
Vellum is prepared animal skin, it has been used instead of paper and was until recently used to record British laws.
If you buy an old book, it's possible though highly unlikely that its pages or binding would be made from vellum. Vellum bindings were common on European books up to the end of the eighteenth century. Books with vellum pages would likely be older and rarer still than vellum bound books.
Vellum is still used today, though rarely, for book-binding in expensive books.
Paper vellum, however is not of animal origin, it is a vellum replacement, made from cotton.
Squid ink has been very rarely used instead of more usual mineral ink. Normally black ink is simply made from carbon black, a pigment derived from coal and oil with other chemicals to keep it stable and liquid.
My father was a bookbinder. In the western world and with mass production, nowadays apart from a leather cover on specialty books or maybe a leather bookmark on premium books, there are no animal products used in book making.
About the only thing where it could be used is the glue holding the cover to the pages and modern techniques use a hot-melt glue process...just like your hot glue gun.
Even on small runs, PVA is the preferred glue for bookbinding nowadays.
If you were buying a hand made book from India or somewhere like that it might be a different story.