An octavo is a book or pamphlet of eight sheets folded into eighths to create eight leaves, typically produced via collation printing. Additionally, its name may refer to its size or specific printing process.
Octavo (8vo) books can often be found among mass market paperbacks or affordable titles, often seen as mass-market paperbacks or affordable titles. Their name refers to their size, typically 8 inches wide by 10 inches tall. Thanks to their portability while remaining cost-effective to print, Octavo books provide readers with affordable reading material!
Octavo (8vo) books are typically hardcover books with dimensions ranging between 7 and 10 inches tall and four to six text columns per page, making them smaller than quarto and duodecimo books but larger than folio. Popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, some Bibles and dictionaries still utilize this format today.
The term octavo comes from the Latin octavus, meaning “eighth,” and can also be abbreviated 8vo as book size designation. 8vo refers to books with eight leaves (16 pages) when applied as a book size designation. This size may also be known as an octavo crown or simply crown octavo.
Octavo books tend to be smaller and less costly to produce than their folio counterparts, which consist of multiple large sheets of paper folded once into 16 pages for a book with 16 leaves (32 pages). Furthermore, these smaller volumes make Octavo books more portable when traveling than their larger counterparts.