Chapbook Defined
By Theresa Eiben on the Poets & Writerswebsite:
A chapbook is a small, thin booklet, often handmade, but not always. Chapbooks generally run about 16 or 32 pages. Fold 8 sheets of standard 8 1/2 x 11 paper in half, staple at the crease, and you have a rudimentary chapbook. The origin of the word is either "cheap" book, sold at newsstands during the era of Penny Dreadfuls ... or "chapter" book, because of its scant number of pages. There is now a long history of very fine bookmaking attached to (usually) poetry chapbooks, and some people collect the rarer ones.
