One of the more unusual bindings that book collectors are likely to encounter in the course of their bookish peregrinations is the dos à dos (back-to-back) binding, which Etherington & Roberts helpfully defines as
[a] form of bookbinding in which two books, usually small and frequently of a complementary nature, e.g., a Psalter and New Testament, are bound back to back so that they open in opposite directions, one of the three boards being the common lower board of both volumes. The spines and fore edges are opposed. Their upper boards are usually either embroidered or covered with gold-tooled leather. However the dos à dos binding is picked up, it opens at the beginning of one of the two books.
The image below (from Garlic Harvest Studio) depicts this style quite well:
Were the above a printed book instead of a blank book, one would see that the printing of both texts is oriented in the same direction.
This is somewhat similar to a binding style known as tête-bêche (heel-to-toe): the difference between the two is that the printed texts in a tête-bêche binding are inverted 180° relative to each other (i.e., when one views one of the texts right-side-up, the other text is facing down). Also, in a tête-bêche binding there is, as Michael Smith notes, no back cover, but instead...two front covers and a single spine with two titles. This allows each story to have a separate cover, with appropriate artwork. The image below (via Librairie Hervé Sciardet) demonstrates the style:
While the dos à dos binding dates back to the 16th century, it most often is encountered on devotional works of the 17th century (as depicted in this lot from a recent Christie's auction):
Of the two binding styles, the tête-bêche binding is by far the style most commonly encountered on modern books. This is thanks largely to its prominent use in paperback publishing, where it has been frequently employed by publishers like Ace Doubles, Gryphon Doubles, Subterranean Press and the like. These publishers also have often used a follow-the-leader style for their "doubles," which produces a book with a single cover and separate back cover. Often there [is] only a single page between the end of the first story and the beginning of the next where advertising [is] placed. In later editions, this page...often [is] not present and the next story start[s] on the page following the end of the first tale.
For folks building a private library, such books offer an interesting way to conserve valuable shelf space....
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