Book Printing and Binding
2024-11-25 13:48
books
Over the past few years I've gotten into making, printing, and binding my own custom books.
You can easily take a PDF, clean it up with ScanTailor, arrange the pages according to logic such that a 2-per-side or 4-per-side print sheet (which you have to generate manually as a PDF for best results) could easily be cut, stacked, and hole punched to have the book in order.
Materials required:
Printer (ideally with auto-duplex)
PDF of a book, and page arrangement code/logic to get a proper print set (2 or 4 pages per side of a sheet of paper)
Paper Fasteners (ACCO is one brand that does these in the US). This is basically like a giant book staple that bends through two holes then clamps shut.
Tape
Rough example: front of a 16-page print (4 sides = 2 pages) at 4 pages per side, flip pages left-to-right when duplexing:
page 1, front
1 5
9 15
page 1, back
6 2
16 10
page 2, front
3 7
11 13
page 2, back
8 4
14 12
This probably isn't the exact right arrangement (I did this by hand rather than mathing it out), but you want something like that, to where when cut the stack, you get 4 stacks like 12 34, 56 78, 910 1112, 1314 1516, to where you can just put the 1234 on the 5678, put that on top of 9101112, then put that on top of 13141516, and that's the book in order.
Now, you take chunks of this book, such that you can hole punch the entire chunk, and using a 2-hole punch, punch holes in the left side of the stack.
Semifinally, take a paper fastener and run it through the holes, securing the end.
Finally, tape the spine of the book and the paper fastener.
You now have a homemade book.
It isn't as fancy as other binding methods, but it's easy to do.
For fancier binding, you'll want a thick paper to print a cover, plus a special type of wood glue or book glue, and a good clamp (there are ones that are like 2x cutting boards with bolts with wing nuts through all the corners, you just tighten the nuts and the book is clamped until the glue dries).
Dimensions of a pocket-sized book using this method:
2 per page: 8.5" x 5.5"
4 per page: 5.5" x 4.25"
An Even Cheaper Binding Method for Full-Sizes Books
This one is simple. No fancy PDF maker required. Just print duplex long side (1 book page per print page), or landscape with duplex short side at 2 per page (2 book pages per print page).
Use a 3-hole punch on the long edge.
Then stick it all in a 3-ring binder.
This is an easy way to read consumable literature (newspapers, research papers, etc.) in print format.
Advantages of printing your own books
1. You can use special commands which would increase the font size or boldness (like Imagemagick's dilate morphology).
2. You can print inexpensively in color (compared to a publisher doing the book at $50 a pop and min. whatever # of copies).
3. You can use, say, special waterproof vinyl paper (I know there's a 2-sided one for laser printers) for printing special books that you would want to be able to take in rough outdoor conditions and not get destroyed, e.g. bibles, personal documents, maps, medical books, plant/animal identification guides, anything that's going to be roughhoused by the end user...
(double-sided vinyl paper options: Amazon Koala paper 25 sheets for $8 ~= $0.32 per sheet.
Terraslate ~= $0.50/sheet at 5 mil thickness...
At the prices on some of these, you're almost better off printing on single sided vinyl and doing the back pages on a sticker sheet separately!)
(Highh Image: ~$0.25/sheet for double-sided synthetic in bulk... that's about the best price I see on any of these now.)