How to make your own book- Part 1

Welcome to part 1 of an undetermined number of posts that will be dedicated to the art of book binding.  Now I should first note that I am not even remotely an expert in bookbinding.  My method is a mixture of things I have learnt from books, online and techniques I've made up as I've gone along.  I'm sure that there's going to be things that 'proper' book binders don't do or do better than I.  But my method does have the advantage of needing few, if any, specialised equipment since when I first learnt to make books I had no money to buy things and no obvious go-to place to get them from anyway.

But enough of my waffling I hear you say!  Let's get to work!  This first post is dedicated to, perhaps the most important part- the book content.  If you want to make a blank notebook, you may wish to skip this post.  If you are interested in printing your own books, then read on.

This post is inspired by my love of Discworld stamps and my need to have a safe place to store them and information about them.  I collected Discworld stamps for about five years.  While I no longer collect (I hit a patch where I could no longer afford them and didn't have time to study what I had- vital if you are into collecting 'everything'), I still love my current collection and want to give them a home that will let me easily gloat over my pretties as I wish.  I was inspired by Stamp Yearbooks- in Australia (and I believe other countries), each year the Post Office creates yearbooks.  These contain every stamp released throughout that year in a book that also includes articles, history, pictures and information about the stamps. Since there was no such thing in existence for Discworld stamps, I made one (this sentence summarises 1-2 years work per book so far).

But you may not care about stamps.  No problem, everyone has their flaws.  Perhaps you want to publish your own book.  Perhaps you have a favourite you've found on Project Gutenberg that you want to make into a very special edition for a gift.  No worries!  Here's a quick and relatively easy way to make your own book. 

I'm going to assume you have a relatively recent copy of Microsoft Word at this point.  I could do this on my old (XP I think?) version so it doesn't have to be the latest and greatest, but it does have to be Word.  While I am sure there must be other programs out there that can do the same thing I don't know them well enough to write about them- sorry.  I'm also going to be basing this on Australian/UK paper sizing (A4 is 210 mm by 297 mm).  Most of this information will be the same for US folk, just some of your paper dimensions will be a little different.

First set up a new document.  I'm going to base all this on the production of a A5 sized book, which means printing on A4 pieces of paper that will be folded in half.  This is primarily due to practicality.  While my printer happily prints A4, it does not print larger sizes.  In addition, A4 paper is extremely common which is good for me.  I have a wide range of choice- from colours to archival concerns such as acid and lignin free papers.  But if you have a posh printer that handles larger sizes such as A3, great!  More options for you!.  Go to ‘Page Setup’.  On Word 2010 you can do this by clicking the little downward pointing arrow circled in red below.  This should open a new window.  Click on the tab labelled ‘Margins’.  Under the subheading ‘Pages’ (green arrow below) click on the dropdown box to select ‘Book fold’.  A new dropdown box will appear below it.  This asks you for the number of pages- I use sixteen, for reasons I’ll get into below.  Click OK when you are done.

What all this does, is tell Word to print your document so that when the pages are folded in half, every four pieces of paper will make a booklet (each piece of paper has four pages- two each side, so 16= four sheets of paper with four pages each), or a section of the book.  If you like you can increase or decrease this number but personally, I find sixteen is the best.  Every time you fold a piece of paper and insert it into another, the edges opposite the fold for the inside pages will stick further and further out due to the thickness of the paper.  While this is not terribly noticeable for four pieces of paper, eight or more will definitely be noticeable.  This means you will need to either trim the final product (very tricky if you don’t have the right tools) or will have uneven pages on that edge.

If you only had four selected under ‘number of pages’ then each piece of paper will be a single section.  At this point there is no point sewing pages together (you would be at it forever with a large book) but if you did this by mistake (like I did with my first copy- thank you Word and your constant setting changes!) then don’t panic, I’ll include a tutorial showing how a method to bind pages together this way.  After all, I may as well use the pages I printed wrong *sigh*

Once this is done, you are ready to go.  You should have noticed that your page size shrank when you hit OK- this is because half an A4 page is A5, so your working page is therefore smaller.  You may choose to play with margins and all the other things Word lets you do.  If your printer does automatic duplex you may need to check if there are limitations on margin size (the printer may need a certain amount of paper blank to have a bit to grip to feed back into it for the other side).  Otherwise, write your masterpiece, compile your information, paste your text or otherwise assemble your book.

Some tips:
* Grab a handy hardcover book to get a feel for pages.  Even pages will always be on the left, odd on the right
* Leave two pages blank at the start so you have a single blank page in your finished book before the title page gives the book a more ‘authentic’ feel.
* Page numbers are useful- don’t forget to add some.  If you don’t want the first few pages (blank page, title page etc) numbered, a section break allows you to start numbering from further in the book.  Just make sure that the first numbered page is an odd page.
* Proof read everything!  And then show the file to someone else to proof read some more.  There will be mistakes.  There are always mistakes *sigh*

When you are sure you are done then you can print.  For me, this step is fraught with as much trauma as the rest of the process put together.  Let’s just say, me and double sided printing can be a bad mix at the best of times and it’s even worse when you add booklet mode to the mix.  This is also why I will be offering the option of binding books with single page sections… I also prefer manual duplexing (printing on both sides of the paper) which gives me more flexibility with my page margins on my printer, in return for greater headaches when working out which way to turn the 50+ pages I just printed to have them the right way around for the other sides printing.  Any advice I have to offer is probably just going to be confusing so at this point, just do the best you can.

Assuming you have things under control you will end up with a pile of paper.  The first four sheets will have page 1-16, the next four sheets 17-32 and so on.  Hopefully the diagram below explains this better.  You will want to fold the pages in half (accuracy matters- keep things as neat as possible), and put the sections together so that your pages will appear in the right order.  If they are not, check you have printed them correctly, folded them the right way and that Word has not changed a setting when your back was turned to be annoying.

Page numbering for a four page section (signature) of a book.

Stay tuned for the next exciting installment in bookbinding- how to put your pages together.