- Joined
- Oct 2, 2023
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- 586
Bookbinding is admittedly a craft I’ve known about but never tried for myself before… But since I’ve been writing more and more fanfic lately, I thought it would be super fun to give it a try and make physical copies of my (completed and long enough) fanfics! So here’s a little thread to show my process with it (and if anyone else here is into this craft, it would be super cool to see your works or cool books you’ve made to share ideas!)
Today on my journey to making physical copies of my fanfics, I learned about typesetting (Formatting the story so it can be printed as a physical book) and it was super fun! I’m not really caring about making it look professional since it’s just a hobby, so I had fun scrolling through different fonts, designing how the chapters and title pages would look, ect.
I started with formatting two different fanfics of mine (One is pretty long, one is pretty short) (fun title pages and table of contents and headers and stuff):
Then I put the pdf files through a program that would align all the pages so they can be sewn into signatures (groups of pages) and sewn into a book! It makes it so it looks like the pages are all out of order but that’s how it’s supposed to be (They’re also sideways due to how I am printing it)
Finally I had the NEVER ENDING NIGHTMARE of trying to print them out
I could have saved myself a headache and gone to a library but I said “let me try to set up one of the printers we have at home!” and it was so difficult what a disaster. First of all I am a technology noob and need my hand held with technical stuff. The first printer refused to print pdf files at all, so I switched to a second printer, where my thumb drive with the files on it could NOT be inserted into the usb port because it was too big for the little slot So I had to set it up so that it would connect to my printer via wifi… Very difficult but after a few hours I GOT IT TO WORK!
Unfortunately the printer works like a snail and takes 1 full minute per piece of paper to print…. The shorter story is done but I’m probably gonna have to let the printer run for a long time to print the second story (It is around 134 pages, meaning it should take almost 70 pieces of paper…) but it’s okay. I can be veryyy patient
In the meanwhile I am going to try and stitch the signatures of the shorter story together and brainstorm cool cover ideas! Wish me luck
Today on my journey to making physical copies of my fanfics, I learned about typesetting (Formatting the story so it can be printed as a physical book) and it was super fun! I’m not really caring about making it look professional since it’s just a hobby, so I had fun scrolling through different fonts, designing how the chapters and title pages would look, ect.
I started with formatting two different fanfics of mine (One is pretty long, one is pretty short) (fun title pages and table of contents and headers and stuff):
Then I put the pdf files through a program that would align all the pages so they can be sewn into signatures (groups of pages) and sewn into a book! It makes it so it looks like the pages are all out of order but that’s how it’s supposed to be (They’re also sideways due to how I am printing it)
Finally I had the NEVER ENDING NIGHTMARE of trying to print them out
I could have saved myself a headache and gone to a library but I said “let me try to set up one of the printers we have at home!” and it was so difficult what a disaster. First of all I am a technology noob and need my hand held with technical stuff. The first printer refused to print pdf files at all, so I switched to a second printer, where my thumb drive with the files on it could NOT be inserted into the usb port because it was too big for the little slot So I had to set it up so that it would connect to my printer via wifi… Very difficult but after a few hours I GOT IT TO WORK!Unfortunately the printer works like a snail and takes 1 full minute per piece of paper to print…. The shorter story is done but I’m probably gonna have to let the printer run for a long time to print the second story (It is around 134 pages, meaning it should take almost 70 pieces of paper…) but it’s okay. I can be veryyy patient
In the meanwhile I am going to try and stitch the signatures of the shorter story together and brainstorm cool cover ideas! Wish me luck
no page layout to worry about!!! best of luck i hope you enjoy the process, i loved it! would love to see, progress pix/ your finished project! i can share mine too once i get started next week!
