No Media Kings » Do-It-Yourself Book Press

Do-It-Yourself Book Press March 14, 2006

By Hamish MacDonald

UPDATE:Hamish has started a DIY Book podcast!

Back in 2000, I wrote an article for this website about how to produce your own book. Things have changed considerably since then, both in the technology available to individuals and in the services available in the marketplace. It’s all good news for us independent publishers.

The original article was called “DIY Book Production.” Aside from being a clunky term, you now have more power than that: You can be your own press. I now produce my own books at home from start to finish, and in this article will explain what I’ve had to learn and acquire in order to do that.

Generally, self-publishing involves an inverse relationship of work to money: The more work you’re willing to do, the more money you can save; the more you want to just skip to an end product, the more it’ll cost you.

Self-pub: Four times more options than in 2000.
When I self-published my first novel, doubleZero, in 1999, I wanted to create a book to sell in stores. A big folded-over photocopy sandwich didn’t appeal to me, but I really didn’t know how else one could make a book, so I laid out the pages and the cover, then paid Coach House Press to do the production work.

There may have been other ways to do it, but having written a book about Y2K, I didn’t have the time to find out. Now, though, there are four main options available:

Offset printing
Print-on-Demand
Hand-bound hardcovers
Perfect binding

Here’s a summary of each (with special emphasis on the ones I like!):

Offset printing.

Offset printing is a high-volume printing method that uses large machinery to transfer text and images from metal plates to rubber pads then finally to paper. Coach House Press is a sterling example of a traditional press who care about their work. Their price was also the best I found — cheaper by $1,500 at the time than any print bureau.

Cynthia pipes in: I second that recommendation wholeheartedly. The moment I walked into Coach House to discuss the printing of Some Words Spoken, my nervousness dissolved. They are crafty elves who understand the feeling and flavour of books.

One of the largest parts of the printing cost is the set up of the colour press. Once it’s up and running, leaving it to print 1,000 covers instead of 500 is not that much of a difference. We printed extra covers and stashed them, so when our books sell out (!) and we need another 500, the covers are ready to go. We’ll only have to pay for the black and white guts of the book, and the binding.

The colour of the cover might shift when it goes to press. Your pretty proof from the designer might not match the final product. Make sure you get a proof from the printer and make any colour adjustments at that point. Once they’ve burned printing plates, it’s too late for you to be fussy.

Pro:	You get a lot of books. A large run of books is not much more expensive than a short run.
Con:	You get a lot of books. Expensive. In 1999, I paid $3,000 for a run of 500 books. Because of the mechanical set-up costs, a short run of books is practically as expensive as a long run. You probably don’t want thousands of books. Even 500 is an awful lot to move. It’s a one-shot deal.

What you need:

	A completed manuscript on disk, formatted the way you want it to appear in the book (or “typeset”).
	A finished cover design on disk.
	Cash.

Print-on-Demand.

Newer digital printers don’t need to be mechanically adjusted to switch between jobs, so PoD publishers can print copies of work as needed.

I’m fussy about how my work looks, and the one PoD service I looked into seriously (the reputable CafePress) involves turning your pages into funny-sized PDF files and uploading them to the invisible maw of a webpage. I’m generally comfortable with Internet anything — online banking, making purchases, auctions — but I’m used to revising and reviewing and revising and reviewing until I like what I’ve created; I didn’t feel confident about what I might get from this method and took it no further. So my discussion of Print-on-Demand ends here.

Pro:

Less expensive than traditional printing.
No stockpile of unsold books.

Con:

Bookstores won’t carry them. Each has to be ordered at a retail price, which stores won’t pay. Stores also can’t return them if they don’t sell, which is the practice they’re accustomed to.
The price per book to you, the author/publisher, is often close to the retail price.
The cover templates they offer are often yeechy.
Some PoD shops promise and charge for marketing and promotion they have no intention of delivering (listing you in a vast catalogue, for instance, does not count as promotion). The way these businesses pitch themselves plays on the emotions of frustrated yet ambitious authors. For a more thorough discussion about PoD, read Jeff Yamaguchi’s “Print Non-Demand“.

What you need:

	A completed, typeset manuscript on file to upload. You may need to have it in PDF format, which I’ll talk about in the “Software” section below.
	A finished cover design (unless you choose one of the publisher’s designs, which is usually cheaper).
	Cash.

Ultimately I’m happy I didn’t go this route, because instead of tying my work into a company’s PoD service I learned the following two methods, which have been a fun breakthrough in my career.

Hand-bound hardcovers.

It’s easier than you might think to create a hardcover book of your work. There are endless fun ways to adapt the handmade book process, too: For Christmas 2005 I made all my own presents — journals, photo albums, even a pop-up stage with a wee cartoon actress for a friend of mine who’s in the theatre. These were a real hit. (Don’t ask me what I’m doing next year to top it!)

Pro:	Complete autonomy: You can do it all yourself and retain complete control. Easy start-up. Can be done with common materials. Produces a result that’s personally satisfying and has a quality feel to it (a hardcover book!). Easily adaptable to a wide variety of creative projects. Hand-made work occupies a premium space in people’s minds if it’s done well.
Con:	A time-consuming process. Stitching can be tricky at first. Longer books involve some unwieldy sewing. Difficult to put your title and name on the cover (block printing, silkscreen, and Japanese Gocco printmaking kits are some options, but I haven’t tried them).

There are good explanations of the process here:
DIY Planner - Bookbinding
Toby Craig’s book assembling photojournal

To be honest, though, it took me a while to get the hang of “saddle-stitching” pages together. I found it hard to follow even the best of diagrams. I finally got it when I read Peter and Donna Thomas’s excellent Making Books by Hand.

Now that I have the hang of it, it’s actually fun, almost therapeutic, to sit and stitch a book together. Producing a novel this way, though, is not so much fun. Where my wee book of short stories or a journal contains ten or twelve “signatures” — sewn-together groups of pages — my third novel makes up twenty-six signatures. That’s a very, very long thread, and a lot of bits of folded-up paper to keep organized while sewing them together.

Here’s how to do it yourself:

For these next two sections, I’m going to divide the materials section into two options: “Minimum” and “Press”. The minimum requirements will allow you to get started and learn without much initial investment, if any (depending on how much craftsy material you’ve got lying around the house). The “Press” materials are in case you decide, as I did, that you wanted to produce store-quality books at home, without having to go out and pay for commercial print shop services anymore.

What you need:

Minimum		Press
	A completed, typeset manuscript printed out.
	A finished cover design.
	A sharp blade and ruler.		A rotary-blade guillotine. Your pages will be much more even using one of these.
	Hard paper board for the covers. I was using matting board like you’d get from a framing shop until I found large grey boards in an art shop that cost a fraction of the price. Bookbinding board is available, but the board will never be seen, so it doesn’t need to be fancy. I’ve tried corrugated cardboard, but it’s too puffy; it doesn’t feel like a proper hardcover.
	An awl for punching small holes in your pages. Or you can also sink a needle into a piece of dowelling.		I use a model-maker’s drill, which is like a watch screwdriver with a 1mm drill bit, and drill through all the pages before folding them. You can also get eggbeater-like hand-drills that will accept a small bit, but I found this harder to control and snapped several bits.
	Heavy thread. You can run it across beeswax to make it easier to work with and less likely to tangle.
	Paper. Regular copy paper will do, or you can use an ivory stock for an antiquey look.
	Heavy paper or paper-backed cloth for wrapping around your cover. Ordinary cloth can work but lets the glue leak through, which looks spermy.
	PVA Glue. I thought this must be something special when I bought it from a paperie, then discovered is the same old stuff that we peeled off our hands as kids.
			A bone folder. This helps you make sharp creases in your pages. More and more art supply shops have bookbinding materials like these.

How I do it:

	Print out the book. (More on this in the “Software” section below.)

	Cut the pages in half (I prefer to make smallish books).

	Fold the top sheet in half to see where the spine is, secure all the sheets together with bulldog clips, then drill four holes along the spine of the pages. If it’s a really thick stack, I break it into smaller chunks, because the drill can go off at an angle or not get all the way through. You can also just use an awl to punch holes through your pages. Make one mock-up page as your hole guide and use it on smaller groups of pages.

	Fold the pages with your finger, or bone folder.

	Group the folded pages into stacks of pages, no more than five or six pages per stack.
	If you look at any hardcover book in your house closely, you’ll probably find that it’s made up of folded-over groups of pages like this. These are “signatures”. If all the pages were just stacked and folded over, they’d bulge out in a U-shape on the right-hand side. Using smaller groups of pages, or signatures, prevents this.

	Sew the first signature: in the first hole, out the second hole, in the third hole, out the fourth hole. This makes Signature One.

	Sew the second signature so it’s joined to the first: into the first hole of Signature Two, out the second hole of Signature Two, back into the second hole of Signature One, out the third hole of Signature One, back into the third hole of Signature Two, out the fourth hole of Signature Two… …And so on. (This is the bit that takes practice and is difficult to describe. Others do a better job; see the resources above.)

	Once all the signatures are stitched, tie the two ends of the thread together, clamp the pages between two hard pieces of board with the spine sticking out, and glue the spine fairly heavily with glue. Leave this clamped together and put it aside to dry.

	Cut two pieces of board, each the same size as one of your folded pages, and cut a third board just smaller than the spine-width of your sewn-together signatures (which now make up a “book block”). Cut a piece of cover cloth or paper a little bit larger than the size of these boards, allowing some gutter-room between the boards since your cover will need to hinge open and closed easily.

	Cut a small bit off the four corners diagonally so they won’t bunch up when folded, brush glue on the inside edge, and tuck them in, pressing down so they stay flat.

	Cut two pieces of decorative paper the same size as your book’s pages and fold them with their fancy side facing inward. When your book block has dried, put a small amount of glue on either end and glue these “end papers” to the block.

	Smear glue on the inside of your cover and stick the outsides of your end papers to the cover. Close the book and clamp it between boards or put it under something heavy, and leave it to dry overnight. When it’s dry, open your book, separate the edges of any pages that are stuck together, and sign it!

Here’s how my books look in hardcover:

Perfect binding.
This is ultimately the same technique that any press uses to make a paperback book. It didn’t occur to me until recently that I could do this, too.

Pro:	You can, with some practice, produce a result that’s just like what people are used to seeing in stores. You are completely autonomous. It’s fast. The materials used in each individual book are inexpensive (card stock, regular paper). It’s not a one-off: Money you spend setting this up gives you the ability to do this over and over, as opposed to paying for the run of just one book.
Con:	Set-up can be expensive (if you go the route I have; it doesn’t have to be).

After years of trying to go the traditional publishing route, I wanted to jump back into the indie game and recapture the fun and proud spirit of producing my own work. Making 400-page novels using the hardcover method is so time-consuming, though, that I couldn’t reasonably charge a cover-price equal to the time spent making each one. And I want to make it easy for someone who might be curious to buy my books.

My mum stumbled across a site called Gigabooks.net, started as a project by a man named Chet Novicki, who found himself giving self-publishing advice to so many friends that he decided to make equipment and handbooks to help others self-publish. I’m wary of anything online that targets aspiring authors, but this guy is giving good information and selling quality gear. I bought a hand-binding press from him, which wasn’t cheap, especially when you add duty to it, but it’s been just the greatest boost to my self-publishing efforts.

Of course, you could make one of these yourself — or in theory, one could. I can’t, though; I haven’t got the tools or materials to do it.

Copyshop versus ownership.

From Jim: An option I used with Infinity Points, a hundred page novella I published in ‘95, was to use a copy shop. They photocopied the guts of it and I supplied thick stock, full colour covers that I got an outputting service to do from an Illustrator file.

The copy shop perfect bound and trimmed the books which ended up being 5.5×8.5 in size. 500 of them cost about $1500. However, I really had to hunt for a copy shop that would do it this cheap, I basically called every one in the yellow pages and left a message telling them the best quote I’d got and asking them to call back if they could beat it.

As happy as I was with the final product, I wouldn’t do such a high-end novella again: you can’t really price 100 page books at much more than $10, and if it’s selling in the store that means that $4 goes to the bookstore, $2 goes to the distributor, $3 goes to the copy shop and the remaining $1 is probably swallowed up by incidental costs — the copies you gave away, etc. In the best case scenario that your print run sells out you’ll barely break even.

As I mentioned before, I paid $3,000 in 1999 to have my first book printed by an offset press. I’m sure it costs more now. I’ve blown a fair amount of money in the past few months setting up a press at home, filling up my bedroom with all manner of strange equipment. But even after having bought all the “Press”-level of gear and having the capacity to do this all myself for any book I want to print, I’ve still spent about a grand less than what the print run of a single book cost (and that book is now topically out-of-date).

What you need:

Minimum		Press
	A finished cover design.		A colour laser printer to print your own covers. They’re a lot cheaper than they used to be. (Mine’s a Xerox Phaser 6100; )
	Cover paper (card stock).		Spray varnish to keep the toner from flaking off laser-printed covers.
	Printed-out inside pages.		Paper-folding machine. Instead of the hour it can take to fold the pages of a full-length novel, this machine cuts the job down to minutes. (Mine’s a Martin-Yale 7200.)
	A sharp blade and ruler.		A heavy-duty guillotine paper cutter. These can cut through hundreds of sheets of paper at once, and can make the sides of your book perfectly even and smooth.
	Contact cement.
	Some sort of clamp or frame to squeeze your folded pages between.		A handbinding press. This holds your pages together, along with the cover, so you can clamp them together tightly then glue them. (From Gigabooks.net.)

How I do it:

	Print out the book.

	Cut the pages in half.

	Fold the pages.

	Stack the pages.

	Put the pages into the press along with a printed cover. Put contact cement along the spine, making sure to cover all the page-edges, then fold the cover over the spine. Let dry.

	Fold the trailing edge of the cover paper in, or trim it off.

	You’ve got a book!

Perfect-bound copies of my books:

Joe Ollman adds: Here’s how I perfect-bind my books by hand. The cover stock must be thick enough to hold a crease. Make a creasing board with a piece of wood, xacto knife and ruler. Cut a groove a millimetre deep and wide where the creases of your cover need to be, then use a butterknife to score them. Once they’re scored they’ll fold easily and without cracking. Apply a bead of glue to the inside of the spine, insert your pages and rub it down so the contact point is made. Then stack them spine down on a bookshelf, putting pressure on the sides and the top, for an hour or so. You can leave it untrimmed (decal style) or you can go to a print shop and use their trimmer to give it a smooth edge.

For detailed instructions for perfect binding, you can also visit Chet Novicki’s site at Gigabooks.net. He’s very generous when it comes to answering questions about the process.

Software for designing and printing the pages of your book.
In my first version of this article, I said that you had to have access to the (very expensive) program QuarkXPress to do the typesetting of your book’s inside pages. I was wrong. I was working as a graphic designer at the time, so that’s what I was accustomed to using. Now, though, I’m a copywriter, and I have seen the scope of today’s word processing programs. You can do just as much to lay out your text, and more easily, in programs like:

Microsoft Word ($399, Windows, Mac)
Softmaker’s TextMaker ($49.95, Windows, Linux, Pocket PC)
OpenOffice.org ($0 — free, open-source software, Windows, Linux, Mac)

Justification and footers.
Most books have their text “justified”, meaning that it’s balanced from left to right so that both margins are square. I tried to do that in Word recently and learned that the program is very bad at it. If there are only two words on a line, you end up with something that looks…

like…

…this.

Badness! So if you’re using Word, use the left justified option (straight along the left side and “ragged right”). I believe that TextMaker handles this much better.

Also, make sure to put page numbers at the bottom of your pages. This will help immensely when you’re printing and arranging them. It was really fiddly work to set it up, but I think it was worth the trouble to create separate “sections” in my books so I could just have page numbering on the story pages and not on the title page or the “About the Author” page. (In Word this is found in “Insert/Break/Section break types/Next page”, then mucking about the options in “View/Header and footer” until you get the proper pages to number themselves.)

An imposing program.
One of the big stumbling-blocks for the self-publisher until recently was a task called imposition. If you take a look at the sheets of paper that make up a book, you’ll see that what’s printed on them is actually jumbled up so that when the sheets are folded together they make one continuous book. Back when I did doubleZero, the QuarkXPress extensions to do this cost a thousand dollars or more.

Since then, a company called Blue Squirrel has developed a program called ClickBook ($49.95), which will intercept any job you can send to the printer and rearrange it into books, booklets, posters, and all sorts of other formats. I can’t say enough good things about this program, because it makes something possible from home that just wasn’t before, and it makes it straightforward. (The math of working out imposition makes my head spin.)

ClickBook can now also save your whole job as a PDF file. Normally you have to be very careful about bringing all the fonts and images you’ve used along with your file if you’re going to use a print service. Nothing’s worse than seeing your favourite typeface disappear and be replaced by a system font! (Okay, perhaps trade injustice is a bit worse.)

If you’re concerned about this but won’t be using ClickBook, you can use the freeware program PrimoPDF on Windows to ‘print’ to portable files that will look exactly the same on any computer, and on the Mac (OS X) you can choose to “Save as PDF” from the Print dialogue box.

About duplexing.
ClickBook works by dividing up the pages into smaller pages and laying several of those out on a single piece of paper. You’ll also need to run the pages through the printer again to print the back of them; this is called duplexing. My first laser printer wasn’t designed for duplexing, so it smudged the sheets the second time they went through, and it often mangled a page, which is really frustrating and wasteful when it’s just one of sixty sheets of paper you’ve already printed one side of. So look for a printer that has duplexing as a feature.

Creating your cover.
When someone picks up your book, yup, it’s Judgement Day. Err on the side of simplicity when designing your cover. Not too many fonts, no garish colours unless you’re really confident that you’re making a deliberate choice others will also appreciate, and make absolutely sure that the images you’ve created or adapted for your cover are not only ones you have the right to use, but are also at a high enough resolution for print. What works on a web page will look like some blocky thing from Super Mario World if you send it through a proper printer. Your images should be more than 200 dots per inch (dpi). And, sorry, you can’t just up the numbers in Photoshop; they have to start at a high resolution.

Think about teaming up with a designer whose work you like. See if there’s anything you can do for them, and set up a clear agreement with them: How many revisions are they willing to make? Get samples of books you like or images that convey what you’re after. The more you give your designer, the more in-tune their work will be with your feeling of the book.

Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia FreeHand, and Adobe Photoshop are the leading graphics packages. They cost lots. There’s an open-source alternative called Gimp, which I really want to support and use, but like so much opensourceware it seems painfully complicated. Or else I’m just stuck in thinking modes patterned by the commercial products. There’s also a new program called Paint.NET, produced jointly by students at Washington State University and Microsoft.

ISBN and UPC: Making your book easier to sell.
The International Standard Book Number is a unique identifier assigned to books. Getting your own ISBN helps bookstores keep track of your book. It also feels damned cool when you get it, ’cause it means you’ve produced an officially real book!

When I made doubleZero, I was still living in Canada, and got wonderful help from the National Library of Canada. It was years ago, but if it’s a typical government department, the same staff might still be there until the end of time. In this case, you’d be lucky, ’cause they were great to deal with. They can set you up with your own run of ISBN numbers and provide you with the Cataloguing-in-Publication data to put on the inside cover. In exchange, they’ll request two copies of your book for the National Library of Canada archives, which is actually kinda cool to imagine (though it did make me think of that scene in the giant warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark).
You can reach them here.

I live in Scotland now, so it didn’t seem right to use the library’s services this time. I was also working on my cover layouts on the weekend and wanted to get my ISBNs instantly, so I went searching and found this site, where I bought mine. ($55 for one, $47 each for two, $44 for three, and so on.)

Once you have your ISBN, you can get a barcode to include on the back cover of your book. Lorie La Fata wrote in response to my original article with a helpful link to a website that will generate a barcode (or UPC symbol) for you. You can reach it here. (Many publishing services would charge you for the production of this graphic.)

A word on copyright.
Some people are so concerned about protecting their unique story ideas (even though there may only be six stories) that they liberally sprinkle the “©” symbol throughout their documents. In publishing, this is generally considered the mark of an amateur, because it insults the professionalism or ethics of whomever you’ve decided to share your work with. One copyright mark at the beginning of the book is sufficient.

How do you register your copyright? You don’t need to. The moment you create an original work, you hold the copyright to it. If you really feel paranoid, you can mail a copy to yourself or someone else and keep it sealed. The post-mark will officially place your work at a point in time.

In lieu of copyright, you might consider protecting your work with a Creative Commons license. It promotes a fairer, more modern approach to intellectual and creative property by allowing people to use and share your work according to your wishes, not the dictates of a publishing, recording, or movie corporation. When you go to the Creative Commons website, you can choose from a menu of allowable uses for your work, which will then be rolled into a license that you can include inside your book.

Freedom is yours.
More and more people are becoming frustrated with the traditional publishing industry. Getting out of that corporatised voodoo and back into self-publishing has made me excited about being an author again, given me the engaging and rewarding craft of bookbinding to play with, and opened the floodgates of my imagination: I’m not concerning myself with being “publishable” anymore, I’m getting on with being the author I am.

Now when people ask me “Are you published?” I don’t get huffy and whinge about “the state of the publishing industry.” I smile and say “Actually, I publish my own work. By hand.”

You can, too.

Hamish MacDonald is a novelist and copywriter who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is the author of doubleZero, The Willies, and Idea in Stone. You can read his stories, download free e-books of his novels, and follow his blog at hamishmacdonald.com.

Last 5 posts in Do-It-Yourself

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A Self-Publishing Comics Primer - March 11th, 2009
10 Ways to Get Your Writing Out There - October 3rd, 2008
Selling Your Wares: 16 Tabling Tips - April 28th, 2008
How To Get a Book Deal Without an Agent - January 21st, 2008

240 Responses to “Do-It-Yourself Book Press”

Douglas Johnston Says: March 15th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Very impressive, and a great all-round introduction!

dj
Neil Says: March 20th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Great article! Check out http://www.guerrilla-press.com for some more DIY bookbinding info.
Hamish MacDonald Says: May 1st, 2006 at 8:48 pm
A post script: I quickly stopped using spray varnish when I discovered that it turned my covers grey and seemed to actually dissolve the toner, making it all speckly.

Instead, I now use the porous side of glossy card stock, since I find it’s got a finer grain than regular card stock, making for a nicer print job.

I also found that trimming my perfect-bound books in the blade-arm guillotine crushed the spines, and on a few occasions led to me ruining a book that was *so* close to being finished.

Now I wrap my perfect-bound books in plain, slightly heavier paper, then put a printed ‘flyleaf’ cover around that, gluing it at the spine. Handmade work will never be perfect — maybe shouldn’t be, or what’s the point — but this process now gets rid of the biggest visual “gotchas” that used to bother me.
stool Says: May 4th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Oh my, its very consistent article. Pictures could be bigger. Thanks!
eric ellis Says: May 8th, 2006 at 9:40 pm
I actually came to this site to find ways on creating my own cd jacket and cover, autonomy of this process
in the music business even with independents is nearly impossible. I’ve yet to find any information on a alternative so I thought I’d search for DIY book publishing. The process for stiching your own book could easily be adopted by the true and faithful song writer to make a cd jacket. The problems are basically the same, “how can I make my own handmade jacket cover that looks respectable?” I’ve seen some attempts at this it’s usually the same product basic paper from a photocopy folded into a sleeve. Mind you I’m no marketing executive but the “final Judgement,” results in condemnation where your art is thrown into the consumer hell fire which is usually reserved for the refuse that ends up at the dollar store. I’ll have to make some adjustments to apply the process but this article has given my soul and art a new way to live and be expressed, thank you very much as god as my witness I cant begin to tell you how much I love this website, it has such a good spirit behind it one that gave me the ability to breath. thank you once again and god bless you
Katey Says: May 18th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
This guide is amazing! You just answered all of my questions! Thank you so much.
tonyk Says: June 26th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
As most home laser printers won’t take a thick cover card (usually a minimum of 250gm is needed), it’s usually an inkjet printer that is used for the job. Trouble is, unlike laser print, the ink will run if any moisture (even from sweaty hands) gets anywhere near it. Has anyone tried laminating their covers (either cold or hot lamination). There are some pretty inexpensive laminating machines out there, and it could solve the problem.
Tom Harris Says: June 28th, 2006 at 8:43 am
Nice site, good instructions to get you going. Leaves out all the details of rounding & backing (forming a curved spine that used to be required with old glues if the book would stay together) that are not essential now with modern glue (I use woodworker’s PVA).

Certainly there’s no exccuse for not making a book.

One gripe: the details of sewing the signatures could be plainer, I use a different method and I’d like to se if yours is better/easier.
Tom Harris Says: June 28th, 2006 at 8:55 am
Actually I Googled for kettle stitch and found the following eminently clear explanation.

http://michaelshannon.us/makeabook/index2.html
Hamish MacDonald Says: June 28th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
Sorry for not drawing a better illustration of the stitching process. Others have described it already better than I could have here, so I’m happy that someone’s added another link to instructions in addition to the ones I provided in the article.

As for card stock, my laser printer is admittedly a big beast of a thing, but it’s pretty good with handling card stock. I wouldn’t use a bubblejet specifically because using water-soluble ink just seems like asking for trouble.

I looked into lamination, but I had several problems with what I saw:
- The big, blank overlapped edge needed around a page to seal it closed.
- The rigidity (folding it nicely would be a challenge).
- The feel: laminated stuff seems ‘officey’ to me.

All this said, it would be nice to be able to produce a cover at home that felt a tad more polished and was more durable. But people seem to like my books as they are already, and are impressed that I made them. There’s a level of polish beyond which I think they might lose their personal, handmade quality.
Marcelo Says: June 29th, 2006 at 8:30 pm
Hi, nice article… cleared a lot of things to me. Just one question: What printer do you use to print the inside pages? (That Phaser 6100 which you mentioned?)
Hamish MacDonald Says: July 2nd, 2006 at 11:36 am
Yes, I use the Xerox for the inside pages. The beauty is that it has duplexing (it prints one side of the page, pulls it back in, then prints the other).

With my previous printer, I had to print one side, flip the pages over, then run them through the printer. This frequently resulted in one page getting jammed and crushed halfway through the job. AARGH!

I think the Xerox is a model from a few years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something newer, better, and maybe even cheaper available.

I’m about to move house, and I’m really not looking forward to shifting that thing. It’s like having a Lada parked in my bedroom.
Douw in Pretoria RSA Says: July 5th, 2006 at 8:29 am
1. Excellent starter for dummies
2. What is wrong with aiming for perfection?!
3. Is leather covers put of bounds for amateurs like me?
4. Where do I start looking for instructions to restore some of the old, well-worn books I collected through the years and still like to refer to often with fear of them falling apart in my hands.
Excellent site
Thanx a million
Hamish MacDonald Says: July 5th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
1) Thanks so much!

2) Perfectionism, in my experience, usually leads people to either do nothing because they’re afraid of falling short, or to discredit their efforts. Doesn’t mean I don’t still try to do my best, but I find the definition of “my best” often expands as I learn more. So I think it’s always better to just do *something* and learn from that.

3) I try to avoid animal products, so I haven’t worked with leather. I imagine it would be a lot tougher to work with than paper, although ultimately more durable, and perhaps the thickness of it would hide some mistakes.

4) I’ve got a book at home that has a section on restoration, but I’m on vacation at the moment in PEI, so I don’t have access to it and can’t remember the title. I’m sure Googling for the term “book restoration” would bring you lots of information, some of which would be directly available online. This would be a great application for home bookbinding, though.
mamat Says: July 8th, 2006 at 11:00 am
lyx would also be a good choice for a free, opensource software to write a book with. it uses latex which is really good at formating the text for printing.
Mike Byrne Says: July 11th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Definitely the best artice I have found (in years of study) on the business - and the pleasure - of making books by hand. Now I must confess. I am a publisher, based in Wales and specialising in… guess what? Yes! hand-made books!
I started doing this in 2002, and publish mostly poetry collections. I too have had to learn the whole business from the ground up and, happily, I have made a (minor) success of it so far, with over two thousand copies of seven separate books sold so far. Marketing and selling is another world, however, and requires a lot of patience and even more courage.
I, like you, would be happy to share my experiences, knowledge and insights with others: all they have to do is get in touch.
Lastly, if you will be kind enough to let me have a postal address I will consider it a privelidge to send you a copy of my last publication for your pleasure. (I don’t write the books by the way, I just publish them.) Thank you again for a wonderful website: a real pleasure!
Congratulations,

Mike.
K I L T I E Says: July 14th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
Wow. I am an amateur author who’s just gotten into bookbinding. I wish I had found this site before putting my first book together. I’d decided to make a few copies of my own by hand for my friends and me before I tried to approach a publisher. I had taken out a book on binding, but there were still a few things I found out the hard way.
Now that I’ve decided I really like binding my own books, I have a few journal projects in mind as well, but I’d really like to be able to find some fancier materials such as papers or covering fabrics. The closest I’ve got is my local craft store. I’ve been looking online, but they still seem difficult to find. My main problem is not being able to find full sheets of specialty papers large enough to cover the whole book without covering the spine separately. I’d also like to try making my own.
I like the way your site is laid out, by the way. Very attractive.
Hamish MacDonald Says: July 18th, 2006 at 7:54 am
Wow! What great comments. I love the idea that other people are out there doing this, too.

To Mike Byrne: I’m very interested in what you’re doing (publishing hand-made books), and would love to talk more. I’d particularly be interested in learning how you made two thousand books without exhausting yourself! And then, of course, I’d love to pick your brain about how you’ve publicised these works. I’ve found it so much easier to promote myself in Canada than in the UK; there seems to be more resistance here to DIY/non-corporate projects… Or something. (And you can find my postal address on HamishMacDonald.com!)

The book I mentioned earlier, which contains many examples of traditional, more formal binding (including the rounded-spine variety that was asked about earlier). It’s called Hand Bookbinding, and it’s by Aldren A. Watson.

But I found this one much more fun and useful: Making Books by Hand, by Peter and Donna Thomas.

To Eric Ellis, who was looking for CD sleeve suggestions: I found an amazing book in a shop down in London that specialises in books full of royalty-free images. The book is called Folding Patterns for Display and Publicity, from The Pepin Press. It’s a huge tome filled with hundreds of packaging suggestions, and includes a CD-ROM with all the patterns as EPS files. There are several different layouts for CD sleeves, nearly all of which can be made from a single sheet.
Jeff Potter Says: July 28th, 2006 at 9:37 am
Hi Hamish! What a great resource. (NMK rocks!) I’ve been DIY publishing and zeening for decades now, but have never made my own books by hand (well, back in the day I copied and stapled my zeens…those were good handcraft days). Oneathesedays I’m gonna make my own books! Take back the craft…show my kids the reality behind the keyboard-clicking. I might even get my own small press, trimmer, binder, etc., and really do it up. I find that working on a computer makes me appreciate handwork that much more. So there’s handmade art editions in my future. Anyway… I see that you dismiss PoD. Now, I’ve never done PoD in the full service sense but I find it to be a necessary and wonderful thing. Maybe we’re not talking apples-apples here, but your options list jumps from DIYing a dozen labor-intensive art editions to offset printing 500+. We need a 20-200 unit option, right? Right! Well, there is one and it’s great. I’ve worked with DOCUTECH printers many times now. I have to say that http://FidlarDoubleday.com is the cheapest I’ve found. I upload any PDF to them and they send me back perfectbound paperbacks with full-color covers a couple weeks later. That’s what I call PoD. They cost about $4 each for 20-200 units of a 6×9 200-page novel. (Far cheaper than CafePress!) This is a commercially viable print-cost! You can wholesale these to retailers at 40% off a $10 cover price and still make a profit (well…). At a $15 cover price you can work with the normal book trade (wholesalers and Amazon want 55% off) and not lose your shirt. (FYI, a standard in the book biz is to have cover price be 6-8X printcost—one reason for offset!) You can fill DocuTech books with B&W photos if you like—they come out great. Basically, you can’t distinguish them from offset—cover or text. To me, DocuTech is a form of PoD that is essential. It leaves all control up to you. Nothing else covers the 20-200 print-run range acceptably. Whattaya think? Cheers, JP
Jeff Potter Says: July 28th, 2006 at 9:41 am
PS: As regards offset, I found http://colorhousegraphics.com to be the cheapest by far. They can print 2000 units of a 6×9 200-page novel from uploaded PDFs for about $2K. That’s the way to do it! –JP
Verlon Gilbreath Says: August 15th, 2006 at 12:10 am
There is a great freeware program that I found at ToolsCenter.org. It is a front-end processor for LaTeX documents. It lets you concentrate more on your document, book, article, etc. and much less on the mechanics involved. There are many templates available that make the output very publish-worthy. It is necessary to learn a bit about LaTeX (pronounced “lay-tek”)but the result is worth it.
Hamish MacDonald Says: August 16th, 2006 at 5:16 am
EEK! No, LaTeX is not for me. I don’t want to have to do any kind of manual markup when I’m in writing mode. But if that’s what you like, great — go for it.

As for Print-on-Demand, I do see the point. I had a book launch this summer in Toronto, and I slaved for about two weeks when I got back to Edinburgh to make enough books to fill the orders from the event. So for higher-volume runs, I get the sense of it.

It’s just not how I wanted to go about it this time, when the whole exercise of publishing my third book was about DIY and not having to process my art through a company. I like being able to produce a book whenever I want without needing to rely on outside resources. It also adds a distinction to my work, which, as an unknown author, is always helpful.
Steve Padgett Says: August 16th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Regarding your comments on Word and justification… what’s happened in the case you described is that Word has introduced a line-break rather than a hard return/paragraph break at the end of the line. If you had WordPerfect instead of Word you could hit Alt-F3 and see it directly, but it’s easy enough to get rid of. Go to the end of the line, hit Delete (bringing the next line up to the end of this one), then hit return. That’ll fix it. If it’s often a problem, even though you can’t see it in Word, you can get rid of it wherever it appears. Hit Ctrl-H to bring up find and replace, type ^l - that’s a small letter L - in the Find What box, and ^p in the Replace With box, and click on Replace All.
I’m not a huge fan of Word, it’s much easier to do these things in WordPerfect: because you can see *all* the formatting in your document; because Word can introduce much more troublesome formatting than this, that’s impossible to get rid of - in Word - open the file in WordPerfect and you can handle it readily enough; because WordPerfect will format your pages for book printing (it’s under Format, Page, Page Setup - the Layout tab); send the proper instructions for 2-sided printing to whatever printer you’ve got; let you reprint 1 page - with the proper imposition - to replace the page that got messed up in doing 2-sided printing with a printer that can’t do it automatically; let you embed your fonts with your document; let you publish to PDF; etc. etc.
I’ve only printed two perfect-bound books so far, and I’ve got a lot to learn, but WordPerfect has made it much easier. I can’t help proselytising; I’m a huge fan.
Steve
jim Says: August 17th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
This is more specific to making journals but looks like a really great stitch-by-stitch tutorial:
http://curiouslycrafty.wordpress.com/tutorials/
Vixen522 Says: August 18th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
This has helped me immensely! Great article, Thanks!
Clay Says: September 4th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Thanks for your article. This type of publishing might be best for me since I will probably find a smallish audience for my books, which are translations.

My main question so far: Isn’t it much more expensive to print books on printers instead of on a press? Is there a printer out there that does the job most economically? I’ve ordered Gigabook’s handbook and hope this matter is covered. But I’ll take all the opinions I can. Your Xerox 6100 seems to be quite the investment.
Steve Padgett Says: September 5th, 2006 at 3:41 am
It’s a matter of scale. There’s a minimum charge for the printer to set your book up at all; you have to figure out for yourself where the break-even point is on the raw cost. No matter how cheaply you value your own labor, printing and binding yourself is not really cheap overall.

Check out the messages up above from Jeff Potter for a couple of alternatives.

There is another consideration though. As Hamish points out just above, sometimes it’s a special one-off, and sometimes you just *want* the experience of doing it yourself.

Steve
Victor Grieve Says: September 5th, 2006 at 11:29 am
As a retired Compositor who set books and magazines by hand with metal type, I find it amazing that it is now possible to set, print and bind a book in colour in ones own home. There were no computers in my working days, the composing room having changed very little in the last 400 hundred years. Your articles are excellent and have given me a new interest in life. Many thanks for giving your time.

Victor
Hamish MacDonald Says: September 8th, 2006 at 5:36 am
On 5 October at The Radical Book Fair in Edinburgh, I’m going to be heading a panel discussion about self-publishing/DIY culture. Following that, I’m giving a demonstration called “Quick ‘n’ Dirty Bookbinding”.

In preparation, I’ve made a wee take-away guide that, hopefully, makes the process simple with some illustrations and instructions.

I’ve made a printable PDF of the guide, which you can download from my website. It just needs to be:
- Printed on both sides of the paper.
- Cut along the middle of the page (side to side, not top to bottom).
- Stapled.

Quick ‘n’ Dirty Bookbinding: A4
Quick ‘n’ Dirty Bookbinding: Letter
Aaron Lethbridge Says: September 17th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
Fantastic article. It gives hope and insight to the budding author and renews determination to keep cracking away without corporate reliance.
Susan Helms Says: September 24th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Hamish

Wow! I am just getting ready to begin self-publishing, and this article was the best. Thank you for taking the time to pass on the information, including the links for ClickBook and the ISBN’s. Other than cost, do you have any other issues with QuarkXPress?

Susan Helms
Hamish MacDonald Says: September 25th, 2006 at 2:41 am
Gosh, thanks for all the nice comments.

Susan, it’s funny you should ask me about Quark, because I’ve been using it for years, but I tried its main competitor, Adobe InDesign, for the first time yesterday, and… wow.

People love to hate Quark, mainly for the company’s reputation of having become complacent and surly because of their long-unchallenged monopoly in desktop publishing. I don’t know about that, but I can say that my experience of InDesign is that it’s a much better product. Switching to it was definitely an adjustment, but with every change I thought, “Oh, that’s so smart!” I don’t have that reaction with Quark.
Jennifer Fiander Says: September 25th, 2006 at 11:32 pm
Hi Hamish, I’m not sure how I stumbled upon your site, but I’m SO glad I did! I have a question for you, and I’m glad you lived in Canada, so hopefully you know the practices here. I checked out the website link you included for Canadians to get the ISBN. (thank you) Here’s my *dumb* question of the day: Do you need a barcode to sell in a bookstore as well?
From what I remember when I checked a few years ago, getting a barcode was quite costly? I’m concerned about the cost of setting up barcodes because we have so many books. If I’m hoping to sell to bookstores, do I need the ISBN AND the barcodes?
Thanks for the input!
Hamish MacDonald Says: September 26th, 2006 at 7:14 am
Hi Jennifer. Not a dumb question at all. It’s difficult to find all this information, because it’s splattered over several different organisations (government agencies, commercial printers, etc.). That’s why I wanted to bring what I’ve learned together in one place.

The barcode is generated from your ISBN. It’s helpful to people working in bookstores, ’cause then the clerks can just use their flashy-red-light-gunny-thing on the book instead of entering the details manually. It likely helps the store with their inventory control, too.

There’s a link in the article where you can go to get a printable graphic of your ISBN for free. Just search back for “barcode”.

Good luck with your project!
Ron Rinehart Says: October 11th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
Thanks for the info. I enjoyed reading it.

I found your site while searching for more information about what kind of glue to use in binding perfect bound books. PUR seems to be in use by large print houses, but I don’t need a 55-gal drum of it or even a 5 gal pail. So, maybe you or others know where to get PUR in, say, 1 pound lots.

My use for this is in binding daily logs (diaries or journals) each year. The least satisfying part of this has been the gluing process. I print covers using glossy photo paper in 13″ by 19″ format on a Canon S9000. Admitedly, the color can smear if it gets wet, but it looks fine for my one-of-a-kind use and easily fits the 5 1/2″ by 8 1/2″ format I use. Printing of the inside also done on the Canon but I have to manually flip each page end over end to get two-sided printing to come out right. And I do use and enjoy Adobe InDesign. I have a textbook (printed commercially, but I am my own publisher and distributor), so InDesign lets me do all the formatting I need and does a great job. For the first three editions, I used MS Word, but InDesign is far superior for such a large project (504 pp all tolled).

Well, I tend to write very long emails but will bridle back for now since this site seems to not include really long responses. Again, thanks for a very nice web site.
Lea Sorensen Says: October 15th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Oh how much I want to thank you for fully explaining how to make a pressed book as I have been trying to do this as I am my own Publisher and Author of my Children’s Books. I didn’t want to use staples as i want to make it a safety issue because of the age group I cover. I had been surching a way and keep coming up with bining with my bining machine but knowingthat a child would easily take it apart 2 minutes or less. Other websites don’t make it clear and I found many confusing cause they don’t explain or missed a step. I am just starting off with my books. Doing it CD, DVD and wanted to do my books as well (I have them already in hard copy for a while, just was missing this part of the link) again oh so much again I thatnk you!! Lea Sorensen
Clay Says: October 21st, 2006 at 11:13 pm
I just bought one of those model p7200 paper folding machines after I realized that it could easily pay for itself and make it possible to produce a lot more books in general. One question, though: When I tested the thing today it got jammed a couple times. It did not come with a whole lot of instructions, so I was wondering if you have any tips about how to make it work more relialby. After all, I expect to it to fold a million sheets for me.

Also, after shopping around and finding a very large price-range for the machine, I was very pleased to find it at OfficeMax.com for about $236 and delivered in less than 3 days.
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 22nd, 2006 at 9:54 am
I can’t remember the model name of my paper folder, but it’s a Martin Yale. I’ve not had any problems with it jamming at all.

The tricky part for me is that I’m folding A4 paper in half. While you can configure the device to make all manner of folds (three-panel pages, letter folds, etc), I’ve adjusted it to fold A4 to an A5 size, and since my guillotine cuts aren’t quite precise, the folds can be a bit wonky at times.

The biggest hurdle, though, is how sensitive the machine is to changes in the weather. Some days (like today, thank God) it shoots pages out into nice, neat stacks. Other days, however, it spews them out all over the place like some mad invention gone wrong.
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 23rd, 2006 at 9:23 am
Expensive experience in the field:

My colour laser printer is breaking down. It seems to need a new transfer belt or drum — either one of which would cost half the price of a new printer.

Add to this the fact that its text was never as nice as my old cheap laser printer, and its colour output couldn’t match my mum’s home printer.

So I’m taking a step backwards: I’ve ordered a mono (black and white) Kyocera printer that’s supposed to be “environmentally friendly” (ozone-free, the only consumable bit is the toner cartridge, which is rated as lasting longer, etc.). That’s for the pages.

For the covers, I’ve ordered a standard inkjet printer, and will be testing out various papers to find one that will withstand being touched, getting damp, etc. (I’ve found a waterproof paper, so we’ll see how that works as an overleaf.)

The bottom line? A low-end-of-the-high-end machine can be inferior in many ways to high-end-of-the-low-end equipment. If I were doing this again (and I’m more or less having to), I wouldn’t buy a colour laser printer.
Oceanwatcher Says: October 23rd, 2006 at 3:28 pm
I loved this article and was a bit amazed that nobody mentioned Scribus. This is an open source program for making printed stuff. Take a look at

http://www.scribus.net/

You can also find a portable version somewhere that allow you to run it from a USB flash drive.

Not bad to have something like this for free
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 23rd, 2006 at 3:59 pm
Thanks for mentioning that.

I’ve been playing with Scribus for the past few days, and…

It’s hard.

This is my beef with a lot of opensourceware: it works the way programmers think, not the way those of us used to commercial programs think.

I really do want to use it, because it seems powerful and could potentially replace all those dodgy copies of expensive commercial software, which we could all feel better about.

But, for instance, today I tried to import the Word document of my novel into Scribus and all the text styles disappeared. There’s no way I’m going through to find every instance of a character thinking to himself and update the italics.

So I tried opening the file in OpenOffice, saving out in its native file format, then bringing that into Scribus. Now I had text styles, but Scribus complained that every font in the document wasn’t loaded on the system (the same system that produced the document).

So it’s not there yet. But if that was all you knew from the beginning and weren’t mentally hobbled by another ideas of how it’s supposed to work, I bet you could do everything with it. And it’ll only get better.

There’s also a vector illustration program I’ve been told about called Inkscape. (Again, though, its differences from Illustrator and Macromedia Fireworks bugged me so much today that I had to stop using it. “How the hell do you grab a single point on a shape?!” Basics like that.)

Programs mentioned:
Scribus (http://www.scribus.net)
OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org)
Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org)
jack Says: October 24th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
For short run books, professionally printed and bound, I find http://www.createbooks.com great! You can get 50 perfect bound books… 200 pages, colour cover for $299, (less when the quantity goes up). Get an ISBN, bar code, into Google Book Search, and Books in Print while you’re at it.
Julie Says: October 26th, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Awesome resource. For someone like me, just getting into the whole world of self-publishing, this is a great alternative site to something like lulu.com. I’ve done one book on my own but now that I’ve got some of the great wisdom from this site I’m going to keep trying.

Thanks for all the advice.
Julie
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 27th, 2006 at 6:52 am
That’s great to hear, Julie! It’s gratifying that so many people are catching on to this idea, but it’s even better when they reach the point of actually producing real, live books.

As an addendum to my printer experience, the dedicated mono laser printer I got does, indeed produce far, far crisper text — so much so that I may need to change to a font with a heavier weight.

And the colour cover overleaf sheets I’ve printed on a joe basic DeskJet look amazing. There’s just no comparing the old laser ones to these.

So this is the setup I’d recommend to anyone starting their own press at home. What makes me happy is that it’ll be cheaper to start and to maintain — meaning the whole arrangement is more accessible to more people.
Clay Says: October 29th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
Hi Hamish, I’m sorry to go on about the paper
> folder - I had got it working much better after
> making an adjustment, but then I printed my book
> 336 pages, or 86 actual printed pages. After
> running them through the laser printer, they get
> hot and warped which makes them difficult to
> send through the paper folder. Have you had
> such a problem? Maybe its because I’m printing
> such a thick book…Clay
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 30th, 2006 at 8:07 am
Hi, Clay. Yeah, I have had this problem, moreso with other printers I’ve had, the ones that didn’t duplex. By the time I manually put the paper through again, the pages were pretty curly.

Of course, the obvious thing to try is to let the pages cool off and to curl them in the opposite direction. I had some success with this, but the odd jam nonetheless.

Ultimately, I have the odd page on which the text isn’t perfectly straight-looking after I trim the book, but I figure these are hand-made books, and people appreciate that, so I try to resist my perfectionism and think of them as “character”.

But, no, I have no quick fixes for that one. Sorry.
Clay Says: October 30th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Thanks! I guess it’s all part of the fun.
Hugh G. Poopalot Says: November 9th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
A crazy question: Does anyone actually create these handmade books with an ink-jet printer. If so, what are the considerations involved.
Hamish MacDonald Says: November 10th, 2006 at 7:23 am
As I said above, I’m making the overleaf covers for my books on an inkjet printer now, and the results are amazing. I’m sure the ink won’t go far and will be pricey to replace, but the result justifies it.

Printing the inside pages though would be prohibitively expensive. For a poetry chapbook you would be fine, but a novel would kill so much ink that you’d have to charge a ridiculous price to cover the cost of making the book.
george Says: November 12th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Hi.. I trying to create a 40 page 8.5×11 poem book for a client… they will only need about 10 copies at most so going the pro publishing route is just not cost effective. I was tyring out blurb because I like the way their hardcovers print.. but their software is buggy and terrible. I was wondering if anyone had any advice or options.. I was hoping for a nice hardcover with slipcover.. I don’t like the shutterfly/my publsiehr look. thx.
jack Says: November 12th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Createbooks will build hardcover Smythe sewn books in small numbers. These are lovely hand made bindings and worth the wait. createbooks.com
Christina Says: November 20th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
This is exactly the kind of article I’ve been looking for. Thank you so much!
Susan Potocki Says: November 20th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
Thanks for putting up such a well thought out site. It’s a great jumping off point for people wanting to get into self publishing. If I’d found it years ago, I wouldn’t have had to learn so much stuff myself the hard way.

There’s something I’ve been trying to figure out for years myself, and I don’t see it here either. Many of the professionally bound books in my collection have a strip of cloth attached down the spine of the signatures. This cloth strip is not attached to the hardcover spine, and allows the signatures to flex as they want when the book is opened, thereby reducing stress on the stitching and improving the durability of the book. This, therefore, seems a worthwhile technique for the home book binder to know.

I have not discovered the method by which books are bound this way. I do not know if the cloth strip is stitched or simply glued into the signatures or how it is attached to the cover boards at the edges. Thus far I have resisted the temptation to disassemble one of my precious books to learn this technique. Do you have any thoughts or ideas on this technique, or know where I might learn more about how to duplicate it in my own books?

I also notice no mention of the free open source Postscript Utilities that other people here might want to know about. These utilities include two programs that I have found invaluable. They are psbook, which handles all the matters of imposition, and psnup, which shrinks and rotates the pages onto the printed sheets of paper.

With them I can take any program that produces postscript output (I use OpenOffice and Word) and, with the right command line options, they will produce an output postscript that can be sent directly to the printer. They are even capable of rotating and flipping the sub pages on the printed sheets so that your second step of cutting your pages in half becomes a simple quadrifold and cut on the guillotine once the pages are bound.

Figuring out the correct command line options for them can be tricky and requires a bit of trial and error, but once that’s solved, they’re a “fire and forget” solution. I’ve got them set up on my computer as a virtual printer. If I want to print out a book, all I need to do is select the “BookBinder” virtual printer instead of the default printer, and my signature pages come out of my printer all ready for folding and stiching.

This is just something I though worth mentioning.
Hamish MacDonald Says: November 21st, 2006 at 8:28 am
Thanks for your insights, Susan.

The gauzey cloth you’re talking about is called mull, and I’ve seen it in art shops where bookbinding tools are sold. Personally, I haven’t felt a need for a third layer of reinforcement (stitching, glue, and mull).

I had a quick flip through Hand Bookbinding by Aldren A. Watson (my ’serious’ bookbinding book, which I don’t often refer to because his methods are laborious and involve various exotic racks and binding supplies). His methods use mull as well as a fourth type of reinforcement, cloth tapes.

In Watson’s description, he says to “Cut a piece of mull 1 inch shorter than the height of the signatures and 2 1/2 inches wider than their bulk combined with the two cover boards.” Then, after gluing it over the signatures (and reinforcing tapes in his example), “trim the mull and tapes back to within 1 inch of the hinges.”
(Hand Bookbinding, A Manual of Instruction by Aldren A Waton, Dover Publications, 1986, pp 82, 83. ISBN 0-486-29157-X)

As for your PostScript tools, I’d never heard of these. They sound useful, if you’re the type of user who isn’t scared off by command-line tools. I like ClickBook’s graphical interface, which lets you choose your page layout and see what the result is going to look like before sending the job to the printer (and using paper, toner, etc).

Also, I wonder how PostScript tools will work with home printers. The situation may have changed, but I remember my old Apple StyleWriter 2400 couldn’t understand the jobs I tried sending from Quark (a layout program that uses PostScript). That said, I’m having no difficulties printing from Quark to my HP DeskJet, so maybe modern printers don’t have an issue with PostScript information.

I tried, yet again, to switch to open-source tools for my books, OpenOffice for my novels and Scribus for a graphical ‘zine I was working on. OpenOffice wouldn’t play nicely with ClickBook and the jobs kept vanishing before reaching the printer. And Scribus seems to lack some layout features I needed. Maybe they’re there, but I’m too goal-orientated to spend lots of time learning a new program.

The same is true with book-binding: I have no doubt there are superior bookbinding methods, but if the result is the same to the end-user, I’m not interested in invisible details. For some people, though, the finessing, the craft itself, is the big reward. So I suppose one’s motivations will ultimately shape their process.
Susan Potocki Says: November 22nd, 2006 at 9:12 pm
So it’s called a “mull”. Thanks for letting me know. The ones in my professionally bound books look more like thick ribbon than gauze, but now that I know its name, further internet searches will probably be a lot easier. Thanks also for the bibliographic information. I’ll look into Watson’s and the Thomas’s books the next time I’m in Portland, Oregon, or, failing that, on Amazon.

When I first started teaching myself the art of book binding several years ago, there simply weren’t the resources on the web like your excellent site (or I couldn’t find them because I didn’t know the terms to search for). I probably should have kept looking. I’m glad to see the art is becoming more common, and there are good sites like yours to help people avoid learning the hard way.

I suspect your problem with ClickBooks and OpenOffice probably came from using the windows edition of OpenOffice. I, myself, only have experience with the unix version of OpenOffice, and ClickBooks is not available for unix. OpenOffice is itself theoretically capable of handling the tasks of layout and imposition, and I fought with it for some time before giving up and just knuckling down and getting the Postscript Utilities to work.

They were not easy to figure out initially (though much easier than OpenOffice), and I wasted quite a few sheets of paper in the process of making my first book with them. Once I figured out all the settings and got my scripts working, though, I haven’t had to touch them since. If I want to print folios, I print my document to the “Bookbinder” virtual printer, and all the layout happens automatically in the background. If I want to print quartos, I use the “Quarto” virtual printer. I haven’t bothered figuring out the command line options for printing octavos because the resulting pages from a letter or A4 sheet are simply too small.

Finally, for home printers that don’t understand the postscript output from the Postscript Utilities, there is another free program called Ghostscript that acts as a postscript interpreter. It can translate postscript into the native printer language of almost all major consumer level printers.

I guess, as in so many things, it’s a trade off between how much you’re willing to learn and work versus how much money you’re willing to spend. Open source software is free and does work, but you pay for it with mental sweat. I never intended to become a unix nerd when I started binding my own books, but, for me, it was a choice between spending money on expensive commercial software or spending it on a good high quality duplexing printer. Granted, I had to learn to use these user-unfriendly programs once a few years ago, but I’m also not constantly fighting paper jams today.
Hamish MacDonald Says: November 22nd, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Thanks for all the extra info, Susan. Two quick corrections:

I believe I’ve led you astray in talking about ‘mull’, which is gauze-like material that goes over the spine, when I think what you were actually asking about is a headband, that decorative strip across the top under the cover. In modern bookbinding, to my understanding, it’s purely decorative. I’ve seen them for sale, little sticky bits with cloth at the top in alternating colours.

And to clarify, I’m just a contributor to this site. It was started — and I believe is still mostly run by — Jim Munro, an author-friend I met when I lived in Toronto. I’m with you, though: he’s done a neat thing in providing this forum for DIY culture.
Susan Potocki Says: November 22nd, 2006 at 9:40 pm
There’s something else I neglected to add above:

Since I only produce at most two or three copies of each book I write, durability is paramount over production complexity. Obviously, self publishers who intend to sell their work put a higher value on speed.

On that note, however, there is one relatively quick modification you might want to add to your Perfect Binding instructions above that I discovered during my own trial and error learning curve. After you’ve stacked the pages, put the stack in the press WITHOUT THE COVER and cut a series of very shallow notches into the spine every quarter inch or so with a thin saw blade (I find a miniature metal cutting saw with the teeth pointed backwards works best). Then put the cover into the press as normal, making sure to keep the pages stacked, and glue everything up as before. The notches and roughened paper greatly improves the long term holding strength of the glue. A very light scuff sanding on the inside spine of the cover also helps, depending on the glue you use, but not as much as notching.

Once you get the technique down, this extra step adds less than a minute to the production time of each book. I have never had a page come out of a book I bound this way, even with a lot of wear and tugging.

Finally, there is a combination glue bottle and roller that wood joiners use which makes glueing up fast, easy, and very tidy. They come in various widths and don’t cost more than a few dollars each (without glue). I’ve never seen any in the craft stores I frequent, but they are readily available from most cabinet maker, veneer, or woodworking supply shops. Once you get the hang of them, you will never go back to using a brush.
Susan Potocki Says: November 22nd, 2006 at 9:49 pm
As to mulls: I’ve done a bit of online research now that I know what they’re called. Apparently, in the past mulls were somehow serged and stitched over at the top and bottom of the spine. The headbands of today are a decorative attempt at duplicating the appearance of this technique, but do not provide the same strength.

I have a lot more research ahead of me to find the original technique, and I will no doubt need to learn yet another stitching method. You’ve definitely given me the start I need to know how and what to look for.
Rick Holbert Says: December 2nd, 2006 at 1:24 am
Hamish, Good article on Micro Publishing…

Like Susan, I also use free software and Linux for my Micro Publishing needs. Some other useful software tools are LyX, mpage, pdfTeX (texexec).

I like to compose my books using LyX on A5 size pages.

Then I can output my books to either postscipt or pdf and use the psutils or mpage to impose the postscript files and pdfTeX (texexec) to impose the pdf files onto letter or A4 size paper.

Also, once the files are converted to pdf, I can use acrobat or other pdf viewer to print them anywhere.

Once printed, I either fold or cut the pages and use Chet’s gigibook method to glue them together and cover them.

I should probably write a new article about Micro Publishing with the new tricks I’ve learned since my old article in the Linux Gazette.
Victor Grieve Says: December 2nd, 2006 at 6:31 am
Is it possible to print A5 pages side by side in Word without a program?
Rick Holbert Says: December 2nd, 2006 at 11:24 am
I don’t know about doing this in Word, but most of the postscript command line tools discussed earlier are available on freeshell.org

You can get a Unix shell account there for $1 US.
eduardo gomez Says: December 15th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
congratulations for the article. My english is awful. Im from argentina. I want to stamp gold letters on the cover. how to do this. thank you very much and merry christmas.
April Says: December 15th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
How do you get the pages in the right order? I’m trying to print a book 4.25×7 in with 2 pages/side and 4 pages per sheet. No matter what I do to stop it, I keep ending up with the pages out of order somehow. One is nearly always NEXT to two rather than on the back and so on.

If you could help me straighten it out, I’d be eternaly grateful.
jack Says: December 15th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
Here’s a nice manual technique for mapping page locations learned from an old-timer. It’s pretty foolproof (which is why I like it!?)
Mock up the pages with scrap paper, folded to the right number of pages, 4up in this case.
Once you have a facsimile of the pages laid out in ‘book’ form, (reader’s spreads), number the pages in order, (I like to use unmistakeable BIG numbers on each page).
Unfold and voilà, you have printer’s spreads in signatures.
Enjoy
Steve Says: December 15th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
April:
Actually this is answered up above; do a search (Ctrl-F) for imposition, which is the proper name for it. A possible shortcut for you: some printers have the capability built in - look to see if yours has the option “Print as booklet”. Also, WordPerfect has the option built in to the program as well.
Steve
Hamish MacDonald Says: December 18th, 2006 at 11:17 am
Yeah, the imposition question was covered above, both in my original post and in subsequent comments that mentioned some free/open-source PostScript alternatives to the ClickBook program I use.

As for the gold lettering, I’m afraid I don’t have any experience with that. I’m (mostly) vegetarian, so I don’t use leather when making my books, and leather is what’s usually used when doing embossed lettering and decoration like that. I believe it’s usually done with metal letters hammered into the leather to make an impression, then filled in with some sort of adhesive and gold leaf.

Maybe do a search for “bookbinding, gold-leaf, embossing” (though I suppose “embossed” lettering is raised, not indented, so this may not be the correct term).

Anyone else know more about this?
Rick Holbert Says: December 18th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Some material for practicing your book binding skills…

Here’s a modest repository of Project Gutenberg texts, converted to PDF and LaTeX:

http://www.sandroid.org/GutenMark/MarkedTexts.html

LyX and LaTeX source can be found here:

ftp://ftp.sandroid.org/GutenMark/MarkedTexts

These books are formatted for half US letter size paper and should scale nicely to A5, or 2up on A4.
Bullion Grey Says: January 1st, 2007 at 2:14 am
good info…I have self published 6 booklets so far in the past 16 years. I learned a few things here….Not sure what I will do next but I have hand made hundreds of my booklets and sold all I made. I had the first experience with a professional printer and do not recommend it. Do it yourself. I thought of POD Publishing actually back in 1994 and developed a creative soluton that I have used since. Anyone wana chat about self publishing or writing?
Make a follow up comment (of course) and Ill write back.
Cheers!
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 3rd, 2007 at 11:21 am
BG, thanks for your comments. I’m definitely interested in hearing from other people who are doing this crazy self-publishing thing, too. Solidarity and community — you can’t get too much of these when swimming against the tide.

I had a friend ask me — and this is someone I’ve worked on ‘zines with in the past, who’s pretty familiar with this stuff now — what someone has to do to have a *real* press.

“It’s a made-up distinction,” I told her. “Your press is real as soon as you declare it such. The only difference is maybe the amount of money and attention you have, but there’s no difference.”

We want our efforts to be acknowledged as equal and valid, yet sometimes it’s easy to buy into to commercial bumpf — the industry contests and other livestock shows — and to forget that “real” is made up and begins with us declaring ourselves as the real thing. And being in conversation with others who are doing the same thing helps. Jim, whose site this is, was my introduction to that. I still marvel at his ability to make ‘the establishment’ hungry for his fringe thing.’

(I’m writing from a hotspot at Halifax airport, where I’ve got time to kill. Sorry for babbling.)

So, in short, if you want to know more, talk more, or share your experiences with me (because I’ve still got lots to learn, especially about how to reach an audience for a finished book), feel free to contact me at:
postbox AT hamish macdonald DOT com.
Aria Says: January 5th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
thanks, your website is great!! I was wondering if you could post more about duplexing and arranging the pages in a signature. Thanks!!!
rayden54 Says: January 5th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Can you explain how to set up the book prior to printing. I need to know everything you do after typing the text, please.

Also, I’ve printed a cover with a color laser printer before and had problems with the ink chipping off.
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 6th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Re: printing/duplexing

Well, as I said in the article, I use a program called ClickBook to do this. You lay the page out in a word processing program, then print to this program, which sits between the word processor and the printer’s software; it rearranges the pages and resizes them according to the format you choose. Then you fold them in half (or smaller) and bind them together, either by sewing the pages together in groups, or by folding each page individually and gluing the folded edge into a cover.

Over the course of this year, I’m going to create more detailed manuals about my writing and publishing processes. I see there being three workbooks (which I’ll distribute as printable PDFs and bound copies), outlining the three steps in the process:

1) The Idea to Novel Process, outlining how to get from an idea of a book to having a finished manuscript (including character, theme, story arc worksheets, etc).

2) The Novel to Book Process, which explains how to turn that manuscript into a book in your hand by printing and perfect-binding the book at home.

3) The Book to Reader Process. This is the part I know the least about; I’d be very happy to collaborate with someone to create this.

P.S. Again, I’m Hamish MacDonald, the author/self-publisher who wrote this article. Credit for the website belongs to Jim Munro, who is its owner/creator/editor.
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 6th, 2007 at 9:39 am
As for your laser printer toner flaking off, I had this, too, when I was using a laser printer for my covers. Regular card stock, it turned out, wasn’t porous enough, or the finish was too rough — or something — and spray fixative, I found, discoloured the paper and eroded the ink.

What worked for me was buying photo inkjet paper and printing on the wrong (non-glossy) side. Ultimately, though, I switched to printing with an inkjet printer onto the proper side of photo paper, and I’m very happy with the result.
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 6th, 2007 at 9:42 am
Sorry, one more note: I tried ClickBook with OpenOffice.org, and it didn’t work. Other comments here offer an alternative that should work if you’re going the freeware/Open Source route(search the page for “Post Script”).
rayden54 Says: January 6th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Right, Clickbooks. How is the book laid out before you print to it?
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 7th, 2007 at 7:13 am
I just lay the pages out normally in Word, then print them to ClickBook. Here are a few ‘gotchas’ to think about:

- Set up styles for different page elements (chapter heading, chapter subhead, body text); then you can change the text throughout the book without having to manually select and change each element.

- Use single-spaced lines and indent new paragraphs. The stype I’ve learnt is that you *don’t* indent the first paragraph of a new chapter or new section. (By “new section”, I mean a scene that’s set off by a double carriage return, like something that happens later that day — still related enough to be in the same chapter, but needing to look separate. You might even put a bullet or graphic in that space to make the transition evident. (I don’t know why, but I use tildes: ~).

- ClickBook shrinks the pages to fit several onto a folded sheet, so you need to make your text bigger. I use the font Berling Antiqua for my body text, and make it 20 points high.

- Number your pages, but not the Cataloguing-in-Publication/Copyright pages, title pages, or credits pages. You might try setting up separate sections in Word to do this (I always struggle with getting this right, and re-learn it each time, so I’m not the guy to teach anyone about Word stuff).

- ClickBook prints pages in multiples of four. I wondered why I kept getting blank pages, but it turned out this was why. If you’re printing out to group your pages for perfect-binding, use the “4-up Book” template, go to “Layouts/Modify Layout”, check “Sub-booklets” and enter “4″ for the “Pgs. per” option. Then check to make sure the “Scaling” option is set to “One-to-one” so your text doesn’t get stretched, and double-check that you’ve chosen the correct paper size.

When printing little wee stitched signature books, I use the “Address Book (folded)” template with 16pp sub-booklets.

- I’ve increased the margins on my pages to 1.25″ all around, just to give more white space on the page and to allow for trimming. (I’m using A4 paper.)

I hope that helps. Unfortunately, some of this you just have to learn by trial-and-error, as you find what works and looks best for you.
Diane Lau Says: January 17th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
I’d like to put a word in for Lightning Source, Inc., a P-O-D company that is great those who don’t want to make books by hand but are computer savvy and can design books themselves. LSI doesn’t charge ridiculous fees and is very cost-effective. You have full control of the design inside and out (B&W or color). And they also place all their titles in the big online stores.

FYI, in 2006 I wrote a guidebook to the entire process called Do-It-YourSelf-Publishing, (see http://www.dianalaurence.com/diyp.html) which I sell direct in ebook format for $2.54.

Diane Lau, Publisher
Living Beyond Reality Press
(also writing as Diana Laurence)
Sveinn H Sverrisson Says: February 2nd, 2007 at 11:19 am
I was thinking about the phrase “your laser printer toner flaking off”; isn’t that also an humidity issue ? Most print shops I know of are obsessed with relative humidity in their quarters, especially where the stock their paper. Maybe the paper is in some cases too dry.

I often make small brochures or handouts for clients, used in somewhat rugged conditions (outdoor fieldwork). The booklets pages are laser printed on not too absorbing paper, while I print the cover w/ inkjet on stiffer card paper. Then I either laminate the covers or use a method I’ve progressively elaborated. Which consists of taking the inkjet printed page and saturating it in clear silicone solution (spraying is easiest), leaving to dry overnight. Then overpaint v/ clear turpentine based varnish, two coats. Spraying is easy but with brush one can play a little bit with strokes and texture.
Curiously this silicone treatment makes my HP inks last much longer, notably the magenta one. And even longer if the varnish has some kind of sunscreen in it.

One last thing (see October 23rd, 2006): Scribus is really trying to be a full fledged “Quark-like DTP program” (their own words). I think they’ve gotten it right, and there are great things produced with Scribus today (mags, books, etc). My problem with the program has moreoften been the professional DTP jargon, also present in Quark and alikes, not any programming thing.

Good resources you have here! Thanks
Inez-- bindery worker Says: February 3rd, 2007 at 4:08 pm
One thing that was not mentioned here at all was keeping in mind the grain of the paper. All paper has a grain, and if you fold along the grain it will look better and the book will be easier to handle in general. Also, for something thicker like the thicker cover paper, folding along the grain negates the necessity of scoring the board first. When folding signatures– if you hold the paper so it’s like you have it on “landscape” view (in MS Word), that is, text running left to right on either side, the grain of the paper should be running VERTICALLY. This will make it easier to fold, and will make the book fall open nicely, rather than curving outward.
Inez-- bindery worker Says: February 3rd, 2007 at 4:20 pm
I realized I didn’t really explain the grain– if you take the corner of a sheet of paper and bend it vertically and horizontally abot 1 inch from the edge, one direction should be drastically more flexible. The grain runs that way. For example, on 8 1/2 x 11 printer paper, the grain runs vertically.
jack Says: February 5th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
It’s true that paper cut for laser printers is usually ‘long grain’ but you can order paper ’short grain’ too, depending on your needs. 11×17 or larger sheets cut for offset or docutech are often short grain (grain running the 11″ dimension) because they’re folded or cut to size along the grain.
Hamish MacDonald Says: February 6th, 2007 at 6:30 am
I have to confess that I’ve not paid much attention to grain. I need to cut my paper a certain way, so I just do that.

Picturing it, I suppose I do end up folding with the grain, but I’ve also made smaller books where I’ve folded against it, and it didn’t make a difference.

So for someone starting out, I don’t think this is something to be too concerned about (i.e. your book won’t be “broken” if you fold against the grain). It strikes me more as a “book artist” concern.
Kevin Hanscom Says: February 16th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Hello,
Your information is very helpful. Just wondering how I can insert page numbers in my manuscript without putting them on every page? Thanks.
Hamish MacDonald Says: February 18th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Check your word processor’s Help file for information about “Sections”. Setting up different sections will allow you to have numbering in some part and not others (and have the numbering in the body of the novel start at 1 as well, instead of, say, page 5 if there were preceding pages).
Kevin Hanscom Says: February 21st, 2007 at 9:19 pm
I went onto Bookland and made up an ISBN barcode but I don’t know how to put it on the back cover of my book.
Hamish MacDonald Says: February 22nd, 2007 at 4:36 pm
I’m not familiar with Bookland, but presumably they give you a graphic of your ISBN. How you incorporate that into your cover is a matter of what program you use to design your book.

With most layout programs, you use one type of box and fill that with text, and another type that you can insert graphics into (”File>Insert”, “Get Image”, or something along those lines).

I really, really wouldn’t recommend using a graphics program to create the whole cover (e.g. Photoshop). Try using a trial of Adobe InDesign, which should work for about a month and produce a PDF of your graphic that you can keep, or else learn one of the open-source programs like Scribus.

I’ll stop here because I don’t really know anything about how you’re creating your project. If you have a specific technical question, though, feel free to ask.
Adam Says: February 27th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Hi. Regarding comment #45… sounds like a humidity issue during the printing phase - hot fuser, in a room with a bit of humidiy, could result in the curled pages. Hope this helps.
Peter Giscombe Says: March 23rd, 2007 at 10:56 am
Wonderful! I was looking for “Book Press” (as in a ‘binding press) and stumbled on your article. I have my design students make books, and just recently was explaining/ discussing “signature bound” bookmaking with them. You site/ article with all its pointers will be very helpful to them. Its a great thing you did, and we all thank you for it.
Hamish MacDonald Says: March 23rd, 2007 at 11:19 am
Thanks very much! If you post any pictures of the work the students create, do put a link here — I’d love to see them, and I’m sure others would welcome the inspiration.
Kevin Hanscom Says: March 28th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Hello,
When using a inkjet printer how do you stop the printer from making lines on the book cover?
Hamish MacDonald Says: March 28th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Sorry, Kevin, I don’t understand your question. Could you please rephrase it? Do you mean crop-marks from your layout program, ink-smears, or–?

Please provide a bit more information about your working environment, like what’s causing the lines.

Thanks.
Kevin Hanscom Says: March 29th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
I made my book cover using a photo which I had scanned onto my computer. I set it up with script putting my name and title, etc., but when I print the cover using photo paper (medium) and my deskjet printer the printer makes very prominent lines on the picture where the cartridges go back and forth across the paper.
Thanks,
Kevin
Hamish MacDonald Says: March 30th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Hmm, that’s hard to diagnose without seeing it in person. A couple of possibilities come to mind:

- The picture is not at a high enough resolution. If it’s been resized to make it larger, the quality will degrade.

- Something could be up with your ink cartridges.

- The program you’re printing from is sending odd information to the printer. (For instance, if I print from my image editor, it puts a funny line along one side of the program. When I print from my page layout program, I don’t get this.)

I’m sorry I can’t be of more help over a distance. This isn’t really a publishing issue as a tech support problem. You might want to check the inkjet manufacturer’s website to see if they have any support answers about this issue.
Kevin Hanscom Says: April 2nd, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Hello,
How do you get your printer to print every book cover the same? and
I refill my cartridges. Do you recommend this?
Hamish MacDonald Says: April 3rd, 2007 at 4:21 am
I used a page-layout program to design my cover, and I print from that to my DeskJet. They look the same each time because… well, they’re supposed to.

What I really wouldn’t recommend to anyone is creating a picture of your cover (that is, put all the elements together in an image-editing program like Photoshop, and printing that as the cover. Then the printer is no longer dealing with text as text, but as pixels, and you can run into resolution issues.

Another option is to design the cover in a vector art program. This kind of image-creation software describes the elements in terms of geometric shapes, so that you can scale them to any size and print them without worrying about resolution. The other type of image program is called a bitmap editor, and deals with images as blocks of colour, or pixels, that are fixed at a specific size — such that, if you tried to stretch the image larger, it would start to look like that portrait of Lincoln that’s made up of coloured blocks.

I don’t know if any of this relates to your set-up, because you haven’t said what program you designed your cover in or what elements are involved. But the ‘one big picture’ cover is the commonest design mistake (I made it back in the day, working on a friend’s movie poster, which, having laid it out at a resolution of 72 dots per inch, I discovered could only be printed about 2 inches high).

As for ink cartridges, I go to a shop that exchanges spent ones for refilled ones, which make in vacuum chambers. I used to refill my colour laser cartridges, but that was a terrible mess and involved soldering in a replacement chip — and then I discovered that the coloured toner had a biological component to it, and the guys at the refill shop wear respirators when refilling them — ACK!

There’s nothing I hate more than going to print a job and discovering that one of the colours is missing, so I just let the pros refill my cartridges. They’re about half the cost of a new one, and if they don’t work it’s not my problem, it’s theirs!
Michael Says: April 28th, 2007 at 7:00 am
Check with an attorney on the copyright symbol use in the U.S. who’s practiced in copyright/IP issues.

The reason I say this is a quick comment I overheard an attorney say that, yes, you do own the copyright by just creating a work, but that registering and using the copyright symbol means you can collect statutory damages and other redress that the mere ‘common’ copyright may not afford you.

Failure to register and mark your work presumably means you are not necessarily entitled to protection and redress specified under the statute.

Granted, I heard this comment years and years ago, and copyright practice and law has certainly changed in the interim, so, as I said, give a quick check with a lawyer versed in that practice and they can give you a bit better guidance than even what an informed lay person could.

I do agree that just displaying it once is sufficient. If you’re that touchy about it, draft a non-disclosure agreement and pass it out to everyone you show your work to (and see if anyone signs it!)
Mark Says: May 20th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
If your looking to learn how to do some more traditional binding with raised bands and leather coverings check out the bookbinding books online at http://www.aboutbookbinding.com
Brie Manson Says: August 22nd, 2007 at 9:11 am
I first started bookbinding when I picked up a craft encyclopedia from the 70s at my highschool library. I have made a handful, but recently I started a series of scale model handbound books, about 1.5 by 2.5 inches. So I went back to my research- and found your site.

A lot of it I already knew- that is, about one of the processes of binding the books. But self publishing? Getting a REAL ISBN? Very cool. I will link your site to mine(when it’s done) as a “Here’s how you can, too” kind of resource. Great work!
Hamish MacDonald Says: August 22nd, 2007 at 9:31 am
Thanks very much, Brie.

Yeah, I must say that I love making little wee hardcover books. My handwriting is miniscule, so they’re actually useful for me, but other people seem really taken with them, too. There’s just something cute and twee about them — aside from the fact that most people don’t think of books as something you can actually make yourself.

But the ISBN-registered books are paperbacks. They take a fraction of the time a hardcover takes to make — about half an hour now, since I’ve got my process pretty refined now.

I’d love to see that Seventies craft encyclopaedia. I bet it’s a hoot now. (I say “hoot” in honour of the macrame owls that I just know are featured somewhere in there.)
Victor Grieve Says: September 8th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
The book is written, the printer awaits! Can you tell me the weight of paper most suitable for book printing. I print newsletters (one side) on 80gsm where it is possible to see the printing on the reverse side, so I realise a much heavier paper would be required.

Victor
Hamish MacDonald Says: September 8th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
I actually made a point of buying *cheap* paper, about 70gsm, so that the books wouldn’t be so thick. (Just shy of 500 pages, it’s still a bit of a brick.)

I print with a laser printer, so the toner just sits on top and there’s no issue with bleed-through or the text on the other side of the page being overly visible.
Victor Grieve Says: September 10th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Many thanks, Hamish. My printer is ink-jet. Would you recommend switching to laser for cost and quality (eg. ink and paper)? Your articles are great!

Victor
Hamish MacDonald Says: September 10th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Thanks so much, Victor.

As for using a laser-printer for your inside pages… absolutely! A laser toner cartridge will give you thousands of pages, whereas inkjets are nowhere near as efficient or as fast. And you can likely find an inexpensive laser printer that will do duplexing (printing on both sides), which speeds up the process a lot.

I do still have an inkjet for doing my covers. I’m amazed at the quality you can get from a home printer nowadays.

Power to the people!

(Okay, I’m embarrassed I said that, but I am happy to see it happening in publishing.)
Chet Novicki Says: September 13th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
In reply to Michael’s post about copyright (#96), if someone steals your work you have to sue them, whether you have registered a copyright or not. Having a registered copyright just makes it easier to prove when you wrote the work. And on a different subject, I’ve found Epson printers - the ones that use either DuraBrite or DuraBrite Ultra ink - to be the best for printing on coated stock. The ink is (apparently) waterproof - once dry it won’t smear, even if you wipe it with a damp cloth.
Hamish MacDonald Says: September 14th, 2007 at 4:14 am
Chet, hello! Everyone, this is the guy who produces the great perfect-binding presses (available at GigaBooks.net). You changed my life, man!

One caveat about Epson printers: I bought one recently, and could NOT get it to work at all with my computer, as I’m running Windows Vista. Their Vista drivers are incomplete or something, and after a full day of fighting with it, I finally exchanged it for a Canon printer.

Hopefully this will work the same as my previous HP: I found when I printed on matte or glossy photo paper, the covers could be handled normally and the ink didn’t smear. But as Chet says, the new Epson inks are designed especially to seal the inks into the paper so that they’re reasonably waterproof.
Susan Potocki Says: September 18th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
I have something new I recently discovered to contribute.

I think I mentioned above that I differ in my binding technique from the method given here. The instructions on this website say to cut the sheets first before folding, stacking, and binding them. I fold my sheets first and stack them before cutting them.

To do this I use a really big wooden clamp (that looks like an antique but which I bought at my local big box building supply store) and a very wide 2Â½ inch chisel (as wide as I could get from the big box). I clamp the stack of folios with the edge I want to cut sticking barely above the clamp and then trim all the pages at once with the chisel using the body of the clamp as a guide. It took a little practice but once I got the technique down it’s a LOT faster and produces a cleaner book than cutting individual sheets (especially if you’re printing quartos). The one really important thing is that you need a very sharp chisel. I’m talking beyond hair splitting sharp. Much sharper than they come brand-new from the store; you will need to sharpen it yourself before using it.

Which brings me to my discovery: I recently learned a laughably easy way to quickly achieve the required level of sharpness (and beyond) with just a glass plate, glue, and sandpaper. It’s much easier, cheaper, and a lot faster than sending my chisels out to be sharpened. It’s called the Scary Sharpâ„¢ system, and it fully warrants the â€œscaryâ€. I won’t go into the details because very good instructions can be found here:

http://www.shavings.net/SCARY.HTM

and also elsewhere just by searching for â€œScary Sharpâ€.

I just recently trimmed my first signatures with my new Scary Sharpâ„¢ chisel. It was so fast and easy I couldn’t stop giggling for half an hour. In less than a minute I had cut and trimmed what might have taken me an hour or more cutting the pages individually on the paper guillotine, and the page edges line up beautifully. They line up so well that I am now itching to experiment with gold edging (but I have resisted so far).

I thoroughly recommend this technique to anyone interested in speeding up and improving their book production. Just be REALLY careful with the chisel; you could have a finger off without even knowing it. And the cleanly cut pages might leave a nasty paper cut as well.

Now, as to your printer problem:

The Epson inks and print quality are definitely superior, and (depending on which specific printer you have) surprisingly cheaper. I have little doubt that any printing problem you experienced were the fault of Vista, not your printer; it’s been my unfortunate experience that Vista simply isn’t ready for release (and my experience with Open Source has given me a keen sense for identifying incomplete software), and Vista was not originally created with the end user in mind in any case. You may need to wait a year or more for the Powers-That-Be at Microsoft to fix your problem for you.

Personally, I would have kept the Epson printer and dumped Vista for an older OS. The whole point of our hobby is producing high quality hand-made books (for which we need good printers and good inks), not submitting to Microsoft’s endless cycle of expensive forced upgrades.
Hamish MacDonald Says: September 18th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Thanks for your post about the ’scary-sharp’ chisel. In the end, I put up the money for a blade-arm guillotine (not the crushing kind you see in school photocopy rooms, but basically a sword attached to a small metal platform). I clamp a book in this baby, pull down the arm, and it slices through my 500-page novel like it was butter.

But I can understand if someone doesn’t want to drop the money for that kind of gear, and it isn’t strictly necessary. In fact, I just went in the opposite direction and bought a super-sharp piece of custom-cut ragged lucite for tearing deckle edges. It’s great for making old-looking blank books or treasure maps

I won’t get into the OS religious wars here. Suffice it to say that these machines are great, and make this kind of home production possible in the first place, but every brand and non-brand does ask a lot in terms of expense and maintenance time.
Susan Potocki Says: September 18th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
If you’ve got the money (and already have a duplexing printer), an industrial blade arm guillotine is the way to go for speed, though the chisel and block clamp method still produces cleaner edges.

However, the instructions at the top of the page call for a “rotary-blade guillotine”, not a blade arm (though I now notice you mention industrial guillotines in the Perfect Binding section). I have a rotary blade cutter (made by Fiskars, I think) which I used to use, but I found it very tedious cutting even ten sheets at once (which don’t always cut all the way through). It’s also incapable of cutting anything like a full stack, much less separating bound pages at the folds.

What I was getting at was that the Fold-Stack-Cut order of construction is a lot faster and cleaner than the Cut-Fold-Stack method given here, and a very sharp chisel with a clamp make it not only possible, but also very easy and economical for the home bookbinder (who has better things t spend money on, like duplexing printers). And this Scary Sharpâ„¢ system can quickly and easily give you a chisel sharp enough to make it *really* easy. Of course it does require your software to be able to rotate pages during imposition, but isn’t imposition always the main stumbling block for all self publishers? Also, depending on your guillotine, you can probably also use the Scary Sharpâ„¢ system to bring its edge up to snuff.

As to OS Wars, that wasn’t really my intent. I’m no Open Source zealot (a lot of them are twits); I think XP is just fine, but I also use Open Source stuff because of it’s attractive price (which lets me spend money instead on more tangible equipment - did I mention duplexing printers?). I’m just confused as to why you’d exchange a printer with significantly more durable inks much better suited to printing covers while keeping an unnecessary “side-grade” OS which is no doubt the actual source of your problem. After all, it’s the printer that ultimately produces your books, not the OS.

I also find it interesting that someone so dedicated to helping people liberate themselves from the perversities of the publishing industry would be so willing to make an accomodation like you have to the perversities of the commercial software industry. But then I work with machinists who are still using DOS because it still works for them (and the machinery they work with is better than the newer stuff driven by newer operating systems), so maybe my perspective as to the necessity of “upgrades” is a little different from yours.
Susan Potocki Says: September 18th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Also, Treasure Maps:

Have you tried using a “wood burning kit” (basically a big soldering iron) to blacken and singe the page edges for that “mysterious historical document” look? I’ve found they work great, allowing you to define whatever edge you desire, without the potential risks of using something as random and uncontrollable as a candle or torch.

Now if only I could find a safe and reliable way to artifically fox paper…
Hamish MacDonald Says: September 19th, 2007 at 5:23 am
I guess my original intention in writing this was, initially, to give people a way to bind their own work that wouldn’t require extra or expensive equipment. That was about a year and a half ago, and since then my own production system at home has evolved and become more complex — yet simpler, as I’ve acquired specific tools for specific tasks.

There’s nothing I’d rather spend money on than expanding my creative capabilities, so it’s a priority for me. But I understand if someone doesn’t have those resources or doesn’t make bookbinding a priority. Or if they want to do any of these steps their own way — great! Whatever works for you. I’m sure there are dozens of different ways to get to the same result, and I thank you for sharing one of yours with the community here.

~

Why do I use Windows? Because I’m a huge fan of mobile computing, and no other mobile computer/synchronisation technology is as mature as Windows Mobile.

I used to use a Newton, but Mr Jobs decided that nobody wanted a “scribble pad” and killed off the line, even though it was a beautiful OS. And the iPhone is not the computer people are trying to hack it into being; it’s a browsing/messaging/music device.

I love being able to put my office in my pockets and be able to work anywhere, and I also need to know that the chapter I just wrote (not to mention my contacts, to-dos, etc) are going to synchronise properly and not get lost. I’m sure there are third-party hacks to synchronise with other OSes, but I’d rather use the one out of the box that I can trust.

Likewise, when I switched to Windows from Mac, it was like waking up one morning and not being gay: suddenly the world was made for me. I realise there are those who think that’s a betrayal of all things independent, but as far as I’m concerned my computer is just a machine, a tool, not an identity or an affiliation.

I paid for Vista, and have been paying for all the software I use commercially for the past year (which felt much more in line with my personal standards), so I wasn’t going to just write off that money, and sure enough, the glitches are settling down and it’s just working for me. Great: I just want the machine to be there and work.

If somebody has the time and the inclination to learn how to unpack ‘tarballs’ and configure things from a command-line in Ubuntu and find community-created applications because they enjoy doing that or it’s important to them, great. But I’m not interested in fighting with my system to get it to approximate what existing software already does. I just use the industry-standard programs my copywriting clients do, and everything’s easy. I’m happy there are people working to open up standards and create free alternatives, but that’s not my battle.

This is coming up lately, the question of whether I’m “independent enough” (despite the fact that I bind my novels in my bedroom, receive no corporate support for doing so, and don’t really exist on the publishing radar). I’d rather others not focus on me but take that energy and use it to package up their own work and put it out into the world.
Susan Potocki Says: September 21st, 2007 at 11:16 pm
It’s me again. I think maybe I’m continuing to be insufficiently clear. I’m not suggesting you keep the good Epson printer with it’s superior inks and use it with an Open Source system. Instead, I’m suggesting you might have kept the Epson printer and used it with fully functional and proven Windows XP.

I don’t blame you or anyone for using commercial software. I’ll be honest, what you don’t pay in dollars to use free software you do pay in mental effort and frustration. What I am confused by is why you would specifically forego a superior printer simply to use Windows VISTA. Windows XP continues to work quite well, and I have yet to see a compelling reason to pay to upgrade to Vista, while at the same time I’ve seen some very good reasons (such as your printer driver problems) to stay with XP.
Hamish MacDonald Says: September 22nd, 2007 at 5:02 am
What can I say? My gear works. I’m happy that it produces a quality result. If something else works for you, super.
Angela Holmes-Merritt Says: September 30th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Really enjoyed your site. I’ve just completed my first full color children’s book and couldn’t believe the cost for getting it printed through a PoD service. Your article and the links have really inspired me to try and produce it myself.
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 1st, 2007 at 10:02 am
Thanks, Angela. Your project sounds great. If nothing else, DIY publishing will give you a prototype to generate further interest, and the ability to give copies to the friends and family you really want to share it with.
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 3rd, 2007 at 2:24 pm
If anyone happens to be in the Edinburgh area, on Sunday, 28 October, I’ll be giving a free perfect-binding tutorial at The Radical Book Fair.

You can find details about this and other events at the Fair here:
http://www.word-power.co.uk/book_fair
DDay/Jasy books Says: October 6th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I think your article on home publishing is fantastic.
I’ve spent over 20 years trying to interest publishers
literally all over the world in my various works.
Now me and my wife and kids have decided to go it alone. I have written a book of Rhyme and illustrations for kids, and am currently working on an adult rhyming book too. Your advice is an inspiration to all new and old authors. Jsy wish publishers would catch up. Thanx
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 6th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Aww, thanks! That’s really nice to hear.

I was at a small press fair at the Scottish Poetry Library today, where one presenter talked about his experiences of publishing poetry through the years. This involved setting up rows of type letter by letter, typing words on to metal plates, squishing around messy jellied inks, hand-cranking presses… It gave me a real appreciation for how easy it is for us to produce work now.
Lea Sorensen Says: October 7th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
I wanted to again thank you for doing your website.My last entery to you was #36 nearly a year ago. I wanted to show you how my books turned out etc etc. I ended up stapling them because of the shortness of the books they turned out all so very well!!
I continue reading replies that everyone has put…It shows we’ve all ran into something or other and manage to get through it. Thanks again!
Lea
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 8th, 2007 at 7:35 am
Thanks very much! Yeah, I’m very happy that this article is still being noticed and (hopefully) helping people see the options that are available to them.

One self-interested note to make, though, is that this *website* was created by author/filmmaker/games designer/friendly-guy Jim Munroe, whereas the article was written by me, author and micropress publisher Hamish MacDonald (http://www.hamishmacdonald.com).
DDay/Jasy books Says: October 8th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Just wanted to let you know that we tried and succeeded with your plan on our first 2 mock up books.
They worked fine, and we’re now ready to press on so to speak. Will update you in a few months and hopefully send you a first ed of the book entitled “Rhymes for all times” best wish’s DDay and kids.
Bruce Siggson Says: October 19th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
I have really enjoyed and learned quite a bit from reading all these postings. Just thought I’d add something for those of us who use Macs… there’s a lovely little piece of software called CocoaBooklet which will let you take a pdf file and make it into a booklet. A booklet is a book that’s folded in the middle. I’ve used it to make booklets of all sizes and lengths and it works great and it’s free (donations accepted).
http://www.iconus.ch/fabien/cocoabooklet/
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 20th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
I was having trouble sending in comments here, so I just posted a bunch of information I just found on my blog, here:
http://www.hamishmacdonald.com/blog/?p=151
Jeff Potter Says: October 23rd, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Hi! Great NMK article! (and discussion!) Is there an easy way to trim the outer margin nicely for a saddlestitch book?

One that’s, say, 20-40 pages thick?

My usually-good lever-arm paper-cutter MANGLES these kinds of cuts. This is a small job.

I don’t want to buy a pro paper guillotine. Well, I do, but haven’t yet. Do I need one?

This NMK report shows a pic of a rule and blade for the “minimum”—will that really work? My hunch is that there’s a TRICK out there to make this cinchy. (I posted this at Hamishville also.)
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 23rd, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Hi there, Jeff.

Yeah, good question. When I was doing hard-case binding at first, I was actually filing the pages down. Itâ€™s a bit rubbish, to be honest.

Iâ€™ve also tried using a craft blade/scalpel to try to do the job, which is worse.

One person who wrote in to the NMK website said that she was using a wood-plane to do the job. But 20-40 pages â€” that might not be thick enough.

I printed up the publishing e-book I was talking about here and was reading it again tonight, and noticed itâ€™s actually a bit light on tips about actual binding techniques, and just shows one. Oops. So I kinda feel like I need to print a retraction here. Chet Novicki, who makes the hand-binding press that’s sold at GigaBooks.net also sells a book showing quite clearly how to do perfect binding (which doesn’t specifically require his presses). His is the technique I’ve been using, though now I’m going to also try working with a heavy-duty stapler instead of glue.

Anyway, back to your point. The website e-book did suggest using small signatures, though, as a way to reduce how much the pages stick out. But I presume youâ€™re already using signatures and not just sewing the thing down the middle, right? If not, thatâ€™s something to try.
Chet Novicki Says: October 23rd, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Re Jeff’s question about trimming the outer edge of booklets. Some Kinko’s and other large copy shops/quick print shops offer trimming services. Usually they charge by the cut, so you could get several 20-40 pages thick
books trimmed at once, reducing the cost to a few cents
per book. And if you’re looking for the best price on a manual clamping cutter (in the US) try factory-express.com. I have a Martin Yale 7000E I bought from them a few years back. They were as much as $200 cheaper than other places I looked. Also, eBay has clamping cutters for sale from time to time, sometimes for as little as $100. Usually these require some minor repairs and blade sharpening.
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 23rd, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Chet! Long time…

Now here’s a man I owe a lot to! Your perfect-binding press is what made it possible for me to now produce my own perfect-bound novels in about half an hour each. And, just to clarify what I wrote above for others, Chet’s book also demonstrates the “invisible staple” binding method I’m about to learn (though not today, because apparently when you buy a stapler they don’t give you any staples).

Here’s a sample of what I’m producing now, with a big shout out to my man, Chet:

http://www.hamishmacdonald.com/blog_images/booksample.jpg
Joao Santos Says: October 25th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Very complete article. Thanks.
Francesca Says: November 22nd, 2007 at 8:06 am
Hamish, I am a former educator and first time author seeking someone to publish my 14 page children’s book in cardstock boardbook pages. I cannot seem to find any self publisher that will publish boardbooks, and this is vital for it’s durability and longevity. The picture book is targeted for children toddlers through age 10. Are you interested? Do you know others who would be? The sooner I find the right publishing match, the sooner I will be able to market it! Let me know? Thanks. Have a great day.
Martha Colmore Says: November 29th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Hi Hamish- I need to make 25 smallish books for Christmas present project. What would be the best method? where do I start? How much time?
Thank you
Martha
Hamish MacDonald Says: November 29th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Hmm, it’s hard to know, since I’ve not seen your project, but here are a few options:

- folded and stacked single sheets, stapled down the spine, then covered with a piece of card that’s glued to the front and back pages, and scored so it’ll open nicely

- a booklet of nested pages with holes punched through the spine and cover then sewn, or stapled through the spine with a cover glued on

It all depends how thick the books are, but these are the two methods for binding that come to my mind.
Michelle Says: December 3rd, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I read in one of your comments you stopped using the spray varnish. I have mine bond and ready to print cover (Heavy Card Stock Glossy)but I cant figure out what I can put on it to make last the wear and tare aside from varnish.
Hamish MacDonald Says: December 3rd, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Yeah, I just used that briefly because it actually messed up the colour laser toner in my covers at the time.

Since then, I’ve switched to printing my covers with a regular home photo printer on matte or glossy photo paper, and the result looks great and is pretty durable.

I’m not sure how commercial printers apply their matte or glossy varnishes to covers, but it seems to be a completely different process to the spray art stuff we get.

Ha. I guess what I’m saying is I have no insight whatsoever on this! Sorry.
Chet Novicki Says: December 3rd, 2007 at 4:02 pm
re Michelle’s post about what to put on her covers - don’t want to sound too commercial (since I sell the stuff) but self-adhesive laminating film is an easy way to do this. Library folks claim it will increase the lifespan of a circulated paperback 4-5 times.
Michelle Says: December 3rd, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Thanks Hamish for the quick reply! The paper I have for the cover looks very nice I just may go with that.

Thanks Chet I will consider looking into that more. Its kinda sad I have friends that work at the university library but I never thought to ask….
Sarah Elizabeth Says: December 5th, 2007 at 11:42 am
I came to this site because I want to print and hand-bind some exhibition catalogs for my gallery. You give a lot of great info. Thanks!
Paul Says: December 13th, 2007 at 6:11 am
You are a LEGEND!!! thank you for so much wonderful help, from my heart this is the best website I have ever had the fortune to discover, (and i’ve spent months trawling, believe me)
Hamish MacDonald Says: December 20th, 2007 at 9:06 am
I received this response about copyright and wanted to pass it along:

- - - - -

Mr. MacDonald:

I was looking at your article on “Do It Yourself Book Press” found on No Media Kings. Overall, it is an excellent article and I found it very interesting. There are, however some inaccuracies regarding
copyright you may want to correct.

1. “One copyright mark at the beginning of the book is sufficient.”
Actually the 1976 Copyright Act retracted formalistic procedures such as a copyright notice. While one mark is sufficient, it is not even necessary (although certainly no harm can come from it).

2. “How do you register your copyright? You don’t need to.” Well, yes, and no. One does not need to register the copyright to receive copyright protection; that is true. As you noted, “The moment you create an original work, you hold the copyright to it.” On the other hand, one does need to register a copyright to file an infringement suit.

3. “If you really feel paranoid, you can mail a copy to yourself or someone else and keep it sealed. The post-mark will officially place your work at a point in time.” This ifallacy has a hard time dying. It’s simply not true and would be frowned upon by a court. Besides:
(a) fixing the moment of creation is usually not an issue in copyright cases’ and, (b) the copyright needs to be registered to file an infringement suit. If someone is really paranoid, my advice would be to spend the $35 on registration.

4. “In lieu of copyright, you might consider protecting your work with a Creative Commons license.” A Creative Commons license does not exist in lieu of a copyright; it coexists with the copyright. As you
correctly noted, “The moment you create an original work, you hold the copyright to it.” Therefore the work is copyrighted whether the author likes it or not - there is no way to “un-copyright” the work.
The Creative Commons license governs how people use another’s copyrighted work. It is a license precisely because the work is copyrighted.

Things might be slightly different in Scotland, but since both the U.S. and Scotland are signatories to the Berne Convention and WIPO, substantively they are similar.

I hope you find this useful.

Very truly yours,

Martin W. Klingmeyer, MSL
United States
Hamish MacDonald Says: December 20th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Jim received this comment via e-mail, passed it along to me, and I’m passing it on here. I haven’t seen the program mentioned, so I can’t give any advice about it.

> Joseph Francis wrote:
> Have you ever tried Ventura Publisher? I find it to be the
best book publishing
> program. It makes Microsoft Word look like the joke it is.
> Features includes Table of Contents, index and figure
generation. It also has
> built in imposition tools.
> I am currently using a Brother duplexing laser printer (model
HL5250). This
> printer prints 30 pages per minute with auto duplexing. Cost
me under $200.
> I use an Epson inkjet for color covers. I have tried both
overprinting spray
> and laminating. My current choice is uncoated cover stock.
Coated cover stock
> is too likely to smear. I perfect bind my books. In use a
simple woodworking
> clamp (under $20) to hold books for gluing. Three knife trim
makes it a real
> book. Cutter is absolute necessity to make a real book.
Annie Says: December 27th, 2007 at 6:06 am
Whoa! This is a very inspiring read. You’ve enlightened me to the numerous options available out there that i didn’t know about before. Simply brilliant! i’m definitely keeping a tab on this!
FabiÃ¡n Says: December 28th, 2007 at 1:20 am
Thanks to share all your knowledge about book crafting, men you really inspire me, and give me the strength of finish my first novel. Greetings from Costa Rica
Faiz Says: January 3rd, 2008 at 11:37 am
You gave a very illustrative step by step procedure. It becomes very easy when you can see the pictures along with instructions.

Good Work
Hamish Says: January 6th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Until coming accross this site i didn’t realize that home bookbinding was possible.

My question is this:
I want to print out my text using my monochrome laser printer and have my illustrations printed on the same pages with my photo inkjet printer. Which software will allow me to achieve proper alignment? Also will there be trouble with using laser paper with inkjet printer or vice versa?
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 7th, 2008 at 4:28 am
I saw a trick in something I read recently for getting colour images into black and white pages: print the pages once to the laser printer, but tell your program that the illustration is a “non-printing object” (if you program allows for this; the major page-layout software packages do). Then run the pages through your colour printer, only make the illustration printable and change your text to white.

It’s fiddly, but that’s the only way I’ve seen so far to do this.

As for paper, the colour printer is going to need a finer finish on it (so that the ink doesn’t bleed), whereas the laser printer will print fairly crisply on anything. You could, perhaps, use a finer finish paper just for the illustration pages, since it tends to be more expensive.
chris Lafferty Says: January 9th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Hi Hamish,

What size paper do you use and what size is the end product of your paperback. I’m assuming that you print on A4 cut in half then fold, which would give your end result a measurement of around 105mm Width and 150mm Height, or do you use a different size paper to A4.

Many thanks Chris
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 9th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Yeah, I use A4 chopped in half then folded. I’ve had a number of readers say that they really like the size this produces — something fairly pocketable. (Okay, except that my last book was on the lengthy side, so it’s pocketable in the way a brick is.)
chris Lafferty Says: January 9th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Cool, thanks for the quick reply…
Theo Says: January 10th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Hi all, great posts and info here. Well done. I have been home-printing and making books for a while now. I use programs such as Open Office, MS Publisher, GIMP, etc depending on what I am doing and for printout I use the excellent Fineprint utility, which I gather is like Clickbook utility. For binding I have a Dahle reamcutter which cuts up to 550 pages at a time. My printer is a Cannon i865 (love it!) which I have set up with bulk inktanks (Continuous Ink Supply - cost about AUD$65) and ink savings of some 90%. Refilling is too easy and less frequent and hardly any purging! To bind my 291 pages books I use a Fellowes 250 Thermal Binder - initially with the recommended glue sheets cut to size but am now working with hot-melt glue which is even cheaper. I can (background) print around 100 books a day whilst I do other computer tasks and bind about 40-50 books a day. I think using contact glue may be slightly stronger and will try this next. For larger runs I have a Risograph GR3550 printer which will print in single colour at 120 pages per minute….in case I need to do a run of 10,000-250,000. I understand there are gold and silver inks around also. regards, Theo
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 10th, 2008 at 4:59 am
Wow, Theo, you’re doing this on a whole other scale. Thanks for sharing all the details of your setup.

One question about the thermal binder: I looked at these a while back and am still not clear about how they work. Do you have to use “thermal covers” on them? (Which seem to be pre-folded covers at set sizes with a glue strip already integrated in them.)

I ask because my books are all different lengths, and I print my own covers, so this wouldn’t work for me. Or can you bind in-between sized books with your own paper? It sounds like that’s what you’re doing, but I’m not sure how that works with the hot glue (since that seems to come in long cylinders).

Could you say a bit more about this part of your process? This sounds like it could be handy — faster than manually clamping and gluing pages (which is still a fiddly, imperfect process for me, even though I’m more experienced with it now).
Theo Says: January 10th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Hi Hamish, thanks for the reply. The thermal binders require ‘glue sheets’ especially made for them. They can be cut to any size you require. They are a plastic compound designed for book binding and it melts in the binder, which is basically a “toaster” with the element just on the bottom only. There are demos on UTube of how they work. For my 291 page books they take about 30 seconds to melt and then you stand them on the edge for 5 minutes to cool while you make more in the meantime. I ran out of glue sheets material and have been trying hto melt glue, but it is not as strong, although much cheaper. Yes, you can buy pre-glued covers but they are too expensive for me. Itt is easy to make you own, much the same way as outlined in your posts. The finished product is similar in every way to commercial paperbacks. But I have yet to find gloss 200-250gsm cover paper that I can use with my Canon inkjet printer. (in Australia) I have already printed some 600 books (listed on my website for free). But, I am always eager to find even better ways of doing things so I will keep an eye on this forum for ideas, etc. By the way, for a good laugh I recommend everyone read about the Scary-Sharp article listed above…(that sharp it splits atoms?!) Regards all, Theo&Robyn
chris Lafferty Says: January 16th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Hi Hamish,

I have just bought Clickbook and am looking to print my books in the same way as you. A4 folded twice. What layout do you use to achive this in clickbook, as i can’t seemed to get the layout right on my mac. Hope you can help.

Many thanks Chris.
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 17th, 2008 at 5:20 am
Hi Chris. I use the layout “4-up book (folded)”. Under Layouts/Modify layouts, make sure that “Sub-booklets” is checked and the value there is 4 pages per section, if you want separate sheets (otherwise they’ll all have to nest into each other like a booklet, which gets unwieldy if you have too many pages).
Cathy Says: January 31st, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Thank you for your tips on how to publish books yourself, I was once worried that I may never get my work published. Also, I was led to belive that it would cost me a fortune to do it myself. Thanks again!
Jim Buckley Says: January 31st, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Superb article and links from those leaving feedback! I must try the scary-sharp method of trimming pages! In the past I have hand stitched the signatures to my hardback books, and perfect bound softbacks. I have married the 2 techniques - I perfect bind the bookblocks, make a hardback book case and using endpapers and cheesecloth or scrim I glue the endpapers to the case. This way I get the durable hinge of a glue soaked scrim spine with a hard cover with the speed (and perfect edges) of perfect binding. When I get around to getting my website live I’ll write a fuller, illustrated, how-to.

Whilst on the subject of hardcovers - I have discovered inkjet printable canvas. I can now produce full colour covers to my books with a fabric hardcover. (On my A3 canon printer). To protect the ink from smudging and water damage I use an inkjet fixative spray (Ghiant make one in matt, satin or glossy) which also helps protect from finger marking! I also make dust-covers using self adhesive laminate to make the seperate pieces of paper used appear like one! - I really must get out more!! hehehehe
Mary Vono Says: February 7th, 2008 at 11:14 am
This web site is almost too good to be true. I have been searching for information like this for awhile and I just got very lucky by finding you.
Thanks for all of your hard work.
Hamish MacDonald Says: February 7th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Thanks, folks, for your very kind words here. It’s most gratifying to think of contributing something to all these projects getting created out there!
Theo Says: February 8th, 2008 at 2:12 am
Hi everyone,
Look what I bumped into….
http://www.fastbind.com.au
Awesome. See the videos too on utube.
Also, do a search on MEMJET if you want to see the future of printing in action.
Can’t wait for these printers to become available!
However, I still get good and fast results with my thermal binder and hot-melt glue, which is also suitable for repairing books.
I did 50 x 291 page books yesterday.
Regards to everyone.
Donald Ward Says: February 15th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I’m on a Mac and using Illustrator 10. I have a 20 page book planned. What kind of production is involved and what would I need to give a publisher? Are Inkjet pages
proper to make and give physically or electronically? May electrtonically be hard to transmit due to resolution transmission?
Hamish MacDonald Says: February 15th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Donald, an inkjet will be fine for proofs or samples, but if the publisher decides to take on the production of your book, they will most certainly ask for digital versions of your illustrations.

The resolution remains unchanged when sending digital files, whereas every time your print your illustration and it’s scanned in, the quality will degrade.

I hope I understood your question, and that my answer is of some help.
doreen murgatroyd Says: March 20th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Hi - I came across your website looking for information on how to make a book press. Did you know that there is a free desktop publishing programme called Scribus. (Type Scribus into a search engine) It works for me, and I’m just above a beginner in creating books. I don’t know if it has a tutorial with it though. For someone on a budget, it’s worth a try.
Jennifer Long Says: April 18th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Hello! I am a former magazine publisher and even though I have sold my business, I cannot get over my love of bound paper. Since I had a large operation, I was not intimately involved in the printing process — and it involved very different tools anyway. So I thought it might be fun to make a few hard bound books myself, using a combination of colored silk handmade papers and a thicker handmade cotton paper as the main elements. Initially, I scored, folded and tore the sheets to get the unfinished edges I wanted. I then assembled them into signatures, clamped them together and used a saw to make the holes to sew the signatres together.

None of this required more than hand tools.

However, now that I am editing my grandmother’s autobiography, I want the nice tight results discussed in this forum — rather than the artsy books I was doing before.

My questions revolve around ClickBook and the paper folding machines. Since I want this book to have 9 foios per signature (each folio will be a letter-sized (8.5 x 11) sheet folded in half (4 pages per folio), will ClickBook allow me to assign these details?

My second question, RE paper folding machines, is that I cannot find one that will allow me to fold more than 3 folios at once. This is a pain since the book has about 450 pages and a signature with 12 pages (4 pages per folio x 3 folios) will amount to 38 signatres that I will need to sew. That’s toooooooo much sewing. Assigning 9 folios per signature means sewing 13 signatures — but I can handle that. I don’t want to fold 3 sets of 3 and then fit them together because the interior-most sheet of paper has a tight crease that will not conform around a folio nested inside it very well.

Anyway, I thought I might contribute a few of my own resources since I am interested in fine binding, not just a way to “get my work out there.”

Books (in order of my preference):
- Author Rosati, Paola.
Title Bookbinding basics / Paola Rosati.
Publication info. New York : Sterling ; London : Orion, 2001

- Author Cambras, Josep.
Title The complete book of bookbinding / Josep Cambras.
Publication info. New York : Lark Books, c2004

This is a great tutorial with photos that go through the different steps.
http://www.davethedesigner.net/booktut/index.html
Hamish MacDonald Says: April 20th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Hi Jennifer. Thanks what you’ve contributed here. That bookbinding tutorial is really clear — I like it!

As for ClickBook, yeah, it can do imposition for a vast array of projects, from tiny wee books to multi-page posters. Letter-sized folded in half will be no problem for it at all.

You can assign it to put a varying number of pages on a sheet, then also tell it to divide the book into a certain number of sub-booklets (their term for folios). There’s a math to the pages that’ll fit on a sheet (has to be a multiple of eight for you to not get blank pages), but how many pages are in a folio should be up to you. It might take some experimenting.

The paper-folder I have is from Martin-Yale, and it’s really designed for direct mail-type jobs, like a gatefold pamphlet. I’ve had to fiddle with it quite a bit to get it to do a dsingle fold on an A4-sized sheet. Now that I have, though, it’s immensely helpful. I’m sure you could do the same for your letter-sized project.

This machine folds pages one by one, and can take up to fifty sheets in its tray at a time. It doesn’t make folios per se, you’d have to assemble those afterward.

The paper-folder wasn’t cheap, and it is fiddly getting it to fold the pages evenly, so you may still want to fold the pages by hand, depending on how many of these books you wanted to produce.

Good luck with the project!
Clay Says: April 20th, 2008 at 9:12 am
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned here before, but I had real problems with the paperfolder because after printing with the laser printer the 50 or so stack of pages became somewhat warped and the paper folder did not perform well at all. It turned out to actually occupy more time due to having to reprint ruined pages. Another observation, one of my books had 300 pages and the large staples required to do the binding (which was too firm for a book that size with staples) were hit and miss as far as actually properly going through all of those pages. After about 15 books the stapler broke altogether - I could still use it for smaller staples but not the real long ones. In short, fold by hand and forget the staples for thick books. Extra glue is a better option. This book-making process is fine for making a small number of books, but if it looks like the book will sell on a large scale, its time to have a factory put the books together.
Theo Says: April 20th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Hi everyone. If anyone uses a folding machine then a hint is to wait (overnight) after printing before folding to let the paper dry/cool off and settle. It makes life so much easier. Another mention of ‘Fineprint’ program. I do all my printing via this driver. You really need to check this out. All my books are put out through this great utility. Go to Google and find ‘fineprint’. And I love the http://www.davethedesigner.net/booktut/index.html flash tutorial. Awesome! I will do this when I get time. If anyone wants our excellent free book to download you can get it here http://www.go-ers.org/HeLovesMe.html
God bless you all.
Lauren Says: May 9th, 2008 at 5:47 am
This is a great article but what i don’t get is why yo have to cut the pages in half. If I just print the pages straight off Word as A4 sized sheets it’s all in separate pages. I don’t really want to make the book smaller by cutting it in half. So can you explain why … ? Thanks.
Hamish MacDonald Says: May 11th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I started off cutting the pages in half simply because that’s the only way I could then also print a cover at home that would fit around it (US Legal size will wrap nicely around US Letter pages folded in half, but the next size up from A4 in the ISO/European paper sizes is far too big to print on a home printer).

Since then, several people have commented on liking the size of the half-A4 format, which seems to be nice and pocketable/messengerbaggable.
Leanette Says: July 11th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I love this blog and your personal site. I have a question about you experience with Aardvark for buying ISBN numbers. Have you had any problems with buying the ISBN number from them? My understanding is that Aardvark is the publisher of record when you buy an ISBN from them. How does this affect the writer’s rights? Do you know if this might create problems with selling publishing rights to a comercial publisher later?
Hamish MacDonald Says: July 13th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Thanks!

Yeah, it looks like you’re right about Aardvark being listed as the publisher. They state that you retain all rights and control, so I suppose it doesn’t matter; you’d have complete freedom to do whatever you wanted with the title, including selling it to a publisher.

Some people like the idea of a third-party name appearing on their books, and Jim invites people to use the No Media Kings ‘label’ if they feel they need one. But it’s still a bit weird that they do this unless you buy the more expensive self-publisher’s package.

Personally, I’m going to buy a string of ISBNs for myself in the UK from Nielsen Book Data; if you’re in Canada you can get them from the National Library. In the US it seems you have to use one of a number of commercial sources. I’d say “be picky”, but you already seem to have an eagle eye for details like the ones you caught on the Aardvark page.
Leanette Says: July 14th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Thank you, Hamish. I’m still not sure of what to do but your response was helpfull. Sometimes I find that I am too picky, a condition that all to often end in procrastination <– a demon that I need to exersize from time to time.
At present I’m working on a hardcover version of my book, Project War God — I don’t expect to make more than few of them so I won’t be needing an ISBN number for it but if I’m successful at making the paperbacks (I want to be a paperback writer [shameless Beatle song referance]) then I will need the ISBN - though, I’m tempted to be a nonconformist and publish without it.
As an aside; I found some photo print paper that is made to look like artist canvas. I printed my book cover, just the front, on this and I’m hoping to us it on my hardcover book.
And lastly, Thank you Hamish for all your help. I am soooo happy I found this site with all your wonderful advise. Many Kudos to ya.

PS: I volunteer at a local Community TV station (CCTV54) in Colorado, I’m on the Board, I direct live shows and just about everything else that is needed in putting together a live show. My reason for mentioning this is to entend an invation to you for an interview. So if you are ever in Colorado look us up, or write to me, and we’ll put you on the air. We a are small INDI enterprise so this is no be deal but it would be fun. You can check us out on youtube - just search on CCTV54 or check us out at http://www.cctv54.org
Hamish MacDonald Says: July 15th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Hey, thank *you*, Leanette! I’m about to self-publish my fourth novel, and I gotta tell you, I still find it a challenge to muster the gumption to do it. So your feedback means a great deal to me, and reminds me of what’s important about doing this myself and telling other people how to do their own thing, too!

Good luck!
Suzanne Says: August 15th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I hope this isn’t too intrusive but do you make a full-time living printing your own books and, if so, did it take a long to time for the price of the equipment to covered by book sales? You mentioned that major bookstores won’t sell PoD books. Do they sell your self-published efforts? Have you had any feedback from them on the quality of your books versus their general standard?

Finally, have you thought of doing a seminar and getting some of these folks in the same room to trade ideas and to demonstrate your process? Thanks! Suzanne
Hamish MacDonald Says: August 15th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Hi there, Suzanne. Okay, so, to tackle your questions in order:

1) God no, I don’t make my living from selling novels. I get my main income from being a copywriter — writing newsletters, articles, and marketing copy. The novels are a labour of love, about sharing ideas and imagination; there’s no measuring return on investment there. I don’t bother calculating any of that stuff. (I do keep receipts and write it off, though!)

2) I’ve recently read an interesting editorial by one writer flying in the face of what you’d expect about bookstores, saying that he found small stores wouldn’t carry his books because they didn’t think they could sell them, while apparently Waterstone’s (a large chain in the UK)allows its individual store managers to make their own judgment calls about what books they order, to a certain degree.

I’ve had my last book in a indie shop here, but frankly, I’m not bothering this time because it’s up to me to check and see if they need to be restocked and to chase them for the money they owe me, and they haven’t really done anything to promote my novels, because they’re more interested in angry political stuff. Fair enough.

When I finished writing my first book in Toronto, a friend slipped me the e-mail address of the owner of Canada’s biggest chain. I e-mailed, and she said they’d carry my book. They didn’t in reality until I got a distributor, then her underlings were actually able to act on her promise. (They generally aren’t equipped to set up accounts with individuals.) Alas, that distributor no longer exists.

I sell the most books when I do readings. I’m not sure what’s at work there, but it seems there are more “sales conversions” when the work is backed up by a personality or presence. I guess that makes sense: if you read half-decently, and from the introduction and general chat, people will get a sense of the tone of the book and whether or not it’s for them. It’s something to go on, as opposed to nothing — which is the other challenge: not just getting the book onto the bookshelves, but off again!

I just attended a ‘zine and small press fair here in Edinburgh — which I was very happy to see happen in this city. CanZine was such a huge affair when I lived in Toronto, and it seemed we had no equivalent here. That seems to be changing. I was the only ‘zine novelist — most of the other material was comics or commentary — but the crowd was very receptive to what I was doing. So I’d recommend any events like that for sales.

3) Feedback on my books versus the general standard — no. And I wouldn’t be particularly interested in that. My books are different from what’s on the stand — they’re close, but they’re imperfect, and the dimensions are different. Readers have told me they really like the format, and with my most recent book I actually went out of my way to make it *look* handmade, and the people at the ‘zine fair I mentioned really went for it, and I sold out, meaning five copies of the new novel, one of the previous one, and a couple of blank art books, just to give you an idea of the numbers here. (Read: “Don’t quit your day job” and “Do it for love”.)

Before I was trying to match what was on the shelves, but now I realise there’s acres of that if people want it; what they’re hungry for is originality and ‘realness’. So trying to compete or compare — I don’t think there’s any joy to be had from that activity.

4) I have done some workshops about writing, hardcover binding, and paperback binding. As for gathering people together from these boards, I don’t think it’s possible because we’re from a pleasantly surprising variety of far-flung places. I’m in Scotland, so if you think you might be in these parts, I’ve got a sign-up on my website now (hamishmacdonald.com), ’cause I want to offer workshops more regularly.

While I’m keen to get my work out into the world — like my new novel, Finitude, which I call a “lighthearted climate change adventure story about an insurance salesman at the end of the world” (sorry, had to plug) — I’m equally excited about helping other people produce their own work and get it out.

I hope that was helpful. All the best,
- Hamish
http://www.hamishmacdonald.com
Suzanne Says: August 16th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
How nice of you to take the time to answer and keep up this helpful site. Blessings to you.
Andrew Says: August 22nd, 2008 at 1:23 pm
there’s another, free imposition program available now. here’s the link to the mac version: http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/Cheap-Impostor-Download-7726.html
Hamish MacDonald Says: September 24th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
I’ve just switched to a Mac, and I have to second Andrew’s commendation of Cheap Impostor. It’s well worth paying for the extra feature set (which lets you move your text around the page, add a gutter, zoom the text up or down, and choose different paper sizes.

ClickBook exists for the Mac, but the jobs I sent to my laser printer from the program kept making the printer spaz out and forget what it was doing partway into the job.

Also really liking Pages, which you can do your inside pages *and* cover in for a pretty reasonable price.
Melanie J Says: October 2nd, 2008 at 10:04 am
Thanks for your fabulous posting here. I wondered if I could ‘cheat’ a bit by having Kinkos, a local print shop here in USA, ‘book bind’ the letter size sheets of my book. What they do is drill tiny holes along the edge and put a black plastic strip with tiny fingers that go into the holes, that they tightly fuse to another strip on the other side, effectively binding it. I’d just have them drill the tiny holes, toss the plastic strips and then stitch the sheets together. I’d proceed from that step to sealing the spine and attaching the cover. I really want to make my book letter size so that I won’t have to bother cutting the sheets– I can print them out or copy them and immediately bind them. I want the books to last a long time and have looked at professional Thesis binders, but I’d really like to do them myself. They will be about 70-80 sheets to bind, and I’ll be publishing 15 to start with. It’s a crazy idea, but I wonder if it would work. The holes would be really close to the edge, and it seems to hold up pretty well when they bind things that way. Thanks!
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 3rd, 2008 at 10:06 am
I’m trying to picture this. So you’re talking about wiro-binding the manuscript then putting a cover over it? Oh, gotcha, but then using a heavy linen threat or something to replace that.

Hrm, well, it might work, but the pages will fight being opened because this kind of binding will hold them tightly together side-by-side, where most bookbinding stitches the pages together outward from the spine.

If you go this route, the trick will be to create a good, wide gutter in your word processing or page layout program so the text doesn’t get lost in the narrow valley between the opened pages.

The other challenge is fixing the cover to the “book block” you create by stitching the pages. If you glue endpapers and a cover over what you’ve described, you’d be creating another obstacle to opening it up. Instead, maybe you’d want to look into Japanese “stab-stitch” binding — which operates along principles very close to what you’ve described. It consists of making two covers, each with a hinge, and stitching your pages to those. The results can be really beautiful.

And specify “wiro” binding, which will made little round holes instead of the wide ones used for plastic “comb” binding — it’ll look nicer, in my opinion.

Good luck!
Hamish MacDonald Says: October 3rd, 2008 at 10:07 am
Hee. I said “threat”. I meant “thread”.

Now I’m picturing WWII propaganda warning us about the Heavy Linen Threat — some kind of frightening race of invaders who wear durable summer suits.
Melanie J Says: October 3rd, 2008 at 3:28 pm
The holes are really small, smaller than the ones in spiral binding, so they shouldn’t be problematic. And I’ll keep the page set up so that there’s a lot of space in the binding, and I won’t lose my text. I hadn’t thought of that. I like the look of Japanese stab binding– good idea. I’ll make up some of each and see how they look. Thanks for your opinion on this.
Graves Collins Says: October 20th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
I have just stumbled on your site. A lot of good info here. I have only scanned the posts so far, so forgive me if I step on some previously posted info.
I have just completed my most major project: The story of my ancestors, which comprised 136 pages of text and 384 pages of Appendix, photos and pictures of documents; 520 pages total, plus end papers, etc.
I used two techniques that I haven’t seen in this site. For book covers I have been using reclaimed covers from hardcover books I get from our local thrift stores. I just remove the contents and re-use the covers. I will put new cover cloth or paper on them if necessary, but often I can just use them as is. I have a supply of about 80 covers of all sizes and colors. And, I’ve only paid from $.25 to $1.00 for each book—which I read before I tore it’s insides out. Double pleasure. Uncut boards plus cover paper or cloth will cost a lot more than this.

For this project I wanted 12 copies of the book for Christmas presents for my kids and grandkids. I found a set of Encyclopedia Britanica in a local thrift shop, sweet talked them in to letting me have the whole set of 13 for only $5. The covers were in perfect shape, and covered in a very attractive leatherette. They also worked out to be just the right thickness, so I could even save the spines intact. I just printed a new spine cover on a leatherette paper from the scrapbooking store and glued it around the existing spine. All you have to do to save a cover is to carefully remove the old contents by stretching the front board back and break the glue between the and second first end papers, then very carefully cut the spine super with a razorblade; then repeat the process with the back cover. I even save and reuse the headbands.

I made this particular book to fit the encyclopedia covers, so the pages had to be trimmed to 8 5/16” X10 7/8”—which I did on a guillotine paper cutter. I used an opaque paper straight from the office supply store at about $6 per ream. I used my home-made combination finishing/binding press to square up the pages. If you set the top and front edges of your contents against the press bottom and side bars, you will put any uneven edges at the spine and bottom of the book. I did all the text, pictures, illustrations, and photocopies on my old HP Office Jet All-in-one. I was even able to do montages. When I printed them out I used the “book” setting on my printer and printed odd page/even pages in sequence as programmed by the printer. I printed only about 40 pages, or 20 sheets at a time to get around having to reprint a lot of pages if the printer slip-sheeted a page. I used a ton of ink, but I refill the cartridges with either HP or generic kits where I can get about 3 refills for under $10.

When I “deconstructed” the encyclopedias, I discovered a method of using a cotton duct cloth for the super which, combined with a saw-kerf/sewing process gives a very strong binding and nearly indestructible hinge. To sew the loose-paged contents, I put it in my finishing/binding press, leaving the spine edge about ¼” above the edge of the press. I put a thick layer of glue on the spine and let it dry, then another layer of glue to add the super. I cut my super 2” wider than the thickness of the spine, leaving a 1’ flap on either side when it was glued to the spine. When this glue dried, I glued about ¼” of the flaps to the inside end page, which I had included as the first and last pages of my contents. I let this dry in a press.

The final step was the sewing. Instead of drilling holes I used a Japanese thin-set saw to make a series of kerfs 3/32” deep and ¾” apart from one end of the spine to the other. I then “sewed” the spine by burying the thread in the kerfs in a back and forth pattern, up then back down the spine. A final tie-off and the process was done, except for a final light coat of glue to fill in the kerfs and attach the spine liner. You then have a very strong binding at the spine and a pre-set hinge with a ¾” flap to glue to the book boards, to then be covered with the end papers. The end papers are not folded as with a perfect-bound contents. One half of the front and one half of the back end papers are glued to the book boards, covering the ¾” super/hinge. The other half is sewn in with the contents. This leaves about 1/8” of the super showing at the very edge of the inside edge of the book board, but it looks very professional.

As for uneven edges left by a guillotine cutter, I just clamp the glued up contents in a press and use my recip. sander with an 80 grit paper. After the dust cloud settles, you have a very smooth edge. If the edges are very uneven, I use a 7” wood plane to shave the edge down, then finish it off with the sander. I believe in using what’s on hand, when possible.
Graves Collins Says: October 20th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
In my previous post, in the next to last paragraph, I mis-spoke. I used “perfect-bound” rather than “signature-bound.”
Merri Says: November 26th, 2008 at 1:51 am
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I found this site at the perfect time and am now looking at ten finished, perfectly bound books on my dining room table. I also visited gigabooks.com and ordered supplies (contact cement and 8 1/2″ x 14″ coated paper for my covers). I also purchased the book binder but after about 4 sample versions I found it easier to use binder clips to hold my book securely. I print the text of my book on an Epson Work Force 30 (I bought it for $66!! I’m able to print a minimum of five books with one ink cartridge, so that puts the cost at about $3.00 per book). I print my covers with the Epson, too, then I spray them with a waterproof, smudgeproof sealant called “Preserve It!” It also protects against UV rays and prevents yellowing. I can get anywhere from 6-7 covers sprayed with one can, putting the cost at about .75 cents a cover. You can actually pour water on your cover and it just beads up and then rolls off! I know, because I tried it! hee hee I use ClickBooks and use the “full book” layout. I print all of the front pages, then take the paper out and put it back in and print the back side. The Epson Work Force 30 is like a copy machine in that it prints the copies fast!!! And, I have yet to have even had one jamb. (knock on wood) I like the invisible bind technique with the heavy duty staples. It gives a very solid feel to the book and I don’t feel the need to pull on the pages to see if they’ll come out any more. Yes, I did that. I’m nothing if not a tester!!! =)

I am just so thrilled that I found your site and that you were willing to share information with us. It has changed my life. I have one book published through a POD publisher and did not want to repeat that experience. My books are not perfect, but when you place them next to other books, you really can’t tell much of a difference.

THANK YOU!!!
Merri Says: November 26th, 2008 at 1:53 am
Oh, one more thing… I mean to mention that the Epson ink I use is waterproof and smudgeproof. I sound like I’m trying to sell everyone on this printer. I’m not! I just can’t believe all it can do for just $66!!!
Hamish MacDonald Says: November 26th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Wow, thanks Merri! Your excitement is infectious: I’m happy all over again that we have the ability to do this.

Congratulations on your success! There’s something about having written a book that changes how people perceive you, and the effect is definitely doubled when they can hold that book in their hands.

YAY!
Greg Says: November 27th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Great article.

I’m not a writer myself, but I read a ton. Unfortunately for my books, they go through a lot. Rather than spending another 30 bucks for new copies all the time, I’m planning on just rebinding them. I just did that with my softcover copy of The Fellowship of the Ring; I didn’t even need to make a new cover for it. I’m going to be rebinding old hardcovers within the next few weeks, though.

A note on Open Source: It takes getting used to, but it’s usable. The biggest thing is that everything works different. You need to adjust to the mindset. It goes with all FOSS, from Linux to GIMP to Open Office to Vim
Li Says: December 3rd, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Thanks for sharing all the useful info!
Alex Says: January 17th, 2009 at 2:19 am
Hey Hammish, I’m totally unrelated, jumped in here from another blog & havent been able to leave after almost 3 hours. Great blog & the links are just fantastic. I’d like to know if you have anything like this on the topic of freelance writing for newsletters & magazines.
Keep it up! loved the ‘Power to the people!’ (post 103) moment;)
gary w. vann Says: January 22nd, 2009 at 6:28 pm
I’m a photographer with an early interest in hand made photo books. Having reviewed virtually everything on the internet, I’ve managed to accumulate enough pieces to start working. You are correct about the how difficult it is to explain sewing the signatures. Although incomplete, your short explanation was about the best I’ve found. I finally just tried to duplicate the steps with needle and thread. Since glue is used toward the end, it looks like just about any method that gets the separate signatures tightly stitched together is OK. It looks like a good bit of sewing practice is necessary, before doing a book. Mention is made of a sewing frame, without details. Do you use a sewing frame? Thanks.
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 28th, 2009 at 8:48 am
Hi there, Alex. Sorry, I missed your comment. And, no, I haven’t got any articles on those topics. I’m a copywriter for a living, but I haven’t dealt with magazines or newspapers, just internal/promotional newsletters. There are some really good blogs out there, though, about writing and promotion, like Copyblogger.com and HelloMyNameIsScott.com.

(P.S. “Hamish” — Scots-Gaelic for James. “Hammish” would be “like unto a pig”.)
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 28th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Oh, and just to clarify: I wrote this post a few years ago, but the rest of the site belongs to Jim Munroe.
Cadie Says: January 30th, 2009 at 1:43 am
Hi Hamish!

I just had a question for you. I’m working on a hand-bound hardcover, and I’m near the end where I am trying to get decorative paper on the insides of my covers. My friend was showing me how to do this because she took a class, but she instructed me to glue the decorative paper to the inside of the covers AFTER I’ve glued my signatures to the spine. I keep trying to glue the paper to the inside covers, but it doesn’t seem to be folding right and it just gets all crumpled when I close it.

Do I glue the decorative paper to the inside covers before I glue in the signatures? I’m a little confused about the difference between “book block” and the covers. The cover is the cover, but the book block refers to cover+spine+cover as a whole?

I have my decorative paper cut to the size of the pages and folded with the fancy side in…but then I don’t understand on what part of the decorative paper the glue goes, or whereabouts to stick it on the book block. Grr, I’m so close to being done with my first book and I have no idea what to do with the insides of the covers! It’s just not complete without it!

Sorry for this exhausted and lengthy question, but do you have any pointers for me?

Thanks friend.
Cadie
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 30th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Hi, Cadie!

I get what you’re saying. The way I do this is to cut a piece of decorative paper so that, folded in half, it fits exactly onto the book block (which refers to the end result when you’ve folded the pages into signatures and sewn those together). I stopped using PVC glue for this and am just using a glue-stick (though lots of it), ’cause I find it makes the inside pages less likely to wrinkle.

Then I close this — so it’s a block of blank paper with one extra folded, coloured sheet stuck to either end. I put PVC glue onto the outside of the front cover paper, fit that into place inside the cover, then put glue onto the back, and fit that into place. Then I put something absorbent (like kitchen roll/paper towel) in-between the cover pages and the first blank page to keep the moisture out of them, and I clamp the whole thing in-between two sheets of hard plastic. Or you can just as easily put it under a heavy book.

I hope that helps!
Cadie Says: January 30th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Wow, thanks for responding so fast! I totally get what you’re saying now, thank you! When you glue the decorative paper down to the inside cover though, do you fold it into the little crease indent between the spine and the book cover? (That little room left so the book can hinge?) I feel like it’s essentially like gluing down the first and last pages to the inside of the covers, but when it dries, it will rip when you open/close the book. That is the effect I’m getting.

I also have little pieces of binding tape that I glued over the 4 stitches of the signatures, which, I think might be messing me up. They are sticking out a little, but my friend told me to leave them. Are they unnecessary?

I took a few pictures: http://www.cadiebelardo.com/bookbinding.html

I’ve practically ripped the book block off the spine trying different things lol…this will definitely need to be redone. I feel that as long as I end up understanding it, it was a worthwhile sacrifice.

So yeah, I understand your instructions now, but for some reason I still can’t get it to not crinkle! I was trying to use 110lb cardstock…too stiff maybe? I’m a little embarrassed to be posting this, its such a silly problem!
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 30th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Oh, it’s not silly at all. It’s taken me years to sort out my process, and still I’m at a point where I’m going back to square one to teach myself the basics again so I can get a better result. Some people are great with instructions and love fiddling with all the little details, but I just want the result. As a consequence, some of the finer points escape me until I’m ready for them.

That binding tape looks awfully heavy. I don’t use anything across the pages like that. The instructional book I picked up at xMas has instructions for sewing across tape like that, but theirs is like gauze, not heavy material like that. Sure, if you were sewing up some giant Gutenberg Bible or skin-clad Necronomicon you might need that, but for a small book I’d think it would just get in the way.

As for the spine, the temptation is to glue the book to it, but practice has taught me that, no, the book should sit forward from it, so it’s further out than (and clear of) the crease you mentioned.

At first I wanted to fit all the pieces of the book tightly together, but I realised you need margins of about 5mm between everything — the spine from the covers, the book block and the edge of the cover, the cover from the inside edge of the book block, etc.

Sorry, it’s difficult to describe this!

I want to update this whole thing this year, do some kind of detailed webinar, but in the meantime, I hope this description will suffice.
Alex Says: January 31st, 2009 at 5:53 am
Hey Hamish, apologies for the misspelling. It’s amazing what an extra ‘m’ can mean! thanks for the tips I’ll definitely try those. Keep on sharing the way you do, generosity always pays back: pressed down shaking together and running over(Luk 6:38)
Hamish MacDonald Says: February 2nd, 2009 at 9:44 am
Thanks for your comments, Gary. (Strange: I was just alerted to them now.)

No, I don’t use a sewing frame. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit at this stage, but I still don’t entirely understand what they’re for or what the advantage is of using them.

I’ve become online, virtual friends with an author in the US who also produces his own books — and does a beautiful job of it. He’s posted sewing and binding PDFs on his website which contain very clear photographs. You can find them (and his lovely fiction) here:
http://www.kvasirhousepress.com/
Jennifer Says: February 2nd, 2009 at 1:40 pm
The link to KvasirHousePress.com is interesting if you want a soft cover, but it doesn’t explain how the mull (or mesh, as he describes it) protects the end papers of a hard cover book.

When I glue the mull to the spine the glue takes away the small gaps between signatures that result when you sew the signatures together. However it is the strings (or fabric tape, if that’s what you’re using) and mull that actually hold the book to the hard cover casing. The PVA glue just finishes the signatures nicely.

I use a sewing frame because I like to make hard-bound copies of my books. The sewing frame holds the strings in place on the spine of the book block while I sew the signatures together. I call these strings “Spine strings.” Take a look at this link to my favorite book “The Complete Book of Bookbinding”:

http://books.google.com/books?id=LZoDLUDYbFQC&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=%22sewing+frame%22+signature&source=web&ots=-y249GjK-2&sig=CkZGvBxDClS4TfGoktsPQxsNfm8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPA41,M1

I don’t use a kettle stitch when sewing the signatures because there will be no support strings left to extend between the book board and the decorative end papers.

The post earlier about the binding tape caught my attention. Binding tape helps keep the decorative papers (end papers) from tearing. The tapes (and the mull) take most of the stress at the hinges so the end papers don’t tear over time.

With a hard cover book, the book block is smaller than the cover by a quarter inch (or so) on three sides (the fourth side being the spine.) So when the book sits on your book shelf, the book block is essentially hanging in mid-air. So the end papers need extra strength to support the heavy book block. So the mull and the strings/tapes provide the end papers that strength.

So if you want to make a hard-bound book, use a sewing frame. If you’re making a soft cover book where the cover is cut flush with the book block, you don’t need to worry about anything I just said. Hamish’s explanation says it all.

Hope that helps.
Hamish MacDonald Says: February 2nd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Brilliant! Thanks, Jennifer.

So there you have it.
Kayla Runion Says: February 4th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Your Handbound hardcover instructions are amazing. I was wondering, though, what material you used for the cover of your books? In the picture it looks cloth-like.
Hamish MacDonald Says: February 5th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Thanks, Kayla.

Yes, it is, in fact, cloth-like. Whenever I’m back in Toronto I go to The Paper Place and buy a roll or two of their “book cloth”. It’s cloth with a paper backing on it.

I tried to use just plain cloth one time, but when I glued it, the result looked… well, “Monica Lewinsky’s dress” might be a bit graphic a description, but that about covers it.
Abhilasha Says: April 5th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Very nice sussestions given and very helpful for print production students…. Thanks a lot.
Bullion Grey Says: April 5th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Just a note to say thank you!
May the Gods of ink and paper, writing and prose, and of books and print Grace you with the joy and wonder suitable for an angel like you!
Thank you, Gracias, et al!
BG
Hamish MacDonald Says: April 6th, 2009 at 6:53 am
Gosh! Thank you!

I plan to put out an updated version of this guide as a series of podcasts soon, so if you liked this, I hope you’ll find that even more useful.
Gene Keeth Says: April 7th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
I am very appreciative of the free knowledge you have offered here on this site. I hope you can help me with a paper issue that has me banging my head against the wall. I am in the process of getting all of the necessary equipment in place to print and bind my first book. I would like to use a type of book paper resembling that found in most novels. Do you have any advice?
Thanks in advance from deep in the heart of Texas.
Hamish MacDonald Says: April 8th, 2009 at 7:19 am
Funny you should ask: I wanted that, too, the look of “paperback” paper. After much searching, I found an unbleached paper that looks like the pages of a pulp novel. It also folds better than the heavier writing paper I was using before.

I don’t know where you’ll find it in Texas, but it’s made by Xerox, so you should be able to source it out. Here’s a link to the place I buy mine from, which will provide you with some terms and images to look out for in doing a search:

http://www.greenstat.co.uk/storefront/evolution_product.html?Product=Recycled-Off-White/Grey-Copier-Paper-A4-80Gsm-122278&idProduct=122278

And congratulations on your project! That’s very exciting! Drop me a line via hamishmacdonald.com when you’ve made your book; I’d love to see it.
Bridget Says: April 23rd, 2009 at 8:22 am
Hamish,
I have read and reread what you posted here, almost since you put it out there–what an incredible resource it has been for me. I printed (with my Epson inkjet) and bound my first novel and it was an awesome project, thanks to your help.

Recently I purchased a dell laser printer, with duplex capacity, and after consuming a cartridge of toner, I still haven’t been able to get it and MS Word to play nicely, and I’d rather spring for a better printer than a new word-processing program.

I know you have a Kyocera; what model is it? I was also wondering if you knew of any other brands and models that will do the job. I’m just dying to bind my new novel, and was hoping you might have heard from other DYI people what printers might be compatible.

Your time is valuable, and I hate to impose, but thanks in advance for any help you might offer.

Gratefully, Bridget
Hamish MacDonald Says: April 24th, 2009 at 6:31 am
Thanks, Bridget!

My Kyocera is an Ecosys FS-1030D, and I’ve been really happy with it for a while now. I’ve had a bunch of others whose makes and models I don’t remember now (Canon, Brother…), but this one has proven to be the best, first because it can do the duplex printing I need and is relatively quick, and second because there’s only one part to change — the toner cartridge; they’ve made the toner in such a way that it actually polishes the drum so you don’t have to worry about changing it, and there’s no waste toner cartridge like on the horribly wasteful Xerox colour laser printer I had when I wrote this article). The cartridge is also quite small despite its capacity, in keeping with the printer’s “eco” theme.

I’m sure there are others, but this is the one I know.

Good luck with your book, and feel free to get in touch with me with pictures via hamishmacdonald.com when you’ve finished some — I’d love to see them!

I’m also working on podcasts to teach people all the things I’ve learned, so if you (or any of the other posters) would like to share your “DIY Book” experience in an interview, that would be great!

All the best.
Jerad Walters Says: April 24th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Hey everyone,

I am trying to find a good, paper-back book cloth that comes in rolls that I can run through my Epson 4000. Does anyone have any suggestions? I used to buy Waterfast Polycloth from Ink Jet art but they stopped carrying it in rolls. Any advice is very welcome!

Jerad
Stephanie Silver Says: April 25th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Hi

I’m so pleased I stumbled upon this website quite by chance - it is really inspiring!

Last year I self-published a directory using an offset printer. I love the idea of being able to produce my own book.

I hope to publish the directory again this year - it
is perfect bound, A5 size - 132 pages - 500 copies.

After reading loads of the posts here - I’m a little confused as to what would work best. About half the book is colour and the other half black and white.

I’m thinking of

- getting a colour printer - one post recommends the Cannon i865.

- paper - would I use any local paper merchant - for an A5 size book is A4 paper best - but then what do I do about a heavier paper/card for the cover - does that need to be A4 too or larger and can it be printed by the same colour printer…

- cutting - what kind of guillotine - or do you think a local print shop will do it?

- what about collating all the paper?

- I use In Design to typeset and design the book - would I still need the clickbook software?

- a thermal binder sounds interesting but how would that work

Thanks so much

Stephanie
Hamish MacDonald Says: April 28th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Hi Stephanie!

So, first — 500 books! Much as I like to promote DIY publishing, this job sounds like it’s a bit big for that. The way I figure it, making 500 copies of my most recent novel would take me from two weeks to a month if I worked on it full-time.

I’m just sayin’! But if you want to do that, wow!

Now, to your specific points:

- colour printer
Depends what your needs are. I’ve got a Canon MP510 (scanner, printer) and like it. But most home printers now can print with near-photographic quality. But my one big warning — especially if you’re doing a job this big — is not to print high volumes through a printer like this. The ink literally costs more than perfume per ounce, so for a big run, a laser printer is the thing to use.

- paper
Again, it depends on the look you’re going for. Regular copier paper (the kind you can buy in reams of 500 sheets) is fine, but won’t produce nice colour images. Most paper of that type has a weight of 80GSM, which is fine, if a little on the heavy side. If you don’t need a fine finish on the pages (like for colour images), go with a lighter stock if you can find it.

- cutting - what kind of guillotine - or do you think a local print shop will do it?
Again, for a large job like this, you won’t want to be messing around and ruining copies with a cheap trimmer. I’ve got a heavy-duty “blade-arm” guillotine I got off eBay. Even at that cheap price, it wasn’t cheap. Like you say, the local copy shop will probably have one and be good at using it.

- what about collating all the paper?
ClickBook for Windows will arrange the pages properly. I’m using PDFClerk on the Mac, and with that I have to manually re-stack every other page. It’s time-consuming; I won’t lie.

- I use In Design to typeset and design the book - would I still need the clickbook software?
Unless inDesign has an imposition setting, but I don’t believe it does (I haven’t used it much, or for a while). There might be plug-ins, as with QuarkXPress, but I know the Quark ones cost thousands of dollars.

- a thermal binder sounds interesting but how would that work
I looked into this and never found a solution I liked. It involves buying pre-glued folders of set sizes, then using a machine to hold your pages and melt them into the spine.

I hope this helps!
Hamish MacDonald Says: April 28th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Hey, gang! I’ve posted the first podcast in my new “DIY Book” series, which is going to cover everything I’ve learned about writing, making, and selling your own books. You can get it here:

http://www.hamishmacdonald.com/DIYbook/DIYbook.html
Leiah Bowden Says: May 20th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Oh, Hamish, you are an angel! This information is exactly what I was hoping to find. It’s enough to birth a book - then to have to struggle or pay hugely to see it in 3D …. THANK YOU!
hax Says: May 21st, 2009 at 8:13 am
Thank you so much for this introduction to book binding.. i tried it for a project of mine and it worked out brilliantly…. i have you guys to thank for that… so once again thank you for your help..
Hamish MacDonald Says: May 31st, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Oh yay! That’s very exciting (both Leiah & hax’s projects). I’d love to see ‘em if you’ve got pictures posted anywhere.
Kirk Whitham Says: June 11th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
You have produced a load of useful information here. I’ve been binding my own stuff for some time and I have learned a few things from you. I build perfect binding machines from my home and sell them all over the country. I don’t want this to sound like an ad, but I thought some of your readers might be interested.
Hamish MacDonald Says: June 12th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Thanks so much, Kirk! I don’t think it’s a conflict to mention your perfect binding machines here — we are talking about the best ways we’ve found to get the job done. Personally, I’d love to see ‘em! Got an URL?
Marion R. Baetz Says: July 21st, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Wow! I am so excited I stumbled accross this forum; thanks so much for making it available to everyone! I am in Indiana, USA, and I will be self-publishing and creating my own books soon! Again, thanks for all the great information, and the great hints from your other readers!
Hamish MacDonald Says: July 21st, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Thanks, Marion (on behalf of all the contributors to this page). I’d love to see your books when they’re made!
inkveins Says: October 30th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
thank you for this website very much it has been very helpful to get this information from someone who is actually an author himself and knows what another self publisher really wants to know throughout this whole site. But i have a question for anyone who is willing to answer at any time you may come across this blog. Q?: What type of software is best suited for designing book covers as well as book cover templates? I’ve decided to rule out bookcover pro it lacks the creative freedom that I need, it’s too basic.
Hamish MacDonald Says: November 2nd, 2009 at 5:41 am
These days, I use Apple’s Pages for both the insides and the covers of my books. Any program that’s capable of doing page layout from a blank canvas can do the job for you; you just have to do some measurement, and take a look around for the standard features you should include (title, author, blurb, ISBN, barcode — the list is pretty basic).

I didn’t know about any dedicated cover design software. Yet another market for cashing in on writers’ ambitions. Having looked at that package, I agree with you: a template-driven program is the thing to use only if you want to create a book that looks exactly like every other spiritless title cranked out of a publishing machine.

If graphic design isn’t your thing, you might be able to team up with someone to do a cover design for you. There are sites springing up like CrowdSpring.com (though it’s down at the moment), where designers all create a proof for you, you pick which one you like, and just pay that designer.

Here’s a helpful page I found recently; it discusses all the parts of the *insides* of a book:
http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2009/09/parts-of-a-book/

And this is the wonderful Book Cover Archive, if you’re looking for inspiration:
http://bookcoverarchive.com/
Kirk Whitham Says: November 2nd, 2009 at 11:07 am
inkveins,
There are a few decent open-source (free) programs available online. If you can get your head around vector graphics, Inkscape works well. It is a poor man’s Illustrator. Gimp is another free program that may help you out. It is similar to Photoshop. You can shoot me an e-mail via my website if you have any other questions.
inkveins Says: November 2nd, 2009 at 11:32 am
thank you guys very much that has been helpful, but it’s that barcode that gets me, would those programs allow me to insert that? how do i get it on there? quarkxpress8 just recently went on sale for a good price i was also looking at adobe’s cs4, would those be good programs to use for book covers as well? i have click book but i use that for the interior.
Hamish MacDonald Says: November 2nd, 2009 at 11:58 am
Good Lord, if you can afford QuarkXPress or InDesign, don’t bother looking at anything else; these are likely the same apps used by most commercial book designers. But you can find lots of lower-priced or free alternatives if you don’t want to spend thousands on one program. Anything that will allow you to freely compose a document on a blank page can do it.

As for the barcode, there are also lots of sites that will generate a print-ready version for you for free, like:
http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/generator/

…So don’t get suckered into paying for it. Depending on who provides your ISBN, you may get print-ready art as part of the deal. Here’s a guide to the various agencies around the world that can issue ISBNs:
http://www.isbn-international.org/en/agencies.html
inkveins Says: November 2nd, 2009 at 1:00 pm
ok wow thanks, but it isn’t thousands i don’t know if i can say it on this site or not but quarkxpress8 is $200 and adobe’s cs4 is $400 if you get it from academicsuperstore.com but if there’s really no difference i’ll go for quarkxpress8.
Kirk Whitham Says: November 2nd, 2009 at 2:03 pm
If you don’t mind dropping the cash, I would suggest the CS4 Suite. The Design package includes Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign (much easier to use than Quark IMHO). I use the Adobe package all day long in my real job as a graphic designer. I also use a great little program called Xara which is PC only.
inkveins Says: November 2nd, 2009 at 2:20 pm
ok thanks my head has been spinning with this stuff, xara has a good price but it seems like another version of photoshop which i already have.
Hamish MacDonald Says: November 2nd, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I’ve had a look at that site, and it seems legit — but you have to have proof that you’re a student. If so, wahey!

As Kirk said, the Adobe suite is the industry leader. I’ve used those programs in the past as a graphic designer, but now I’m printing from home and £1,500 is just a mad price to pay for software. I’m perfectly happy with the results I get with my wee iWork suite for £69 and a couple of bitmap and vector programs I’ve bought for about £50; I honestly have everything I need to do layout on a blank page right there.

The conflicts and limitations will start creeping in if you’re moving on to offset or other large-scale printing, but… that’s not what most people on this page are up to.

By the way, if you’re on this site and looking to do your bookbinding at home, click on Kirk’s name and go to his site (atomicpublishing.net). He makes an all-in-one bookbinding “machine” that is the dog’s bollocks. I’m producing all my paperback books now.
Hamish MacDonald Says: November 2nd, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Erm, sorry, I meant “that’s how I’m producing all my paperback books now”.
inkveins Says: November 2nd, 2009 at 2:59 pm
yeah i am a student so i really try to get the most bang for my buck as often as possible but i got my clickbook from there so they are legit. i checked out http://www.atomicpublishing.net for the binding machine and it seems like a good product for the right price because the other guys i’ve looked at i thought were a bit too expensive for the same machine, i was almost ready to go to home depot and make my own, but i’ll definitely be purchasing from there, i don’t think it will get any better than that.
K. Inomata Says: November 28th, 2009 at 2:13 am
When you refer to “a completed, typeset manuscript on file to upload” (see your section on offset printing) are you talking about the manuscript typed in a special software program like Adobe Indesign or Pagemaker, or “Microsoft Word?”

I am under the impression that I have to take my already completed book typewritten in Word on my computer and transfer it to some print-ready software like Pagemaker, etc. IS THIS CORRECT?
Stephanie Says: December 7th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Hi Does anyone know where I could get hold of some thermal binding glue strips - I’m looking for a supplier in the UK.
Mazarine Says: January 14th, 2010 at 9:06 pm
Have you heard about that new Espresso book publishing machine? What do you think of that?
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 17th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Yeah, they’ve been around for a couple of years, actually (I think they’re on to Version Two now). They’re a great innovation, although they cost about (*checks*) half a Lamborghini… so I’m not quite sure who buys them.
Kirk Whitham Says: January 17th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Those are pretty cool machines, but I would hate to part with the half Lamborghini in my garage.
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 17th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Which goes “Vroo–!”
Nick Says: January 30th, 2010 at 11:15 am
Hey,

First off - Love your site! It’s a great resource for self-publishing; so much information.

I’m about to start self-printing in the coming months - can you recommend a paper that looks and feels like standard paperpack grade paper? You know the type - lightweight, has an almost embeded grainy texture, off-white but not dirty-yellow? I know it comes on huge reams in print shops, I was just kind of hoping they’d be available like regular A4 xerox paper packs?

Covers. For a long time I was considering Lulu. And then I ordered from Lulu. The book turned up on blindingly bright white paper… which looked and felt kind of… weird. And the cover was a shiny, thick stock that felt like a school text book. The overall impression was that the book belonged in the 70’s… which was a shame, because the content wasn’t half bad. Covers. I’m thinking matte. Can you recomend any card stock and, more importantly - printers, that can handle the job (with a pro finish)? When I say pro finish - think the Penguin Modern Classics range you can find in your local Waterstones - lightweight, floppy books; kind of edgy and almost indie looking. At the same time - totally pro!

NS
Kirk Whitham Says: January 30th, 2010 at 11:35 am
Hi, Nick.
Finding the proper paper is sort of the Holy Grail of do-it-yourself publishing. I’ve had some luck with a few papers. I currently use two types. If you have access to a paper cutter, I recommend 50lb sketch or drawing paper. It has a nice rough texture and is slightly off-white. Believe it or not, I buy spiral-bound acid-free pads from Big Lots (a cheapo discount store in the US). If you don’t have one of these stores nearby, try your local arts supply store.

I have also been using a 70lb Durotone white newsprint from French Paper. The newsprint isn’t as heavy as the 70lb label implies. It is a bit smoother than the art pad, and a bit darker, but comes in letter-size sheets. It’s expensive, though.

For covers I use an 80lb Lustro Cream. Sadly, this has been discontinued by the manufacturer, but certain varieties of Mohawk 50/10 are similar. Kromekote Plus Cover C1S is also quite nice and a bit glossier. Not all laser printers like this stuff, though.

Hope this helps.
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 30th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
To highlight something again and give credit where it’s due, just in case, I (Hamish MacDonald) wrote this article, but the site was created by Jim Munroe.

Okay… paper!

First, hello to my man Kirk — thanks for your helpful suggestions here. If anyone here’s looking to do paperback binding at home, you’ve got to check out his Atomic Binding Machine (atomicbinding.net). It’s the dog’s baws, as we say here in Scotland.

I’ve discovered a wonderful, pulp-like paper that I now use inside all my novels. You can buy it in the UK in reams for a decent price from this shop:
http://www.greenstat.co.uk/storefront/Steinbeis-PureWhite-Recycled-Copy-Paper-A4-80gsm-P-122279

It’s a “pulp novel” style paper that’s made from “de-inked low-grade post-consumer waste material, which is generally in low demand and hence more likely to be consigned to landfill. It’s 80gsm paper passes the Blauer Engel/Blue Angel certification”. It even comes with Greenpeace’s stamp of approval.

As for covers, I use black cardstock (with the title and my logo printed on it with a rubber stamp using white ink) then wrap an overleaf of printed matte photo paper around it. That way I can guillotine the book and not mind so much how the spine gets crushed, ’cause it’ll be covered by the photo paper.

My most recent book, Finitude, is about climate change, so I print onto a torn-edged piece of raw brown paper and wrap that around. All very recycled-looking, but that seemed appropriate to this book.

I hope that helps!

I wrote this article a while back. Since then, I’ve started a podcast, where I’m trying to unpack everything I’ve got in my head about indie publishing. It’s called DIY Book, and may be useful:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=330209475

Cheers!
Hamish MacDonald Says: January 30th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Oops! I should have double-checked. Kirk’s site is:
http://atomicpublishing.net
Jamie Ball Says: February 11th, 2010 at 6:47 am
Hi i have a book that i just want to make one copy of for myself, and so i was reading up on how to do bookbinding and i see in your explanation one of the first things you do is cut the pages in half, I’m guessing the size of the paper is A4 but i would like to know how this works, does the paper need to be in a format so that there are 2 pages on 1 sheet? This is the only thing im not sure about because my book is currently in word saved on A5 size paper. so what should i do before i print off my book? Any help would be great since i don’t want to print out all my pages and then waste so much paper since i started off completely wrong
Hamish MacDonald Says: February 11th, 2010 at 9:35 am
No worries! You have two options here. Either stick with your A5 formatting and load your printer with A5 paper (which is just A4 cut in half) and print to that.

Now, I had some trouble when I did that because, while my laser printer tray could be adjusted to accommodate A5 sheets, they didn’t feed very nicely, so some pages got skipped. It was not fun trying to go back and reprint selected pages.

The alternative is to change your page setup to A4, resize your text (making it bigger, because the pages are going to be shrunk in doubling them up on one sheet), and print it out so they pages are 2-up — in other words, so the paper is in “landscape” orientation (the long edge on the top and bottom).

A lot of printers come with built-in settings for printing this way, calling it something like “booklet printing”. The one challenge with booklet printing is that it’s based on the idea of *all* the pages being stacked together in a V and stapled or stitched down the center fold (like a magazine). This should be fine if the book is short. If it’s long, the pages will creep further and further out toward the middle and it’ll be as hard to close as a screen door in the wind.

The solution to this is “imposition” — using software to number and print the books so the pages are printed on a “portrait” page (long edge on the right and left) with two pages on top, two paged on the bottom. Then I cut the paper across the middle horizontally and fold them. Then the pages are stacked one on top of the other, each folded singly, not together.

If you’re on a PC, ClickBook is a great, affordable option for doing imposition of every conceivable sort. If you’re on a Mac, stay away from it like it was a bag of Nile-born mosquitoes! There are options for the Mac that range from free (Cocoa Booklet and Cheap Impostor — the latter is great!) up to more expensive apps like PDF Clerk Pro (the one I use) or Imposition Wizard (which I just can’t figure out, and is ten times the price of PDF Clerk Pro).

I hope this helps. Actually, this is exactly what I’ll be covering in the next episode of my podcast — Episode 15. Except I haven’t made it yet. When I do, it’ll be available here:
http://www.hamishmacdonald.com/books/DIYbook.html

Do-It-Yourself Book Press March 14, 2006

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