So today's megatask is making your own paperback books. My inspiration came from this page, which I suppose you could read instead of this one if you were so inclined. Why would you want to make your own paperback books? Well, with the advent of e-books, this can be a way to have your prose-flavored cake and eat it, too, or, perhaps you've written your own book and you'd like to see it take on a physical form.
Regardless of your motivations for doing so, making your own books is pretty great and not all that hard to do. If you don't have all the tools/materials readily available, it will require a little outlay in the area of 100 bucks, but most of the stuff can be used and re-used. Here's what you need and why:
Printer - this one's obvious. It's a book, so it'll need to be printed on two sides. If your printer already does this, that's easy and great. If it doesn't, you might have to fool around with printing odd- then even-numbered pages to get it to looking like you want. You'll have to format your document to get the size you want and have it line up properly on both sides if you're not making an 8x11-size book.
Ink - printing books uses up a lot of ink. Make sure you have enough.
Paper - why limit yourself to plain white paper? Some 20lb ivory or other off-color paper might be a good investment here.
Card stock - makes a good, cheap cover for your book. Regular paper-size will work if you're making a smaller book, but don't forget to get something bigger if you're making a bigger book.
Paper cutter - scissors just won't work. You need precision if you want your pages to line up with the cover and bind properly.
Glue - the aforementioned blog recommends Gorilla Glue. I do, too. It's cheap, it works, and you can get it at Home Depot, so why use anything else?
Sandpaper - is optional, but it'll make for a cleaner finished product. You can use this to roughen up the edges of the paper before gluing and afterwards to sand down the corners of the book after the glue pops out.
Cotton swabs - are for applying water and glue to the surfaces that need gluing.
Clamps - actually, one clamp will suffice. It doesn't have to be big, just something large enough to clamp a few pieces of scrap wood to a table.
Scrap wood - you'll have some glue popping out of the edges of the book during the binding process, so a few pieces of this will help prevent ruining some nice piece of furniture. If you want to get all fancy you can fashion an actual book-binder, but I'm not that motivated. Are you?
Yeah, I know, now that you have all the materials you can pretty much figure the rest out for yourself, but in the interests of completion I will outline a little step-by-step just in case you're like me and need some direction.
Print up your book. Things typical books have: title page, copyright page, table of contents, page numbers, etc. Don't forget to alternate which side your page numbers appear on. While you're printing stuff, print a cover. Traditionally, this will contain the title of the book and the author.
Cut out your book. Me, I made four at a time, but the formatting took forever. Still, I feel like it saved paper. Just make sure to leave a good margin of somewhere from one inch to a half-inch on all sides of the print, keeping in mind that the glue will take up some space on the left-hand margin.
Cut out your cover. Fold it so it covers your entire book, and consider making it about 1mm too long on each end because the glue expands.
Clamp and glue and clamp. Line up your pages and clamp them together, sand the surface where the glue will go, dampen it with a cotton swab (optional), and sand the inside fold where the cover will meet the paper and dampen this area too (optional), then comes the gluing. Using another cotton swab, apply a thin layer of glue to each surface. It doesn't require a lot of glue, but you do want to make sure both surfaces are completely covered.
Clamp it. While I've seen other sites saying this will take 12-24 hours, I used white Gorilla Glue and it was pretty much dry w/in one hour. Make sure you clamp it tightly, because this glue will swell and bubble right out of the edges of the book, which is good.
Unclamp it. You can tear off the excess hardened glue and sand down the corners, and, if you're really feeling ambitious, you can sand down all the paper edges of the book to make the pages more flush.
Congratulations! You've made a book. Washing your hands 100 times to get the dust and glue off (don't get this glue on your hands to begin with; it'll dye your skin) is optional, but compulsively recommended.
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