/kəˈlapˌsär/ a star that has collapsed under its own gravity to form a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole. Reid | 30+ | they/them | painter, writer, color goblin | pacific nw | Commission info: kollapsar.com
There's a fanfic you love so much you'd like to have a physical copy of it? But you don't know how to make it? You've come to the right place! I'm a teacher and I've done this with my pupils (11 year olds), so you can do it, too!
To preface this, obviously this is only one of many methods to bind a book, and it's not perfect, but it's easy enough for my pupils to do it, so I thought I'd share how I do it, to hopefully help people who want to bind fanfics but have never done it before! :)
Here are some examples of what my books look like when done:
Part 1: Preparations on the PC and printing
To start off, a book is made up of several signatures, which is just a bunch of pages folded in the middle. I've found the best signatures for this method are made of four A4 (or letter format) sheets of paper, folded, so it makes 16 pages in total. But signatures of 5 or 6 sheets work well too!
That means you need to prepare your pdf to have a page count that is dividable by 16 (4 sheet signatures), 20 (5 sheet signatures) or 24 (6 sheet signatures). I usually just add blank pages to the front and back of the book until I reach a usable page count. Also check that your chapters start at the page you want (odd pages are on the right, even ones are on the left).
If that is done, you can get to printing. I print signature per signature, and use Adobe Acrobat for that. Apparently, the free trial version can do this too, so no need to pay for it if you don't have it!
The fanfic I'm printing has 320 pages, so I'm gonna print 20 signature made of 4 sheets (16 pages). I write down which pages make the signature so I can them just type them in:
Signature 1 consists of pages 1 - 16
Signature 2: 17 - 32
Signature 3: 33 - 48
Signature 4: 49 - 64
...
Signature 20: 305 - 320
Now, printing works like this:
In Adobe Acrobat, open your pdf and click on print. In the printing options, you first chose the "Booklet" option and then type in the pages for the signature you want to print (e.g. 1-16). Hit print and you'll have your first signature, which you can then fold in the middle! Repeat this step for all the signatures until you've printed the whole book. Done!
(This is just a screenshot from the web, so the numbers don't match, but my Adobe Acrobat is completely in German, so it would probably be even less helpful!)
About the paper: I use normal printing paper in a bit of a yellowish colour (looks better than the sharp white of normal paper). Printing paper has, however, the wrong paper grain, so if you have access to paper with grain in the other direction, take that instead! The results with printing paper are okayish, with maybe a few wrinkles, but nothing too bad (in my opinion, haha).
If you've got any questions or need clarification an anything, feel free to ask!
I’ve been reading about werewolves on Wikipedia and I just have to say. “Werewolves are warriors that descend into hell to fight demons” kicks unbelievable amounts of ass as a concept
"Passingly, I think that this might always have been inevitable, that perhaps she had always known it but had wanted to hold on for me, for as long as she could."
commission for @aceofbasedesires, who requested an illustration of one of the scenes in @augentrust's fic The Bone That Has No Marrow! it was a huge pleasure and an honor to get to work on this, since i had already read that story and loved it to bits 🥰 please give it a read if you haven't yet!
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Clipart Studio lets you cut up magazines sourced from the Internet Archive, images from Wikimedia Commons, & files you’ve uploaded, and create art collages from them. This is great — be sure to check out the gallery.
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