I Make Books. Slowly

They are NOT FOR SALE. I like to make my favorite fanfics physical so I can have them on the shelf. I am Not taking commissions.

[little-cat-press]

Hello, you have found my bookbinding blog!

and you may be wondering, what is this? So I have prepared a list of questions and answers that I think people may be wondering

Q: what's bookbinding?

A: bookbinding is the process of making a book! Starting with a piece of text, typesetting it, printing, folding the signatures, sewing them, gluing, trimming, and casing it in.

Q: do you sell your books?

A: Nope! Most of what I bind is fanfiction, and it would be ethically and legally complicated to find a way that it was OK to sell a fanfic binding, so I'm not gonna bother touching that. These books are either for me, or gifts. I strongly believe in the gift economy of fandom.

(the morals and legals around selling blank journals or public domain stuff is much simpler, but I'm not very interested in doing that either. Maybe if it was a cool and fun project)

Q: Who do you gift books to?

A: Close friends and family, primarily. I also often like to offer a book to the author, though whether or not they accept has been a tossup.

I also have participated in a few gift exchanges in the Renegade Bindery group.

Q: I'm an author you've approached. What would this offer entail?

Q: how long do you take to send author copies?

A: Hi! I love your writing! I will need an adress to send the finished book to, and then I will mail it, and then you will have a book! That you wrote!

A: It varies greatly. I've been trying something new lately called "asking the author if they want one AFTER I've finished the typeset, instead of when I put the book on the to-bind sometime eventually list", because then all that's left is to print and physically assemble the book, and thus the author is not additionally waiting the time until I start on that particular project.

But also I make books slowly, frequently with long pauses between the various stages, so again, it varies.

Q: why do you bookbind?

A: Several reasons. It started with the desire to have the Trust series (@alittleblogoftrust) on my bookshelf. (and thus starting the longest author's wait so far, as it was the first offer made and not yet fulfilled... Those books are going to be thick, and somehow that means they are an intimidating project and I have not made much progress on them) And then I discovered that the process of bookbinding is simply very fun! I like making books!

And there are so so many excellent stories that I can put on my bookshelf and read in book form.

Q: I'm interested in bookbinding. Where can I start? You mentioned a renegade group?

A: Renegade (@renegadeguild) is an excellent bookbinding collective. We have a big discord group full of folks interested in the art of bookbinding, and if you have any questions, someone there almost certainly has an answer.

For other resources, I really like DAS Bookbinding on youtube. He explains things in a calm, clear manner, while demonstrating. He doesn't get into typesetting much, mostly focusing on physical construction.

He has a Getting Started playlist, though I think I actually started with his Case Bound Book playlist.

Q: You tag thoroughly and systematically. What's the system?

A: it's all listed out on this post

Q: I have more questions

A: Okay! You can put them in my askbox if you like

[little-cat-press]

todays bookbindy project is a pocket size calendar to hang up on the bathroom mirror and put shiny star stickers on every time I brush my teeth

this has been a successful motivator before and I have been meaning to make this calendar for months or maybe over a year

next year's may also include pictures of teeth for the top half.

[little-cat-press]

🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷

[little-cat-press]

todays bookbindy project is a pocket size calendar to hang up on the bathroom mirror and put shiny star stickers on every time I brush my teeth

this has been a successful motivator before and I have been meaning to make this calendar for months or maybe over a year

next year's may also include pictures of teeth for the top half.

[little-cat-press]

spent a While on a book today and it is actually not a thing I usually do!

last year for my birthday, my husband got me a book that I wanted. It's a pretty cool book on no-waste sewing, and I wanted to make a shirt out of it

the tricky part is, it is in French. I do not speak French. neither does the person whose posts made me want to get the book, but she got around that by using a translator app on her phone. Personally I would prefer to translate the book once and have it stay translated, rather than translate it every time I want to reference it, so I figured, I know how to bookbind, I'll just get the digital version, run it through a translator, and then print and bind it.

however it's not actually just that simple. it's a sewing book, after all. the diagrams are very important. also the text is kind of scattered around so even once I got the drm off so I could copy the text, I need to translate it a bit at a time.

that's fine though. along with copying the text, calibre lets me copy the images, and it's one image per page, with text on top. The images aren't all page-sized, which is interesting, but I've got them aligned and it's fine.

So then I started going through, copying a bit of instructions, sticking that in google translate, and then copying the translation and sticking it in my english typeset. I'm doing this all in slides, btw, because I realized it would be a pain to typeset in writer.

after a couple pages I figured out a good workflow. I've got all the slides set up with the images from the pages (not for the Entire book, but for the 16-page section for this shirt. I'll get to the others later.) I've also got screenshots of the pages with text, but they're blurrier than the nice crisp textless images pulled directly from the book. still, the screenshots can show me where text needs to exist.

So I have a text box, and all it says in it is "Instructions", and I copy/paste that to all the spots on the page that need instructions on them. That way I don't need to make any more text boxes, and they're all formatted the same real easy.

then it's just a cycle of grabbing the french text, translating it, and putting it on my page. and also reading it to make sure it makes sense, which does require a couple edits here and there but tbh google translate has gotten way better over the last decade and most of it makes perfectly good sense. mostly the errors are in small labels out of context, like I think it said "incision point" instead of like. "vent seam" or something? and also that a positional word is translating to "under" but I think "lower" might be more correct. and the abbreviation for "right sides together" (end/end) seems to also translate to "end to end"

I've got eight out of 16 pages translated, and I don't think it'll take an awful lot longer to get the rest done. then I'll make the shirt.

[little-cat-press]

got three more pages translated and I need to take a break

there's a lot of fiddly position numbers and bits

[little-cat-press]

spent a While on a book today and it is actually not a thing I usually do!

last year for my birthday, my husband got me a book that I wanted. It's a pretty cool book on no-waste sewing, and I wanted to make a shirt out of it

the tricky part is, it is in French. I do not speak French. neither does the person whose posts made me want to get the book, but she got around that by using a translator app on her phone. Personally I would prefer to translate the book once and have it stay translated, rather than translate it every time I want to reference it, so I figured, I know how to bookbind, I'll just get the digital version, run it through a translator, and then print and bind it.

however it's not actually just that simple. it's a sewing book, after all. the diagrams are very important. also the text is kind of scattered around so even once I got the drm off so I could copy the text, I need to translate it a bit at a time.

that's fine though. along with copying the text, calibre lets me copy the images, and it's one image per page, with text on top. The images aren't all page-sized, which is interesting, but I've got them aligned and it's fine.

So then I started going through, copying a bit of instructions, sticking that in google translate, and then copying the translation and sticking it in my english typeset. I'm doing this all in slides, btw, because I realized it would be a pain to typeset in writer.

after a couple pages I figured out a good workflow. I've got all the slides set up with the images from the pages (not for the Entire book, but for the 16-page section for this shirt. I'll get to the others later.) I've also got screenshots of the pages with text, but they're blurrier than the nice crisp textless images pulled directly from the book. still, the screenshots can show me where text needs to exist.

So I have a text box, and all it says in it is "Instructions", and I copy/paste that to all the spots on the page that need instructions on them. That way I don't need to make any more text boxes, and they're all formatted the same real easy.

then it's just a cycle of grabbing the french text, translating it, and putting it on my page. and also reading it to make sure it makes sense, which does require a couple edits here and there but tbh google translate has gotten way better over the last decade and most of it makes perfectly good sense. mostly the errors are in small labels out of context, like I think it said "incision point" instead of like. "vent seam" or something? and also that a positional word is translating to "under" but I think "lower" might be more correct. and the abbreviation for "right sides together" (end/end) seems to also translate to "end to end"

I've got eight out of 16 pages translated, and I don't think it'll take an awful lot longer to get the rest done. then I'll make the shirt.

[little-cat-press]

working on a tiny library

thirty itty bitty books, two copies each of a 15-story series. Lilliputian scale, at least for the page size — the font is still quite large for a lilliputian!

And yes, these are actual, legible words inside them! Though you do need good eyesight to read them.

this little guy is also Lilliputian sized (he'd be like 5'8" at scale), and he's sitting on a sextodecimal anthology of the same series.

somehow their small size fooled me into thinking it would be quick to convert them from flat paper into books, but there's still a lot of them! So it's taking me a bit.

[little-cat-press]

Taking a break from bookbinding because my spine says I did too much shrimping. All the 2-signature ones are cut, folded, and punched, and 10 of them are sewn, leaving 12 to be sewn. And leaving the three- and four-signature ones (four each) at the stage before cutting the signatures apart.

[little-cat-press]

I have done some more, so now all 22 of the 2-signature ones are sewn, and the rest are cut and folded.

they're being squished more to keep them organized than for squishing reasons tbh. don't want the signatures to get scrambled. the two clamps on the left have two each of the 4-signature books, and the one on the right has all four of the 3-signature books in it.

and a gum container works well to contain the other textblocks until I feel like doing the fiddly process that will be gluing all the spines

[little-cat-press]

:D do it! they're fun!

for these, I use the Minuscule font set because it's designed to be used at very small scales. If you want any help with figuring out typesetting, lemme know! I use LibreOffice but you can use any program

[little-cat-press]

I got out the mini bookbinding stuff again this evening and finished punching and sewing the rest of these Lilliputian books, and now they're all getting pressed some more and I will glue them another day.

[brunheiffer]

Do you have any recommendations for someone interested in trying binding their own fanfic?

Not on the mechanics of the binding itself, but more on the transition specifically from fanfic to bound copy? Like...how long should a fic be to be a book and not a sturdy pamphlet, or is there a formula you use for word count to page count? Is there a program you recommend for typesetting, or any font/art creators you like to use?

Tysm for anything you're willing to share!

Hi @coconutjelly,

I’ll answer with what I do first, but there’s loads of binders out there who are much better at explaining than I am.

I use a very old edition of word because I already had it. I prefer to casebind anything over 15,000 words but I have done smaller word counts. My particular preference top out at roughly 200,000 for a single volume. So I will break a longer work into multiple volumes.

I’m going to recommend checking out Renegade’s website and discord. There is always someone willing to chat and there are people that use formulas and are much more articulate about processes than I am. As well as ones that have tried a variety of methods.

Renegade Bookbinding Guild

Renegade Bookbinding Guild is a community focusing on the binding and the physical preservation of fanfiction and other fannish works, as we

[coconutjelly]

Holy cow, these resources are amazing, thank you! Wild and wonderful to see an active non-profit dedicated to fan binding! This is such a cool effort, and I'm gonna be diving into their stuff allllll day!!

[little-cat-press]

also you can make the cover size smaller! for a half-letter book I personally don't like to go below a hundred pages, because that's thin enough that aligning the spine board can be tricky. With the font and size I'm doing, that's roughly a 15-20K lower limit. So if I want to bind a story that's shorter than that, I make a smaller book. Quartos and octavos are still a very decent size to hold and read, while easily containing shorter fics.

(and I also love to push the extremes and go Very tiny, but that's not necessary lol)

and, seconded, the renegade server is excellent, and the people there can and will answer many kinds of questions to an astounding amount of detail, and can help you plan and troubleshoot!

[little-cat-press]

working on a tiny library

thirty itty bitty books, two copies each of a 15-story series. Lilliputian scale, at least for the page size — the font is still quite large for a lilliputian!

And yes, these are actual, legible words inside them! Though you do need good eyesight to read them.

this little guy is also Lilliputian sized (he'd be like 5'8" at scale), and he's sitting on a sextodecimal anthology of the same series.

somehow their small size fooled me into thinking it would be quick to convert them from flat paper into books, but there's still a lot of them! So it's taking me a bit.

[little-cat-press]

Taking a break from bookbinding because my spine says I did too much shrimping. All the 2-signature ones are cut, folded, and punched, and 10 of them are sewn, leaving 12 to be sewn. And leaving the three- and four-signature ones (four each) at the stage before cutting the signatures apart.

[little-cat-press]

I have done some more, so now all 22 of the 2-signature ones are sewn, and the rest are cut and folded.

they're being squished more to keep them organized than for squishing reasons tbh. don't want the signatures to get scrambled. the two clamps on the left have two each of the 4-signature books, and the one on the right has all four of the 3-signature books in it.

and a gum container works well to contain the other textblocks until I feel like doing the fiddly process that will be gluing all the spines

[little-cat-press]

:D do it! they're fun!

for these, I use the Minuscule font set because it's designed to be used at very small scales. If you want any help with figuring out typesetting, lemme know! I use LibreOffice but you can use any program

[little-cat-press]

working on a tiny library

thirty itty bitty books, two copies each of a 15-story series. Lilliputian scale, at least for the page size — the font is still quite large for a lilliputian!

And yes, these are actual, legible words inside them! Though you do need good eyesight to read them.

this little guy is also Lilliputian sized (he'd be like 5'8" at scale), and he's sitting on a sextodecimal anthology of the same series.

somehow their small size fooled me into thinking it would be quick to convert them from flat paper into books, but there's still a lot of them! So it's taking me a bit.

[little-cat-press]

Taking a break from bookbinding because my spine says I did too much shrimping. All the 2-signature ones are cut, folded, and punched, and 10 of them are sewn, leaving 12 to be sewn. And leaving the three- and four-signature ones (four each) at the stage before cutting the signatures apart.

[little-cat-press]

I have done some more, so now all 22 of the 2-signature ones are sewn, and the rest are cut and folded.

they're being squished more to keep them organized than for squishing reasons tbh. don't want the signatures to get scrambled. the two clamps on the left have two each of the 4-signature books, and the one on the right has all four of the 3-signature books in it.

and a gum container works well to contain the other textblocks until I feel like doing the fiddly process that will be gluing all the spines

[little-cat-press]

working on a tiny library

thirty itty bitty books, two copies each of a 15-story series. Lilliputian scale, at least for the page size — the font is still quite large for a lilliputian!

And yes, these are actual, legible words inside them! Though you do need good eyesight to read them.

this little guy is also Lilliputian sized (he'd be like 5'8" at scale), and he's sitting on a sextodecimal anthology of the same series.

somehow their small size fooled me into thinking it would be quick to convert them from flat paper into books, but there's still a lot of them! So it's taking me a bit.

[little-cat-press]

Taking a break from bookbinding because my spine says I did too much shrimping. All the 2-signature ones are cut, folded, and punched, and 10 of them are sewn, leaving 12 to be sewn. And leaving the three- and four-signature ones (four each) at the stage before cutting the signatures apart.

[little-cat-press]

working on a tiny library

thirty itty bitty books, two copies each of a 15-story series. Lilliputian scale, at least for the page size — the font is still quite large for a lilliputian!

And yes, these are actual, legible words inside them! Though you do need good eyesight to read them.

this little guy is also Lilliputian sized (he'd be like 5'8" at scale), and he's sitting on a sextodecimal anthology of the same series.

somehow their small size fooled me into thinking it would be quick to convert them from flat paper into books, but there's still a lot of them! So it's taking me a bit.

[little-cat-press]

new sketchbook, for sketching in

quarter-letter sized, with the pages untrimmed. Didn't think it would fit in my pockets but turns out it depends on which pants I'm wearing

I think this is my first time doing a cover half cloth and half paper. really like how it turned out

[little-cat-press]

I am contemplating maybe taking some bookbinding commissions after all. Probably going to still stay away from binding fanfiction, especially fanfiction written by someone who isn't the commissioner, but I could bind journals (both blank and styled—for example dot journal or a planner or tracker), public domain books, and original works written by the commissioner.

Keeping in mind that they would be more expensive than commercially produced books, but also better made,

would you buy a custom handmade book?

I would buy a journal

I would buy a public domain book

I would buy a book I wrote

No

Voting ended onFeb 24, 2025

If you wanted multiple copies of your book, I could give you a bulk deal, since I'd only need to do the typesetting once.

[izzythedemigod]

I just found the funniest font ever

Like. What is this. Why is this. Who is the target audience of this?

[skrutskie]

The font is called "Redacted Script," it's available for free here, and I just ran to download it because I am, in fact, the target audience for this

[armengoldira]

Restoration Of An Old Book

[retro-golden-gayer-again]

I worked at the public library (posted below) when I was in HS, it was my first steady job and very rewarding at that. I created a new way to repair some of spines on old books. I wish I was back there again, feeling safe, productive, being a teen boy and having a great time as a kid. (1968)

sadiemae-cody-&-friends 🐶 & retro-golden-gayer 🏳‍🌈

[orbch]

i LOVE your artstyle so freaking much oh my god it's so cool

could you do a little analogical?

if not, do one of your favorite ships! :]

just a chill casual convo on the stairs dont look at virgils eyeshadow there are zero underlying emotions present….. (and thank you!!!)

[little-cat-press]

reblogging to my bookbinding blog even though this post has nothing to do with bookbinding because the art is so nice and soft and I want to put it on a book cover despite not having a specific fic to bind and put inside that book

maybe I need to commission you for cover art sometime

[little-cat-press]

the needle on my hyperfixation compass has swung from Making Books to Making Video Games

I'll be back later but for now other projects are calling...

[little-cat-press]

I say this and then I make considerable progress on four books that have just been sitting on my desk for months

two are now fully done, and the other two are nearly so. pics later.