C. T. Louis

An experimental binding for a work about The Doctor and Jack trapped in a computer's experimental time loop. Raw edged covers with logo cutout and metallic classified stamp to look like a Torchwood file. Coil binding for a reading that can loop endlessly. Passages inside the computer printed in white Linux Libertine font on black, and passages outside the computer printed in traditional black on white Garamond font. Chapters numbered in binary to give an impression of frighteningly increasing loops. Author's extranea included as a 'log file'.

I’m really enjoying binding as a method of celebrating and validating transformative works as well as a pro-community gesture. In keeping with that idea, I’m happy to make the author a copy at no cost for themselves if they’d like one. Thanks!

I was incredibly honoured, excited, and intimidated to be matched with @queercore-curriculum for the Renegade winter exchange. They were one of the original impetuses for me to begin bookbinding — their gorgeous longstitch binds of some incredible Drarry fics have been so inspiring & their bookshelf photos make me want to cry with envy. @queercore-curriculum makes graceful and restrained binds, using color choice and stitching patterns carry the weight of the fic, instead of heavily-illustrated covers. I wanted to bind this fic to fit in with the other books on their shelf.

The first fic I bound them was GallaPlacidia’s Ship of Theseus. This is a gorgeous fic about forgiveness and falling in love and building a home together. One of the central motifs of the story is the garden that Draco grew at their shared cottage, and specifically the calla lilies in it. I designed a stitching pattern that evokes a more organic, floral shape than the criss-cross pattern I’ve tried before, and used white, buttercup, and emerald green thread stitched through a spine of dark grey bookcloth. I wanted the bind to be hopeful, to convey that spring was coming through the winter, just like in the fic. I then printed Gustav Klimt’s Bauerngarten (1907), which is in the public domain here, as joyful endpapers. 

The floral motif carries through the typeset: California poppies as my bindery logo, a lily as the ornament to start the fic, and a small flower ornament as scene dividers, but I had to diverge for the title page. In the fic, when Harry proposes:

“I changed it,” said Harry. Draco brought it closer to his face, and saw that in the gold there were fine engravings. A ship in a full sail, a ship in a state of decay, a ship that had been rebuilt, slightly different. A repeating cycle.

I had to try to illustrate this because, really, I was tearing up when I got to that line. I’m not 100% happy with the final result (would probably rotate it to have a fully-built ship at the ‘top’ of the circle to make it more legible), but I am happy to include this part of the story on the title spread.

Title font: Mantinia

Body text: Dante

Ornaments: Bodoni Ornaments

Endpapers: Gustav Klimt’s Bauerngarten (1907)

Bookcloth: Duo bookcloth in Birch (no longer available)

Some notes on process: I always make a ‘test book’ that I keep before sending out a copy to someone else—this is to make sure everything works well & looks good together (which you can see in the photos). Happy to answer any questions about process improvements between test & final copy, or chat about this stitching pattern!

For my two books I used Microsoft Word. However, I’m excited about trying Affinity Publisher for the next project. It has a free month trial with apparently lots of youtube tutorials, but because I haven’t tried it yet, I’ll just focus on Word.

Note: This is what I did. I know @renegadepublishing has a very in-depth guide on typesetting. You could probably ask them for it or it may be on their discord. I had already started on my typeset by the time I’d heard about their guide, so I didn’t follow it, but it’s another option for you.

Margins

I already owned a book interior template back when I was self publishing, so I just copied the margins that were in it. I bet you can fiddle with this and find the margins you like best.

Go to Page Setup and click the small arrow to open the dialog box. From there change your margins, choose landscape, choose bookfold, and choose the number of sheets per booklet. For both of my books I did 16.

Next you’re going to click on the Paper tab and tell it what sized paper you’ll be printing on. I did letter (11 in by 8.5 in).

Next click on the Layout tab and tell it to start the section on Odd Page and check the boxes for different odd and even pages and different first page and fill out header and footer margins.

The Typeset

Under Page Layout, you’re going to click on Breaks.

There will be a drop down menu and select Odd Page. This is your half title page or full title page, depending on what you want to do. I recommend grabbing a random book off your shelf and looking at how they did the front matter. How many title pages did they put in? Where are they located? On an odd page or an even page?

Let’s say you want to do two title pages. Both should be on Odd Pages. There is no need to insert an Even Page break between them because the computer will know there is an Even Page between two Odd Pages, but you can insert a blank Even Page between them if it helps keeps things clear for you.

Continue to insert the appropriate Odd or Even Page breaks. For example, if you want to add a copyright page or an Other Things the Writer’s Written page. This is all up to you. You don’t have to put in any of that stuff. Just be sure that you’re giving these pages a designated break.

Now you’re ready to do Chapter One!

Make another Odd Page break and copy and paste the first chapter into the document. I know that sometimes copying and pasting from AO3 can be tricky, but I’ve only had two chapters where the italics didn’t transfer and I had to manually insert them, so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Just keep an eye out for any formatting issues.

When it comes to formatting, have fun! Play around with different body fonts and chapter fonts. Add a Drop Cap if you want. To make things easy and consistent, use the Styles. You can modify them however which way you want, but be sure to choose justify. It’s also important to make Hyphenation automatic.

Now it’s time to make some headers and footers. You should have a bunch of text in chapter one. Pick a page and double click the header. The first page of the chapter will say it’s the first page header and then it will be Even and Odds. For the Evens I typed in my name. For the Odds I put in the book title. I’m actually having a hard time remembering how I did the page numbers, but I think I just clicked on the Page Number box and chose one I liked. For the headers and footers, you can alter the font and size. You can make them bold or italicized.

All the odd headers should be the same and all the even headers should be the same with the chapter title page not having a header or footer. (I think there might be a way of keeping the page number on the chapter page but I don’t know how.)

Now you’re ready to do Chapter Two!

Check the last page in the document and insert the appropriate page break, be it Odd or Even. This is important because it’s telling the program that you’re starting a new section and therefore there won’t be a header or footer on that page. The headers and footers will essentially skip over it and continue with the rest of the pages when you copy and paste the text in.

You’re going to keep repeating these steps until you get to the end of the book, always inserting the appropriate page break at the start of a new chapter. You should also do this if you want to add quotes or if the book has multiple parts and you want to make a page that showcases that without the headers or page number cluttering it up.

When you get to the end it’s a good idea to add two more blank pages. Congratulations! You did it!

When it’s time to print, make sure you tell it to print on the Short Edge. Double check that it’s on landscape, that the right sized paper is selected and that it’s printing double sided.

Remember when I said 16 pages to make a booklet? You don’t have to do 16. There are a lot of different options, but what this means is that the printer will print these sections so that when they are folded, the page numbers will match up. It’s super confusing to explain and I’m probably not doing a good job, but if you grab the first four pages out of the printer, and fold them into a packet, the title page will be on the front page and page sixteen will be the last page. It will continue to print this way with four sheets of paper needing to be folded into a booklet.

It's also important that if you're going to insert clipart, you'll need to tell word not to compress the images. This drove me crazy for a long time. Go to file, click options, click advanced and scroll down to where it talks about images.