How to bookbind your fanfic!
Part 1: From AO3 to printing
The necessary first step is turning your AO3 fanfic into booklets. Your whole book will be a bunch of booklets piled on top of each others and stitched together.
Booklet examples:
Btw, this is the official Word tutorial on how to make a booklet.
You can see there are different options. I usually do 8 pages, which is what you will see in the video. This means that a booklet of 8 pages is two sheets of paper, printed front and back, folded and one put inside the other. To have your word pages in the correct order you will need to format your word document.
Everything is in the video but here is the text for easy reading (btw the fanfic I used is Exit by schwutthing, an amazing Valjean/Javert fic)
Do not download the fanfic on AO3. Click on "Entire work" and copy paste it on word.
Format your word document. Click on File-> Margins. Select "Multiple pages: Book fold" and "Sheets per booklet: 8". Put "Gutter" to 1cm.
Double click on the empty area just above your text, on a random page of the document. This will make the "Do not download the fanfic on AO3. Click on "Entire work" and copy paste it on word.
Format your word document. Click on File-> Margins. Select "Multiple pages: Book fold" and "Sheets per booklet: 8". Put "Gutter" to 1cm.
Double click on the empty area just above your text, on a random page of the document. This will make the "Header and Footer" option appear. You can click on "Footer" and select the format for the pages' number. Always add the pages number, it will make your life easier.
Now you can justify your book. I usually justify (select all text with CTRL+A and click on Justify), but keep in mind that some documents might not enjoy passing through "justify" so double check your final document. For example, if there are lines of poetry and the author wrote into the next line without starting a new paragraph the justify option will make it weird.
Make your book pretty! I added some illustrations and blank pages. I also made the title of the fanfic bigger.
Fix the chapters' titles and notes. I clicked on Home-> Find and searched for "Chapter", so I could select on each chapter title and make it bold, and also delete the "Chapter text" added just after. You can do the same with "notes" in case you want to delete notes.
Now it is time to print! I prefer to save in pdf before, so I will do that.
IF YOU HAVE A PRINTER THAT DOES NOT PRINT BOTH SIDES
Click on print
Select "Microsoft print to pdf"
Select "Manually print on both sides"
This will create two different files pdf, one for the front pages, and one for the back pages.
Click on the file for the front pages and print them all. Do not panic if you see the pages number all over it.
Now take your printed (only on one side) block of pages and load it into your printer again, making sure that you will now print on the blank back. Open your back pages pdf file and print.
(you can do a trial with a few pages to see if everything is lining up correctly).
IF YOU HAVE A PRINTER THAT PRINT BOTH SIDES
"Click on print
Select "Microsoft print to pdf"
Select "Print on one side"
This will create a single pdf that you can print on your both-sides printer. You will see that the page are not in the order you had on the word document, but the whole file will start with page 8 (see video).
Now print!
What you want is this:
You can see that on the front you have page 8 first, page 1 after, because when folded it will end up with page 1 at the start of your booklet! And on the back of this first sheet you have 7 and 2, that will end up in the correct position.
Now you will have a lot of pages... time to fold and create your booklet! Every two sheets... you will fold as you see above.
Next post will be specifically about folding the booklet, making the holes and sewing them together.
