Hello! Genuinely haven't stopped thinking about your binding of Homecoming and I was wondering how you got into binding? And any tips for people on how to start? :D
Hi, that is such a lovely thing to say. I got into binding after seeing a binding of Running on Air (still my favourite fic despite my feelings on JKR). So I dived into yt tutorials and after watching Jess Less's unhinged fic binding video, I bound my first Sports Night fanfiction. It wasn't anything to look at but I was hooked. So I'd recommend that just for the fun of it.
But what really made me fall in love with it were the videos by Bitter Lemon Bindery. She has gorgeous ASMR binding videos which make the process look much neater than it is (especially when I do it :D) but also tutorials like this one which is the most comprehensive one I have ever watched and I watch A LOT binding videos. I wish I had found that one when I was starting out. I also recommend DASbookbinding videos because he is just a master bookbinder, but they are slightly more advanced. I still love listening to him and learn new things from him.
As for the text itself, I used to labor with it myself for hours and hours on end, and you still will if you want to play with it and add artistic flair, but what took the longest was just formatting the fic to look like a book. Then I discovered a post on here by Blak Books Bindery (you can just Google it they also have a website) who created free macros that you can just put into your word processor like Word (they give you a step by step on how to do it) and with like three clicks it does the magic and spits it out formatted. I love it. I can't believe I ever worked without it. And then you can continue to play with the text and headings and tweaks that make it into an art form.
After I save it as a pdf I usually put it into BookbinderJS which is just an online JavaScript app (again just Google it) and it helps me to print it to the size I need.
It's also great to follow the bookbinding communities on Reddit, they are super supportive and offer help with any questions you might have along the way. You might encounter me there as well :) I hope this helped a bit. It is quite a rewarding hobby. There's very few things more satisfying than holding a beloved 150k fic in your hands.
