#simplified bookbinding

I use a simplified bookbinding method (search #simplified bookbinding) (if you want to find the tutorials) (The links all broke because I changed my username since I made them). I admire and love all the elaborate and artistic books other bookbinders make. My goal is to just get the book on my shelf. So this is what a simplified book looks like. You can see the cover is just plain bookcloth. The spine text is laser printed on bookcloth -- if I change my printer's paper source to 'thick paper' then it prints just fine on bookcloth.

I use formatting templates to cut down on the amount of time that I spend typesetting. All my cover pages are: fandom name; fandom logo; title; author, arranged vertically. Chapter headings are just centered in biggish font.

In the photo below, you can see the headband isn't sewn. I tried sewing a headband. It looked like a drunken spider had a seizure on my book so I cut it off and went back to simplified headbands -- it's fabric glued over a piece of twine. Then it's glued to the spine instead of sewn.

The only fancy typesetting I did is for the text messages. Insert a table with two columns and as many rows as there are text messages. Right justify the responder's responses. Make the table rows invisible. And voila! You have text messages!

The text block is glued, so the text block has smooth edges. Instead of printing in signatures and sewing signatures together, I print on A5 size paper. I have to manually double-side it, meaning that I print 10 pieces of paper at a time, then turn them over and stick them back in the paper tray to print the other side. I use bookbinder glue to perfect bind them, with two layers of mull saturated in glue to stabilize the spine.

Usually in bookbinding, you format the text into signatures, print them, fold them, sew the signatures together before casing them into a book. Sewn signatures look like this:

I don't do well sewing signatures, so I found a way to publish books that doesn't involve sewing. In the Simplified Bookbinding method, you print the text front and back on loose sheets of paper and then glue the loose sheets together. A glued text block looks like this:

Gluing loose pages instead of sewing signatures changes/simplifies the formatting, creation of the textblock, and the headbands. You also don’t need the sewing supplies, so it’s cheaper and faster.

To see books I've made with this simplified process, click here, here and here.

I thought some of you on Tumblr might appreciate a "bookbinding for beginners" post. You can use this as an introduction to classic bookbinding, or just keep bookbinding with this simplified method. I’ve put out a series of tutorials on Simplified Bookbinding. Here’s the list and links all in one place.

General posts about the bookbinding process:

Simplified Bookbinding: How to Make a Cheap First Book.

Simplified Bookbinding: Buy Good Glue

Simplified Bookbinding: Cutting Tools

There are four steps to creating a book, with more specialized posts.

1. Format the text and print it.

Simplified Bookbinding: Font and Text Ornaments

2. Create the text block.

Simplified Bookbinding: Headbands

3. Create the case

Simplified Bookbinding: Cardstock Covers

Simplified Bookbinding: Spine Text

4. Attach the case to the text block

Details about this step are in the posts on creating the entire book, and the one about glue.

Here it is! Lehnsherr & Xavier: Attorneys at Law, all 107,772 words of it. X-men fandom, lots of plot, rated T. It took me four years to write and four weeks to publish (printer issues). It's uniquely satisfying to publish my own writing. It's like that farm-to-table produce thing, only this was daydream-to-bookshelf.

I've gotta work on training my camera man a bit better, but here's the book demo. I formatted this in Open Office, which is a free software designed to be an alternative to Microsoft Word. It worked quite well, actually. I used the simplified bookbinding technique, so this is glued and not sewn.

Also (drumroll please) I've finally settled on a name for my publishing imprint and a logo. Behold:

My books aren't the works of art I see from other bookbinders. But there's value in being able to do something efficiently and cost effectively. I think there's a niche for the way I bind books. If I tried to be fancier, I think I would overwhelm myself and quit.

They're still pretty books.

Not for signatures. The Simplified Bookbinding method uses A5 paper, printed front and back on separate sheets of paper. No folding. No sewing. One tip I'd give you is to figure out which side you should glue, and then put some pencil marks along the page edges so you know that's the glue side. Once I got the pages turned around somehow and glued the wrong edge - my book started at page 336 and counted down to page 1.

My brain moved on to another hobby.

This is For Gladness of You, a Star Trek AOS fic by kariye, fanbound as a commission for @flyingspacewhale. This story is about 55,000 words, which is 161 pages.

Artist @keysmayers cleaned up the text ornament and title page graphic so they would print crisply, and I think they turned out great. (someday I will get a new phone with a decent camera, because the blur in the photos is my camera, and not the actual print job.)

It's plotty, and angsty and very spirky. Here's the fic summary:

The story doesn't shy away from the problems the humans have to deal with due to their telepathic bond with creatures who have basically a modified Alpha/Omega sexual dynamic. I really want green dragonriders to unionize or something.

I love the fabric I found for the cover. It looks like faraway dragons flying in a Thread-free sky.

The dragon sketch was done for a tattoo and the artist said it was free for personal use, so I took it for bookbinding.

I formatted the chapter headings to look like the chapter headings in my 40-year-old copy of Dragonquest (bought from a thrift store for 0.75 cents). (sorry for blurry sucky photo)

And I love how the end papers turned out! I used to have a really hard time getting end papers to look good, but I've practiced enough that my end papers are consistently decent. I like the framing effect of this style of paper.