babel goes typesetting

Second book in trying out leather covers; a delightful puppy play Frerard anthology-zine, which includes a foreword written by me, and a copious number of images. I enjoyed the chance engaging with a specific kink for the anthology provided me, as I always love a good theme; this is actually the second of the kink anthologies I'm doing, but i've yet finished the first, which is on vampires. Fic links below the cut, as always.

Look, I'm a sucker for a Jane Austen AU, and in the Heated Rivalry fandom, I really love non-Hockey AUs, so this Pride & Prejudice/authors AU was right up my alley. And oh my, it's so wonderful. I knew as I was reading it that I was going to want to bind it.

(in case you were wondering, I'm team 1995)

The series of these two fics is "the thing perhaps is to eat flowers and not to be afraid", which comes from an e.e. cummings poem. Which is why there's an entire poem on the title page.

Okay, so. I had this gorgeous red paper I bought in Washington last month, and it paired gorgeously with this red bookcloth I recently bought. So I was going to use the foil quill to put the title on, but the text just came out blobby, so I had to think of something else. Skivertex to the rescue! I swear that stuff is magic when it comes to foil quill.

I also was inspired by @maleekamolscreates's use of labels on a recent bind for the titles, and I kind of took that further by extending the "label" across the entire cover. I really love how it came out! I had this vision of an apple on the cover, but it wasn't working for me, so I decided to keep it simple and nixed the apple.

I kept the typeset fairly simple, but it was fun adding in some photographs that were in the text of the fic. I did at least get to use the apple motif in the section dividers.

When it came time (like, the next day) to make my own copy, I went with a different color scheme because I didn't have enough of the red paper. So I used this gorgeous marbled paper that Mally made and went with blue instead of red on the cover. The colors of the endbands and edge speckles come from the endpapers, but I think it's kind of hard to tell. (Also I'm mad at myself for forgetting to speckle the edges of the author copy.)

Never Too Late For Love by @sineala

Fandom: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Ultimates

Ship: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark

Start Date: 04/25/25

End Date: 02/15/26

Pages: 231

A surprise bind. While Zapped was working through the art for SotM for me, I….kinda got carried away. I had been looking for a reason to bind this fic, so this was perfect reason to.

The soulmate idea is one that i loveloveLOVE. Red string of fate, find each other in every universe, this was always going to happen - I eat that shit up. So for this fic, I swept through and found every mention of a soulmate, bond, or soulbond - and highlighted them all red. (Sineala taught me a new word today - rubrication. I stole the idea from the Medieval Manuscripts research I did for a previous bind, but of CORSE there's an actual word for it. It just felt right to do...)

I pulled my overall inspiration from the Le Chat Noir - the 1896 poster, specifically, you know the one. Between the lace, the cat, and the color combo - everything felt like it fit really well with the theme of the story. I wish I could explain why it felt like it fit, exactly. Maybe because Ults tony has always felt like such a cat to me. Or maybe it’s the hue of the whole universe has this…old paper, big band, gramophone sound to it. Either way, i grabbed on to the idea and leaned in. 

Overall, this bind for MTH 2024 was the simplest. Probably because the original idea was so clear. Other than working through finding all the right words to highlight in the text block, the whole book was put together very quickly - then sat on my hard drive for half a year.

Ofc yeah! So if you're wondering about the penguin classics covers specifically, then I just use this generator to make them. It's pretty easy, you type in the author + title and drop in the file image. But if you mean specifically the archive classics covers with the back and spine and al, then that's a bit more of complicated process. To make it easy and accurate, I download the custom cover template that lulu provides for the measurements. I ignore the safety margin, but everything else gets a guideline in InDesign.

To make it penguin specific, I stared for a long time at my own penguin classics. And took measurements. But also, this website is very helpful: https://penguinseriesdesign.com. It's the Penguin Series Design, which goes through all of the different designs that Penguin had done for their covers over the years. This one specifically is for the Penguin classics. In the second link, they provide a link to Jim Stoddart's website, where he diagrams a cover he did for Penguin, and shows the grid, fonts, font sizes, and even CMYK color lol. Jim Stoddart, if you don't know, was the art director of Penguin who redid the covers for the Modern Penguin Classic look. If you want to get more into the specifics of the Penguin Design, Classic Penguin: Cover to Cover was very useful. The sans serif font is FuturaEF Book. The serif is Mrs. Eaves Roman. The glyph is a random one I chose from the font, Davys, which has the cutest glyphs btw. I chose this one because it kinda looks like Hermes to me. And then I usually pull the summary from ao3 or if there isn't one, write one myself. Or I'm feeling particularly lazy, and the ao3 summary is just a quote from the fic, I'll copy + paste that in as is. If the summary is short, I'll sometimes put in reviews from commenters. Ummm that's all I can think of for now, but if you have any more questions/want to know more/need clarification, feel absolutely free to hit me up!

Ok, if you are like me, you recently stumbled upon @armoredsuperheavy​‘s brilliant blog about bookbinding and fanfiction, and now you are excited to throw yourself head-first into bookbinding.

This also means that you are about to invest a fair amount of time into figuring out how exactly to lay out books. What you end up getting comfortable with will most likely be what you end up using long term, so it is worthwhile giving it some thought. The question really comes down to this: who’s name will you be cursing for the foreseeable future? Adobe? Or Microsoft?

Full disclosure: I only started using InDesign because I was forced to. I worked as an editor at a newspaper, and that was what we used. The beginning was hell. I won’t sugar coat it, it sucks. In the end it was worth it. Once you figure it out, InDesign’s potential far outstrips Microsoft Word (in my opinion).

That encouragement means very little when you open this treacherous program for the first time and see THIS:

“What?! I will literally give you $100 if you guess what all the buttons on the left are for. How the fuck do I make the margins disappear!?”

So, if using InDesign means figuring out what at least one third of the tools on the left are for, lets talk pros and cons.

TL; DR: the internet is temporary!!! printed books (for your own private amusement) are forever!!!

What I do:

Basically, I choose fics that I think deserve to be printed and typeset them using a software called Adobe InDesign. InDesign is the professional standard in the industry, but there are definitely easier (and cheaper!) options for formatting.

(i love them so god damn much. i'm already planning to bind their currently-ongoing J&D 2 writeup.)

anyway, i'd always meant to get into bookbinding and this seemed like the perfect place to start - never mind that the formatted document was 160k+ and 500 pages long, go big or go home, right?

i emerge from my extended hours in "baby otter convinced it's dying when put in water before it realizes it was built for swimming" crafting skill-tree purgatory to show you: my first-ever bookbinding project!

i got the cover paper, endpapers, spine & corner leather, davy boards, and embroidery floss for sewing up the signatures from michaels. the text block was printed on 24-lb, 50% recycled 96 bright copy paper from staples. i made my own book press out of two cutting boards and some assorted hardware, and a bit of research into leather paring led me to this blog post by a professional book conservator, who recommended razor planes for small-scale leather paring as a step below an actual spokeshave - i found one for $20 on ebay and it turns out it works PERFECTLY, strongly recommend. i used a combination of @armoredsuperheavy's how-to document and DAS Bookbinding's round-backed bradel binding and half-leather library binding tutorials for the case.

i formatted the text block in google docs, using Epilogue for the body text and Shadows Into Light for the headers. i used the in-game Precursor script for the covers, spine, and foretitle, done by screenshotting individual letters from a translation chart and assembling them in MS Paint, and the splash title features a nice series logo vector i yoinked from its wikipedia page. i used this tool for doing the signature layout. i did have to do quite a bit more line-editing than is probably normal for fanbinding since i was taking it from a raw discord copy-paste to a Formatted Novel(TM), but my partner gave it the okay and it did give me the chance to come up with some fun chapter title names XD

using sealemon's text block sewing tutorial let me colorcode the binding thread to which portion of the elemental powerup progression of the game was being covered, with the added bonus of adding an extra little pop of color to go along with the concept art portraits, character model/gameplay screenshots, and a few of their own original illustrations my partner included while they were writing! i ended up just doing a buttonhole stitch in black for the endbands, since i didn't have any pre-made ones on hand.

i don't have a cricut and i don't know how to do the fancy heat-transfer vinyl thing, so i just had to make do with a 9 mm olfa knife and several hours' worth of patience for the cover text XD

what ended up working really well was to lay strips of delicate-surface painter's tape onto a sheet of printer paper, print the assembled strings of text onto the tape, and cut out the lettering to make a custom sticky stencil! put it on the book where you want it, pat it down really good, and fill it in with a couple coats from a fine-tip Posca paint pen. peel it gently back up, and boom - beautifully crisp painted lettering! :D

this was an absolute blast to make

Ebony Dark’ness Dmentia Raven Way thanks for the entertainment and for confusing my friends it was funny to watch them read this out loud

okay, more posts of free stuff for binderary! yeah!

here's a bunch of bookbinding/typesetting ornaments that i made! a while ago i went on a kick of drawing random little ornaments to use in book design and typesetting, and all of them are available for free to use in a gdrive folder here!

there's also a README document with permissions info - basically, please credit me if you use these, don't use them for for-profit projects or make money off them, and please make note if you edit them from the original. you can also message me if you have ideas for new ones i could make! i do still make more of these every so often.

(also also, these are free to use, but if you really WANT to donate to my ko-fi because you like them... i will never say no to a tip, i am so broke lmao the economy is in shambles)

anyway enjoy!!! have fun!!!! feel free to tag me in a post if you use any of these in your books, i would love to see them and hype you up!!

My typeset for @renegadeguild 's 2025 Tiny Book Exchange!

[An exchange where you typeset a smaller fic and then someone binds it for you! [or you only typeset a fic or just bind someone else's submitted typeset, ya got options]]

typeset made (you're here) | bind made

This fic is such a treat to read and felt perfect for making a small, hand-sized book of! @ironfamjam 's Give Me Your Fear, I'll Give You My Faith

Summary: "Hit with a spell meant for Arthur, Merlin loses his senses one by one and all Arthur can do is watch."

I am so very excited to present free typeset #33: Grimms' Fairy Tales, by, of course, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. (Apologies for this being quite a long post, but I really wanted to show pictures of what's available in these typesets!) When I saw this in my ask box, I knew I had to do a typeset for it. But there were so many individual tales, and I wanted to do something a bit unique for each of them. But I also wanted to use a lot of color. And throw in some art. And that might make the typeset not so super printer friendly for some folks, so....

I made two versions of this typeset! Two different designs and color options. Both pdfs are available for FREE here and are sized for half letter (letter folio).

Grimms' Fairy Tales typeset version one is the full color version with a lot of little details and different art/motifs for each story (most of the art I used was by Maurice Pillard Verneuil; his stuff is so pretty).

And for the second version of the typeset (which I dubbed the Black and White, Hold the Art Alt in my google drive archive--I need a shorter name for that. The Deep Drive? Drivechive? Googachive?--I went black and white printer friendly, with prominent featuring ornaments and a more simple design.

You can see the differences clearly above. Both these typesets were a lot of fun to make, and I hope they print out well for people wanting to use them. It's one I hope to be able to print out soon for myself, to have as a personal physical copy. I kept stopping in the middle of typesetting just to read a few tales. (Cat-Skin and Snow White and Rose-Red are my two favorite tales (I just love the changed appearance lover trope), though The Juniper-Tree has a a solid standing with best revenge death.) Anyway, use these typesets as you wish! If there's any issues with the files, feel free to let me know! Just please leave credit and consider tagging me if you use them, or reblog if you can! More details and interior shots of the first version are below the break!

This is a quarto typeset for the fic more precious than gold by Drag0nSt0rm avaliable to read on A03. This is another case of creating a new copy of the previous typeset even though I did really like my previous one that I had made back in 2024 when I first got into the hobby. I am redoing these typesets for a higher print quality and as I am keeping a lot of the different design choices the same as before. As I wasn’t also planning and make these choices and the fact that the fanfic is 12,949 words long, it didn’t take long to make for a typeset. I spent maybe 10 to 15 minutes on the cover ages back (pre-timing) and used a lot of those elements and the typeset images when recreating or making new images to include. I spent 5 minutes making the title pages but it did take 10 to 15 to go through the old typeset (via Office Libre as google docs doesn’t let you copy your images from the doc) to recreate the text separators.

The typeset itself only took a little over 1 hour and 20 minutes to make.