Q&A: I need to know how to print and bind a book at home.?
Question by that_girl_there: I need to know how to print and bind a book at home.?
I want a website to tell me how to print and bind my own novel at home without fancy materials, machines or tools. I’ve written a novel but I don’t think Ill publish it its just for the family for now and i just want to make a couple of copies but I dont know how to set it up to print front and back on half pages and bind it.
Best answer:
Answer by Lakely
You can buy black ink for your printer cartrige (ink jet) and just print the pages out on that. Go to your local quick print place and get the latest kind of binding done by them… it’s not expensive if you print the pages yourself.
Or go to an office supply place for ring binder equipment… people even sell ring bound books on Amazon… so it’s done rather commonly.
If you want to get fancy, do some artwork and have it copied on a color printer (for your cover)
Have fun and go ahead and list it on Amazon. If you have a great title you might sell a number of copies that will cover your expenses… and who knows… a publisher might see your work and want to give you a real contract.
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Home printers don’t print on both sides. You’ll have to print on one side of the page and then take that paper out and put it through again facing the other way. And you’ll need thicker paper than usual if you want to print of both sides because the ink will show through a little bit.
If I were you I would just spend a few bucks to have Kinko’s bind the book. It will be fast and inexpensive and it will look good too. Check out their binding options, they have a few: http://www.fedex.com/us/officeprint/storesvcs/options.html
Bookbinding is taught at Craftster.org (not .com). Our daughter used their tutorial and her very first effort was pretty good, the second one really nice.
Printing two-sided is heavily printer dependent. On mine, I change from portrait layout to landscape, setting columns, creating enough white space for binding, then print a page (let’s say page 1 and 2). I remove it and turn it over, then print 3 and 4 on the back.
This method works only for very short books which can handle individual pages folded in half before binding. Ordinarily, book pages are “booked” (that’s where the name comes from), a bunch of pages stitched together and folded in half at the line of stitching, and all the books (sets of stitched pages) bound together and glued to the binding’s spine. So what’s on the other half of the sheet of page 1 might be page 16 or 20, and on the back of it, page 2 and 17 or 21.
Don’t overlook someplace like Kinko’s doing a binding on full-size pages.
I would suggest using http://www.lulu.com to publish some books. Its free to upload and create the book, then you order as many as you want.
Otherwise, I would suggest going to a craft store and see if they have the materials you’ll need.