Home » My first bookbinding attempt – from PDF to an actual book

My first bookbinding attempt – from PDF to an actual book

Last week I saw the book I’d been very interested in going to a discount for its launching. The book is “Fullstack Rust“.

One chapter in and I already know I must have the book’s hard copy to be able to enjoy it better.

Unfortunately, I don’t know “how to convert PDF into an actual book” (bookbinding) works. I have a lot of “soft-bounded books” back from college, usually, they came from my classmates who would ask who else wants to have a copy of the book for our class and they will just collect money for it, but I never asked how do they print or who do they ask to do it.

While I’m in Malolos, I asked my younger brother who was a Teacher if there’s a service nearby who do bookbinding from PDF version of a book.

He told me that he knows a lot of mini shops that prints and binds the thesis of college students, but he is not sure if they can do what I expect, which are:

  • booklet type (prints 2 pages in 1 leaf)
  • back-to-back printing (just like an actual book)

Printing

So the next day he accompanied me to the mini shop which he patrons on.

My brother is definitely correct to say that they are not familiar with the specifics that I want. The closest and common binding they can do is for the thesis of college students, which is not booklet nor back-to-back. I explained to them what I wanted as an output while being very careful to not turn them off and give up on our mini-project.

Initially, I was hoping to have the coloured copy of the book, but after learning that they would be charging me PHP 7.00 (~USD 0.14) per paper (and there would be 160 papers) I just went to “black-only” printing, if I did not do so, I’ll be charged with PHP 1120 (~USD 22) for printing alone.

The whole printing process, trial and error, computer restart, printing restart took more almost 2 hours.

I was billed PHP 320 (~USD 6.30) for the printing. PHP 2 per paper x 320 papers.

The printing configuration that worked for us is:

After trial and error, this Print setup is what finally worked for us

Cutting and Bookbinding

After getting the printouts, I was asked to bring them to the woman, “ate Guy“, who handles the bookbinding. Then after explaining to her that the output requires them to cut the paper in the middle so they can bind it like a booklet, she then told me, that unfortunately, they don’t have the tool to cut them so she referred me to another shop very closeby, “Papers”, and ask them to cut the printouts. Unfortunately again, the operator who does the “cutting” is on absent, so I went back to ate Guy, she told me they would add more on my bill to include the “cutting cost”.

I got billed for PHP 100 (~USD 1.97) for the bookbinding and cutting. I went home and will be coming for the next day to pick up the book.

Receipt for cutting and bookbinding.

To be honest, I got excited, probably because I was doubtful at first that it would be successful and that I might just waste some money on this little project. Also knowing none of these people have done this before made me felt proud. I already imagined the PDFs I also want to print into a book once I learn that this is doable.

Result

The next day, I finally got the book:

Feedback

It wasn’t perfect, but not that bad given its the first time for the all of us.

For future reference here are the following main issues I noticed:

  1. Since the printing is “black-only” but the book is coloured, the coloured texts of the book, usually the code snippets, are less visible. It might be good to see if there’s a solution or tool that can change the colour of all texts into black first then save it as a new PDF.
  2. There’s a very small margin between left and right pages, especially at the half of the book. It might help to reduce, or if possible completely remove, the margin at the edges of the page so that there would be more space at the center. It’s kind of tricky as you would want to apply this margin-left-0 or margin-right-0 depending if whether the page is odd or even. Hopefully, there’s a tool or trick for this.
There’s a very small margin between left and right pages, especially at half of the book.
  1. They were not able to cut the pages completely in half. This fault is more on the operator’s side and we can’t do much about it, probably just hope they get more practise so they can do it better.

  • Aligns on this side.
  • But not on this side.

Conclusion

It was fun and overall I am really satisfied. I spent PHP 420 in the whole process. I am looking forward to my next bookbinding attempt.