[FM Discuss] book making

[Emma Jane Hogbin]

On Monday 20 April 2009 5:23:38 pm adam hyde wrote:
> As for the book making itself. Adam Thomas, a friend from Berlin, and I
> have made some nice books with a bound spine. Its a very simple method
> but can look very nice if done well. The thing is, it brings the cost of
> the book to produce under what Lulu can produce them for. So I am

This is probably only true if your time has no value...

Binding books by hand is a lot of fun and can be very rewarding (I was a fine 
bookbinder for a number of years), but it isn't a task that should be taken on 
lightly. Things that will seriously affect hand binding:
- number of pages (printing 2-up x 200 pages is a lot of printing for a home 
printer and if one sheet mis-feeds you can potentially wreck a whole print 
job)
- grain of the paper (assuming you are making "classic" sized books that are 
merely A4 or US Letter folded in half) a book can end up refusing to close 
nicely, open flat, or worse, tearing itself apart if the paper grain is running 
perpendicular to the spine
- space (making one or two books on a kitchen table is no problem, but making 
as few as six can require an infinitely larger space)
- cover materials (hard cover can use framing board, softcover will be flimsy, 
etc).

For a few tutorials on hand binding you can check out the PDFs that I've 
uploaded at:
http://emmajane.net/tutorials

The most appropriate binding is probably the Coptic binding which uses no 
adhesives, but does require the pages to be printed in signatures. This one 
can be downloaded directly from:
http://emmajane.net/files/coptic_0.pdf


regards,
emma