I just found this really nice bookbinding demo video from a self-publishing author. His method of printing 2 books together, using a cheap thermal binding machine to do the final gluing, and then cutting the book in half at the end is pretty clever.

If you have to use a copy shop’s stack cutter to trim your book, this is a very economical solution. You can get several books out of each cut - which comes in handy when they charge by the cut.

When I began searching for instructions on how to bind a book I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to find a reliable and useful information. I only wanted to create a simple paperback book (I later learned that paperbacks are called ‘perfect bound’ books) but found a huge number of websites that were just republished copies of old public domain books on the subject. It was interesting to learn about the fine craft of hand made sewn books, but nobody was making trade paperbacks in 1912.