[...] A simple little origami paper trick started a new interest for me in bookbinding. I found a blog article with a link to a PDF file that, when printed out and folded, created a very useful little 8 page expense tracking booklet that would slip in your pocket. [...]

It’s a bit simplistic, but you could always print one set of pages, then reload the paper and print the other set.

The following url has some info on using converting postscript files into different book formats:

http://www.cappella.demon.co.uk/tinyfiles/tinymenu.html

Rick,

Thanks for sharing these resources.

I had come across the tiny guide site before and it has some great information. But it is not for the casual booklet maker. The text assumes basic familiarity with professional printing prep and there is a lot of jargon on the site.

I didn’t include it here because I thought it would be more confusing than helpful to folks looking for a fun project.

But, for any readers who are serious about studying the printing process, these texts are worth a look.

The Go-To Guy!

Andrew,

I’ve figured out how to reformat any eight page pdf document into a mini booklet using a simple bash script and the pdfpages package for LaTeX.

It’s not an elegant, automatic solution, but I used my drawing program (CorelDraw) to set up eight correctly sized and oriented text boxes on the page and formatted the text to print sideways. Then it was just a question of putting the text I wanted for my booklet into each of the proper boxes. You can easily tell how to orient the text in each box by making a blank booklet and numbering the pages. Unfold the thing and you’ll know what goes where. Then just print or save the booklet in pdf format for others to print and fold.

[...] Make Cool Little Booklets With Your Computer [...]

Could you please send me the script? I should avoid me some work…

BrokenClock,

I don’t have any scripts for this. I did this project the hard way by laying everything out in a graphics program and printing.

If you are planning to make simple staple bound booklets, I made a video that shows how to convert PDF files into booklet format for printing. Check it out here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q2ueGUNtKY

If you need something other than that, check out the links in the article for more resources.

Andrew

“… if there is a web based tool (or someone interested in programming one) that would let a user design and layout a page and then kick out a PDF file ready for printing, I’d like to know about that!”

I’m not sure if this is will be useful -never tried it myself- but take a look:

http://www.csparks.com/Bookbinding/typesetting.xhtml

Quote from there: “For typesetting and imposition, I use ConTeXt, a macro package for Donald Knuth’s TeX system. This is free open-source software available for both Windows and Linux systems.

Here is the source document. It produces this pdf. The layout is for an octavo imposition: There are 8 two-sided pages per sheet. They are oriented so the sheet can be folded and cut producing a complete signature with all the pages right side up and in the right order.” …etc

There’s a video of this technique at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh1W15BWCUk

Marc,

Thanks for the video link.

Andrew

I found a way to make books with out a hitch. I use Wordperfect X3, which allowes me to save my project as a PDF file.You can use any program that makes a PDF file.I then purchased “CutePDF” at the following url; http://www.acrosoftware.com/index.htm When you load a pdf file and click on the booklet icon, the program puts the pdf into a booklet format. You then can print it out and fold it.