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Any of you has experience with DIY printing of books? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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There are some books and long texts that I would like to print since reading on electronic devices is distracting. Anyone of you has does this before?

I remember in college there were talks of how some print shops could print textbooks for you given the pdf but I never had to do that.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I'm looking into this as well.

How much progress have you made? Are you trying to make zines like I am?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

For zines the easiest way is to use a sewing machine. You fold the sheet of paper in half and then sew down the fold. I have sewn 10 sheets of paper this way (which gaves you 40 half-pages), but the limit really depends on how sharp the needle and how strong the sewing machine.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm planning on doing something like this as well but the problem is I have no idea for to typeset for something like this. Supposing I have some text I want to print, each paper page will have two document pages on one side, and both sides will be printed. But the ordeing of the pages changes to something for which I haven't worked out the math. I bet there is already software that can help with.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

You need desktop publishing software to format/set the pages.

Scribus is a popular and free desktop publishing software application that can do what you are asking.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I was able to do this by first generating a regular PDF using a pipeline of shenanigans including article-extractor, pandoc, tectonic. Then used a script called pdfbook2 that comes included with texlive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

That seems like a lot of work. I used Scribus to set zines and also print badges.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

I'll keep that in mind.