I've never done a DIY book using the author's technique. I've printed and bound books using the traditional technique of sewn signatures. It was more work than the method described in this post. I was very happy with the results.
There are a ton of tutorials on that method. At this point I don't recall what tutorial(s) I followed (it's been at least 20 years since the last time I made a book).
Don't scrimp on the typesetting. Today there's probably software to "ingest" an EPUB file and make printable output. Back when I was printing books I took plain ASCII text files and fed them to a Microsoft Word template. It was amazing how poorly Word 2003 handled >200 page files.
huijzer•6mo ago
Interesting. I’ve seen a lot about sewn signatures too indeed as well as a technique where you glue a small strip of paper on the side instead of a full cover.
What do you mean by “scrimp”? You would spent hours fiddling with Word? EPUB to PDF is okayish nowadays indeed via Pandoc. But nothing beats Typst. Truly remarkable piece of software.
EvanAnderson•6mo ago
There are a ton of tutorials on that method. At this point I don't recall what tutorial(s) I followed (it's been at least 20 years since the last time I made a book).
Don't scrimp on the typesetting. Today there's probably software to "ingest" an EPUB file and make printable output. Back when I was printing books I took plain ASCII text files and fed them to a Microsoft Word template. It was amazing how poorly Word 2003 handled >200 page files.
huijzer•6mo ago
What do you mean by “scrimp”? You would spent hours fiddling with Word? EPUB to PDF is okayish nowadays indeed via Pandoc. But nothing beats Typst. Truly remarkable piece of software.