#typesetting tips

[canon-in-too-deep]

Free Typesetting Template

So while I try to get some designs set, I thought I'd clean up and share the template I use for typesetting!

Templates save lots of time, and let me keep 'tools' where I like 'em. Free template here on my google drive ✨.

(As with all my stuff, Personal Use Only!) This file is for Affinity Publisher ONLY. I highly recommend getting Affinity Publisher if you're doing a lot of typesets and want a high degree of control over details. It has most of the features of Indesign, and far more capabilities than Word or Google Docs. There is a learning curve at the start, but overall it is a great program for typesetting and is a one time purchase, versus a subscription like other services. Please note, this template is set for my own personal preferences, and I always adjust it according to the text I'm working on. You can make whatever changes you want to suit it to your needs; I just included the normal settings I tend to use. See below the break for template details! (How to use/notes)*

This template is sized for half letter pages.

140% Leading, 11pt Font Size (Body Text)

The baseline grid is set for these exact preferences. If using a different font size/leading, I change these to match and play with the text boxes for 'Master Body' to make them look nice.

The template has the text boxes set up for where I usually insert text, copy, and headers/footers. I usually fill these out with the relevant details, and adjust the placements and sizes as needed.

I put X down where I usually write my name/imprint. The copyright page has a lot of blank space because I like to include my personal logos on there.

The copyright page also has the Project Gutenburg info I like to include, since I mainly do public domain works from there. If I'm doing a fanfic, I'll replace this with the tags/details from the fic's AO3 page.

Main text gets copied and pasted into page 9, then flows into the rest of the pages.

The paragraph and character styles I use are all included.

Very important, after pasting in your text, go to Find and Replace, and turn all italics to 'Emphasis' character style to preserve them.

'Body Divider' is how I include dinkuses.

'Special' paragraph styles are for when texts have things like letters or songs included.

Typically, I use 'Chapter Heading' + 'Chapter Character' for chapter titles, and set a table of contents on page 7 using these settings.

You'll notice that on page 9 I have a text box that links into the Master Body pages. This is my sort of 'test' page for chapter titles. I can freely change the size and layout on this specific page. I move it around based on what design I come up with, then copy that design into my 'Master Chapter Heading' spread to apply to the rest of the chapter title pages.

At the very end of a file, I'll usually put in a colophon. This is not in the template, but it's just a blank page at the end with my stamp and notes on the size of the typeset and what fonts I used. *I don't have a fully written tutorial at this time, but I recommend joining Renegade Bindery's discord, where a lot of very talented people have shared their tutorials, and provide very helpful live answers.

[getfuckedblr]

here’s my guide to making typesets! I use Word to make my typesets, Canva for designs, and Adobe to insert the majority of my designs.

this is a ton of info and I tried to make it as readable as possible, but plz let me know if u need any clarification!

Word: always use the app, the online program doesn't have all of the options needed

paper size: US Letter Borderless

then i flip it landscape, do custom borders, and select book fold. I do 1 inch on top and bottom, .75 in inside, and .5 in outside. i leave the gutter option alone and leave it set to 0. You can choose how large you want your signatures to be (sheets in booklet option on the margins page): I normally do 40 page signatures, but if it's a smaller text you'll want to go smaller for stability. after that, you should have a half page to start your typeset!

Inserting your fic:

the next thing you’ll do is insert your fic; on ao3 click entire story, CTRL A to select all, CTRL C to copy it all. Paste it into your document. word automatically detects the headings, and you should be able to see all your chapters on the left side bar (if you can’t see it, click the page numbers on the bottom left to open the tab).

Formatting:

you can do the next few steps in any order, but we’re going to fix the formatting now. you’ll want to CTRL A everything, pick a font and a font size. I normally use georgia and size 10, going smaller or larger depending on the file size.

To have an indent on every line: CTRL A your work to select all, right click the “normal” style, on the home tab. go to the bottom left, open the drop-down menu, and select “paragraph”. next to special, hit first line. i like to do .3, you can do whatever you want. i then like to make sure the space after is set to 0, the line spacing to single, and then hit save. it should automatically adjust your lines to start at whatever indent you picked.

To fix the spacing: go into the layout tab, and go to spacing. There'll be a before and after option: write in 0, then click enter for both of them. Word is a little bit bitchy so you have to force it do things sometimes. after this you can choose if you want single spacing, or 1.5, or whatever you want.

*sometimes, the way the fic was formatted when posted to ao3 means that even after setting the line spacing to zero, there will still be a space in between each line. this is where you have to troubleshoot. you can either go line by line to delete the excess space (yes, for real. and yes, it's just as awful as it sounds) or, sometimes, not every-time but sometimes, you can highlight the chapter text, go into the home tab on top, click the A with the purple eraser to erase all formatting, and then do all the beginning steps again, and it will get rid of the extra space.*

Now that your format is mostly fixed, delete the archive of our own beta, and anything else you don't want. I normally delete everything up to the title of the work, and leave that for creating my copyright page. Remember to do the same for the end of the work!

Page Breaks and Section Breaks:

the next part is the most crucial. it's how we format both the chapters, but also how we format the headings and footer. this was the part that took me the longest to figure out: it's the page breaks and section breaks. page breaks mark the place where one page ends, and another begins. section breaks will create a new section in your document, so you can break the beginning few pages from the rest of your textblock. This will allow you to insert page numbers that start on page one, instead of at the first page of the document.

I like to go the end of the description, and then click on the first chapter. then I'll add a section break. you can find this in the layout tab, click breaks, and then click section break. so now our section 2 starts with chapter one. After this, add a blank page after the description and before your new section, and then click on the first chapter. (adding a blank page allows for smoother formatting later with headers and footers)

I then go to each chapter, delete the authors notes at the start and end of each chapter, and add a page break at the start of each chapter. i like to use the heading tab on the left to click each chapter, so I know I'm actually starting the new page right where I need to, and other formatting won't delete the page break.

when I create a compilation fic, where I have muitlple fics in one typeset, I use section breaks at the starts of each new fic. this will allow the page numbers to continue, but I can then edit each sectio to change the fic title and the authors name. if you're really fancy, you can do this for each chapter title as well, you would just hve to use a section break for each chapter instead of page break. *Remember to click link to previous to turn it off, so you are only editing that section, and not all the other sections. this can be found in the heading and footer tab on the top, which will automatically open when you click on the heading or footer.*

Adding page numbers, authors name, text name:

To add a page number, I click the footer, which automatically opens the header/footer tab on top. Then, I click page numbers, add page numbers. I turn on different odd and even pages, which is also found in the header/footer tab. you'll have to insert page numbers on both an even and odd age to get them to show up once you click that option. Page one should be an odd page, page two should be an even page. I like to put the page numbers on the outside of the page. Then you'll click format page numbers, click "start at" instead of "continue from previous section", and write in 1. now your typeset starts at 1 on chapter one instead of the start of your document! you'll need to go back and delete the numbers that showed up on the first section, but remember to deselect link to previous before you do that! or you'll end up deleting your page numbers again.

to add text on page numbers:

click into the header/footer again. double click directly on the page number, then start typing. You ca highlight the whole thing to change the font, font seize, etc. I normally do the same size as my text, and I'll either do georgia font or garamond font. I google "copy paste line for text" to get that line dividing the page number from whatever text I have next to it.

to add graphics on an entire work:

you can go into the header or footer, go to the insert tab, and insert a picture. Doing it in the header or footer will ensure it's on every single page that shares that header or footer. I have done this in the past, and find it's cute, but it's also tricky because it needs to be small enough to fit inside the header or footer, and won't really be able to interact with the text because it's different on each page, while the graphic will stay in the same position regardless.

Blank Pages:

you want blank pages at the start and end of your textblock: this is what you'll be glueing your end papers to. even more, you'll want to ensure your total page number is both divisible by 4 (each page of paper will have four pages of your text on it, two to each side) and fits into your signature count. If you're working with a 40 page signature, and you have 420 pages, that's fine. You'll end up having the last signature only be 5 regular pages instead of 10, which is plenty enough to sew. you really just want to try and avoid only having one of two pages in that last signature, as that won't be very strong in holding up your end page, or be very stable in sewing on to your book block.

to make sure they're blank, with no page numbers, you'll want to insert a section break on the last page of text. Deselect link to previous, delete the page numbers and you should be all good!

Printing/Saving:

I'm on a mac. I don't know how you would do this on anything but a mac. let that be a warning lmao. but I will CTRL A everything, ensure it's US Letter Borderless, and then hit print. if you don't tell the document it's the right size, it'll be funky when you go to print because of the margins. to insert images, i click save as pdf. it'll save it in the correct order to print for your signatures, and then I upload it into adobe to edit further. that'll have to be a different post bc this is entirely too long already.

If you want to print directly from here, ensure it's printing the right size, flip on short edge, double sided. and you're all done!

[niennanir]

Listen to your elders

So last week I posted abut the importance of downloading your fic. And then three days later AO3 went down for 24 hours. No one was more weirded out by this than I was. But while y’all were acting like the library at Alexandria was on fire I was reading my download fic and editing chapter eight of Buck, Rogers, and the 21st Century. And also thinking about what I could do to be helpful when the crisis was actually over.

So first off, I’m going to repeat that if you’re going to bookmark a fic, you really need to also download the fic and back it up in a safe place. I just do it automatically now and it’s a good habit to get into.

But let’s talk about some other scenarios. Last October I lost power for over a week after hurricane Ian. Apart from not having internet or A/C I did find plenty to do, I collect books so I had plenty to read, but maybe, unlike me, your favorite comfort reads aren’t sitting on a bookshelf. So let’s do something about that, shall we?

In olden times many long years ago around 1995 we printed off a lot of fic. It was mostly SOP to print a fic you planned to reread and stick it in a three ring binder. And that’s totally valid today too, but you can also make a very nice paperback with a minimum amount of skill and materials.

Let’s start with the download; Go to Ao3 and select your fic, we’ll be working with one of mine. This method works best with one shots, long fic tends to need a more complicated approach. Get yourself an HTML download

Open up the HTML download and select all then copy paste into any word processor. Set the page to landscape and two columns, then change the font to something you find easy to read, this is your book, no judgement. This is all you have to do for layout but I like to play a little bit. I move all the meta, summary, notes to the end and pick out a fun font for the title: 

No time like the present to do a quick proofread. Congratulations, you’ve just created your first typeset. On to the fun part.

Now you’re going to need some materials:  8.5x11in paper ruler one sheet of 12x12 medium card stock (60-80lb) scissors pencil pen or fine tip marker sheet of wax paper white glue two binder clips 2 heavy books or 1 brick butter knife

You’ll also need a printer, if you’re in the US there is almost a 100% chance your local library has a printer you can use if you don’t have your own. None of these materials are expensive and you can literally use cheap copy paper and Elmers glue.

Print your text block, one page per side. Fold the first page in half so that the blank side is inside and the printed side out:

use the butter knife to crease the edge. Repeat on all the sheets. When you’ve finished, stack them up with the raw edge on the left and the folded edge on the right. I used standard copy paper, because you’re only printing on one side there’s no bleed to worry about. Take the text block and line everything up. Use the binder clips to hold the raw edge in place.

Wrap the text block in the wax paper so that the raw edge and binder clips are facing out. I’m going to use my home built book press but you don’t need one, a brick or a couple of books or anything else heavy will work fine.

Once the text block is anchored down, take off he binder clips and get out the glue.

You can use a brush but you don’t need one, smear some glue on that raw edge.

Go make a margarita, watch The Mandalorian, call your mother. Don’t come back for at least an hour

In an hour smear some more glue on there and shift your brick forward so that the whole book is covered. This keeps the paper from warping. While glue part 2 is drying we’ll do the cover. Get out your 12x12 cardstock

Mark the cardstock off at 8.5 inches and cut it. Measure in 5.5 inches from the left and put in a score line with the butter knife (the back edge not the sharp edge)

Carefully fold the score line, this is your front cover. You have some options for the cover title, you can use a cutting machine like a cricut if you have one, you can print out a title on the computer and use carbon paper to transfer the text to the cardstock. I was in a mood so I just freehanded that beoch. Pencil first then in pen.

Take your text block out from under your brick. Line it up against the score mark and mark the second score on the other side of the spine

Fold the score and glue the textblock into the cover at the spine. Once the glue dries up mark the back cover with the pencil and then trim the back cover to fit with your scissors.

Voila:

I’m going to put this baby on the shelf next to the Silmarillion.

The whole process, not counting drying time, took less than an hour.

If you want to make a book of a longer fic, I recommend Renegade Publishing, they have a ton of resources for fan-binders. 

[pleasantboatpress]

so, you wanted to start bookbinding?

so @princetofbone mentioned on my post for "factory settings" about wanting to know more about the binding style that i used for it. so i thought i might make a post about it.

i was as terrible as i always am for taking in progress shots, but i can link you to the resources i used in order to make my book. i would also like to point out that "factory settings" is my 120th bind, and i have been doing bookbinding as a hobby for just over 3 years now. unfortunately this means some of the methods that i used for that bind aren't particularly beginner friendly, just in terms of the tools and methods i have used, but i would love to point you in the right direction when it comes to resources. i dont say this to sound pretentious which i fear i might come across, just so that youre fully informed. getting into this hobby is fun and rewarding, but it can definitely be intimidating.

with that caveat, heres a list of links and resources that i have used for bookbinding in general, with additional links to methods i used specifically in regards to this bind.

ASH's how to make a book document. it gives you a great introduction into typesetting fics (where you format the text of fics to look like a traditionally published books) and then turning them into a case-bound book (the style i used for "factory settings"). it is comprehensive, and explains how to use microsoft word to do your bidding. it was invaluable to me when i was just starting out! currently i use affinity publisher to typeset/format my fics for printing, but i only bought and learned how to use that after i had been binding books for a year and a half. i made some beautiful typesets with word, and some of my close friends use it still and design stuff that i never would be able to in my wildest dreams (basically anything by @no-name-publishing)

DAS Bookbinding's Square Back Bradel Binding. a great style to do your first bind in! this method requires, when making the case, to attach the cover board and the spine board to a connecting piece of paper, which makes it so much easier to match the size of the case to the size of the text block (your printed out and sewn fic). using this method is what allowed me to get much more accurately fitting cases, and made me much more confident with the construction of the books i was making. a well-made book is something that is so wonderful to hold in your hands!

DAS Bookbinding's Rounded and Backed Cased Book. This is the specific method that i used to create my bind for "factory settings"! even before i could back my books, i found that watching DAS's videos in particular helped me see how books were traditionally made, and i was able to see different tips and tricks about how to make nicer books.

Book Edge Trimming Without... i trim the edges of my text block using my finishing press and a chisel i have sharpened using a whetstone and leather strop with buffing compound on it. i follow the method for trimming shown in this video!

Made Endpapers. i follow this method for my endpapers, as i used handmade lokta endpapers, and they can be quite thin, but they look beautiful! i used "tipped on" endpapers (where you have your endpaper and then put a thin strip of glue on the edge and attach it to your text block) i used for a very long time before this, but these feel like they are much more stable, as they are sewn with your text block.

Edge Sprinkling. this is the method that i used for decorating the edges of my text block. but the principle is basically clamping your text block tight and then sprinkling the edges. i do not believe you need to trim the edges in order to do sprinkles on the edges, and that's what makes it accessible! i personally just use really cheap acrylic paint that i water down and then flick it onto the edges with my thumb and a paint brush.

Double-Core Endbands. i sew my own endbands, which i followed this tutorial for. that being said, it's kind of confusing, and this video is a bit easier to follow, but it is a slightly different type of endband.

Case decoration. i used my silhouette cameo 4 to cut out my design for "factory settings" in htv (heat transfer vinyl). i also used my cameo 4 to cut out the oval of marbled paper on the front, as i honestly didn't want to try my hand at cutting an oval lol. i also glued some 300 gsm card with an oval cut out of the centre of it onto the cover before covering it with bookcloth, to get a kind of recess on the cover. i then glued the oval of marbled paper onto the top of the recessed area once it was covered with bookcloth, so that it was protected. the images i used were sourced from a mix of rawpixel, canva and pixabay. a more accessible way to get into cover decoration is by painting on a design for your cover as described in @a-gay-old-time's tutorial just here. or even doing paper labels, which look classy imo.

physical materials. sourcing these will depend on your country. i am located in australia, and have compiled a list with some other aussie bookbinders of places to buy from. here is a great post describing beginning materials for getting started binding.

@renegadepublishing. this tumblr is great! its what got me started bookbinding, and being in the discord has been inspiring, motivating, and honestly just one of the best online experiences i have ever had. it is full of resources, and most people in there are amateur bookbinders, with a couple of professionals thrown in. the discord is 18+, and anyone can join!

i'm sorry this post got so long, but i hope that this has a lot of information for you if you would like to get started bookbinding. its one of the best hobbies ive ever had, and i genuinely believe i will have it for the rest of my life.

[mythrilthread]

My magnum opus, the jewel of my Binderary round-up, the result of four months of hard work (that is to say, a lot of force applied over distance), the project affectionately known as The Motherfuckers (because it was rather unclear if I was going to finish these books or if they were going to be the end of me).

Force over Distance by cleanwhiteroom. It is currently also on AO3.

I was first introduced to this incredible story by a dear friend, who first sold me on actually watching SGU, and then said that they remember this fic since like 2011, which is always a promising sign. I went digging and found out I was in luck - the story was being rewritten and reuploaded on the author's blog. The next two weeks are described by the same friend as "one of the scariest moments in our cohabitation" as I'd spent literally every waking moment injecting the story directly into my eyeballs, and let me tell you, I'd not been doing a lot of sleeping at that time.

Then I gathered up my courage and reached out to CWR re: my burning desire to bind this story. And the rest, well. Let's dig into it, shall we?

This was my first time typesetting 540k words. Considering I tend to prefer larger font sizes for increased legibility, it was immediately obvious that this was going to be a multivolume project. I settled on three, as it's the relationship between three individuals that forms the core of the story.

I also knew I wanted to keep the typeset in black and white, but play around with light and dark a lot. So I did. One of the first design idea I actually had was the way I wanted to handle projected speech. Mental link between Young, Rush and Destiny is THE most vital part of the story, and I wanted to make it immediatly obvious. I also wanted to be able to take one glance at the page and tell how much of the action is actually just two guys staring each other down :) Hence the blackout effect of thoughts being represented as light over darkness.

I also wanted to preserve as much of my reading experience as possible. So I saved all the chapter quotes/summaries in the TOC, and hid the chapter content warnings in the frame of the gate that marks the beginning of each chapter. For most of the chapter the warnings stay the same, so after a while you stop really noticing them, but then you open a new chapter and see that the familiar shape of the words has changed, and get this UH-OH feeling. Which, I think is very much how it works in my design, because when the warnings change there's usually another line of text added.

For flashbacks and dream sequences I switched from italics to a lighter shade of gray. I woudn't say it's more legible per say, but it's in keeping with the overall light/dark theme.

There are instances of people using handwritten notes in the story. I collected more than a dozen of assorted handwriting fonts, with each character having their own "handwriting". So when, for example, someone begins writing in someone else's hand, you immediately know it.

The most insane, labor-intensive part of the typeset, however, was the way I decided to handle the Ancient translations. CWR's gone through the trouble of setting up hover-to-discover for it, which gives you a very different reading experience than, say, having the translations in the endnotes. So, naturally, I said to myself that I want to replicate that, and footnotes just won't do the trick. So. Every instance of Ancient in the text has an underlay of light gray Ancient script. And an OVERLAY of paper vellum with the translation printed in blue. Now, not to toot my own horn too much, but if looks SICK AS FUCK. You also MAYBE SHOULD NOT LIVE LIKE THIS. For the two copies of this work I had to cut up 10 sheets of vellum into strips, and then spent from 20 minutes to an hour per volume tipping the strips in their proper places. I then had to wear kinetic tape on both my hands to help with the joint pain. (It was worth it.)

Now for the title spread. It is also paper vellum that you see as soon as you turn the first page (the half-title), and see it covering the title of the book and author's name. And then you turn it. And the shields sing the matter wave of Destiny through the black. And yeah, I think that's very, very clever of me, actually.

Then, of course, were the endpapers. All 12 of them are unique abstract paintings done on black cardstock by hand with brush pens and correction tape, I scanned a sample of each set for posterity. All of them are my interpretations of characters' midscapes. For volume 1 I went with the fire wind of Rush's thoughts. Volume 2 was for Young, and I went for the reverse blackout poetry effect (because for all the mental talking they do, the unprojected thoughts are opaque to their counterparts) and all the loops, hairpins and blocks he does. Volume 3 is for the combination - Rush's fire wind, changing its color to match the circuitry pattern of Destiny's AI.

The rest, in comparison, is easy. All volumes are stitched with 3 strands of embroidery floss, a combination of black, blue and silvery-gray. The French double-core endbands are sewn in the same color scheme (though with a different shade of blue and gray switched for white for added contrast). The edges are painted and splattered to look like space.

The covers feature my (signature at this point, I guess) half-cloth river pattern, with the base being dark blue linen and the printed parts being Spitzer telescope images of the W51 star forge, Jack-O'-Lantern Nebula and the Eagle Nebula (courtesy of NASA), waxed by hand for added sheen. The spines are foiled in silver with a foil quill.

Each set is 5 pound of solid hand-crafted book, with one set being my personal copy, and the other sent as a gift to the author.

And that's it, folks! This has been an incredible project to work on, and I'm very proud of what I achieved with it.

[fandomtrumpshate]

FTH 2024 Creator Signups are OPEN!

The moment you've been waiting for has arrived! But before you rush straight to the signup form, note that a few things are different from last year:

You will not be able to edit your signup immediately, but you will be able to edit it. We're changing some things on the back end so that we can get posts up faster, but that means that when you get your email confirming your signup it won't have an edit link. Once we've processed your signup (which may take several days), we will send you a link to make edits. Please do NOT fill the signup form out again in order to edit a previous entry! Wait to hear from us.

Typesetting is now an option under Fan Labor. Remember that we only allow digital goods in the main auction - we'll be opening signups soon for the Craft Bazaar if you want to offer bookbinding or other physical crafts.

All Marvel-related fandoms are now under the Marvel top-level fandom (instead of MCU) and all DC-related are under DC. This includes comics. This allows us to stop worrying about, for example, whether Deadpool or Venom is MCU or what "DC Extended Universe" does and doesn't include.

Six of Crows and Shadow and Bone are both covered by the new Grishaverse fandom tag, House of the Dragon is part of ASOIAF/GOT, and 9-1-1 Lone Star is grouped with 9-1-1.

You can view this year's full list of fandoms here - remember that if the fandom you want isn't listed, there is a write-in option. However, check all possible names for your fandom before resorting to write-in! If your fandom is a spinoff, choose the fandom it's related to and specify in your auction notes which parts of canon/the universe you're willing to create for. Every fandom with subfandoms also has an "Any" option if you're willing to create for anything within the top-level fandom and an "Other" option to write in subfandoms.

Even if you've signed up before, please re-read the FAQ to re-familiarize yourself with our policies. If you're new to FTH, check out these tips for first-time creators (and also read the FAQ). It might also help to peruse last year's listings to get an idea for what kind of information people include and how we use the information you give us to form our tagging system.

Remember that you can offer up to three auctions, but you will need to fill out a separate signup for each of those. Each auction can only be for one type of fanwork, but can be offered in up to 3 fandoms (and unlimited subfandoms if you choose a fandom with subfandoms) or "Any fandom." Your bidder will get to choose from any of the fandoms in the listing, so please don't offer something you don't want to create just to get more eyes on your auction.

Signups will be open for two weeks, until February 19th, so there's no rush! Take your time and make sure you understand how it all works and what you're committing to. If you have any questions not covered here or in our FAQ, please email us at fandomtrumpshate @ gmail.com!

Ok, did you read all that? You know what's different from last year? You've refreshed your knowledge of our FAQ?

In that case, sign up for FTH 2024 here!

[haxkattpress]

The Bolthole by aideomai, Tepre, and GallaPlacidia

I'm absolutely thrilled to finally share my first fic bind here on Tumblr! I completed this bind back in November, and it introduced me to so many wonderful people.

You can find pictures and detailed explanations of my process under the cut.

This is "The Bolthole" by Aideomai, Tepre, and (formerly) GallaPlacidia on Ao3. The cover design is adapted from "The Little Brother" (1902) by Josiah Flynt. The typeset is my own.

I fell in love with this cover the moment I saw it, and wanted to try to recreate it with book cloth. As a hobbyist book binder, I like to try to revitalize older designs from the public domain. There are so few copies of this book left in the world, so I thought it would be fun to give it new life as the cover of a contemporary story.

The cover is made out of three different colors of book cloth from the Allure and Verona lines. The book cloth and endpapers were bought from Hollander's.

I used my Cameo 4 and a strong tack mat to cut the design out of each color of book cloth. I then assembled the pattern like a puzzle. It was MUCH harder than it sounds! Some of the pieces were incredibly thin and fragile, and they were difficult to keep track of.

For the foiling, I used my Cameo 4 and the We R Memory Keepers fine tip foil quill for everything but the spine, which I did by hand. I foiled immediately after I cut, without removing my mat from the machine. This helped me line everything up. It did not, however, prevent me from sweating bullets as my machine worked.

This method was, frankly, torture, but I'm really glad that I tried it. Now that I've had a nice long break, I'd like to try it again soon. I love running my hands over this book, and the texture of the book cloth feels wonderful under my fingertips. I do, however, have a few words of caution. Do not try this out unless you have book cloth to burn! Here are some pictures of just a few of my failures.

The Cameo 4 is not your friend. Your cut-outs can and will get fucked up for no reason. If the mat isn't sticky enough, or the blade isn't sharp enough, or the fabric doesn't adhere properly, your design could get completely shredded. I strongly recommend that you avoid Verona book cloth, or anything with a paper backing and loose fibers. It was absolute hell to work with. When it wasn't shredded by the machine, it was fraying like crazy. Acrylic coated cloth is the way to go if you want clean lines. And, you know, your sanity intact.

This was my most challenging bind to date, but I learned a lot! Aside from experimenting with book cloth, automated foiling, and my Cameo 4, it was also my first time formatting, printing, and sewing a text block. I'm incredibly grateful for all of the online tutorials and wonderful people who helped me make this bind a reality!

[whatapictureisworth-press]

I made another book! This time I tried my hand at binding a copy of @marvinhere‘s tumblr folktales typeset. Endpapers were chosen because they kinda looked like that “do you love the color of the sky” post, and then I tipped them in upside down 🤦‍♀️ oh well, it’s not super noticeable

[swordsmans]

excellent news from usps--i can now talk about this beauty!! i had the pleasure of typesetting and binding @the-furthest-city-light's wonderful zolu fic spill your wine and it was a ride from start to finish (repurposed prototypes and injuries included). overall, i'm extremely pleased with how it turned out!!

this was a full fabric, square-backed case binding with a peek through cover showcasing a heat transfer foiled title on the (red, burgundy, gold) endsheet (and a hidden katana design to match the charm). things got a bit weird near the spine because i didnt anticipate my glue acting funky under the heat, but live and learn! the outside covers turned out plenty clean.

the edges are painted with matte black acrylic and sealed with beeswax, and the bookmark is a little 4mm burgundy silk number tipped with a gold clasp and katana charm (of course). the silk is very thin/fragile, so in the future i think ill double the length i use.

i also had a great time typesetting this! when i first read this i knew i wanted to do something that was both angular/modern and ornately victorian (with a red, black, gold scheme). this had to be decadent and beautifully clash-y, because nothing less would suffice for the kind of author who'd use a verse from the canticle of canticles as the summary for a fic series like this. truly iconic. nerds will notice that this is a little visually reversed from the way books are traditionally typeset, which is also intentional. i think it fits the vibe of the bind and the fic. i hope the vision came through.

this was actually the second case i built; i wasnt happy with the first one so i ripped it up and made a notebook (with the front and back covers) and bookmark (from the spine) for dani, which was a fun little experiment. i just... didnt take any pictures, apparently?

overall this was a really fun and challenging project, and i cant believe its done!!!! wow!!!

[spockandawe]

Here we go! I have some smaller books to share as well, but I've been absolutely VIBRATING with excitement to share a BIG one, and I'm going to indulge myself and post that today, then figure out words for the rest. Because I bound a new cnovel. Check it out, guys, I bound jwqs/clear and muddy loss of love :D

Let me indulge myself and backtrack a little! First, these are quarto books, so they're short. But I think these average a little under 500 pages each, and jwqs is a LONG book (my beloved), and this adds up to a total eleven inches of lesbians. More like twelve once they're in their cases. It's over a million characters in Chinese and I think the English translation comes in somewhere around 890k, it's HUGE

Making these books was SO FUN, I hadn't read jwqs and still haven't, and will probably read on my phone when I do. I don't have any exciting photos of the typesetting, but I knew this was an imperial succession story, and that made me nervous, those stories don't always click for me. Well, the process of typesetting and adding footnotes for this beast definitely confirmed that I'm going to have a good time with this thing when I have the time to read it, but there was also so much going on that only the vaguest of spoilers sank in. I went into an absolute FRENZY of typesetting, and after I printed, cut and folded it, well. That was one afternoon of sewing. You're looking at the reason I'm scrambling to make up a few hours of missed work, hahaha

After that, I needed cases. At the very beginning of march, I received a shipment of some FASCINATING bookcloth. It's called Duo, and it's made by layering a thin gauzy fabric of one color over paper of a different color. Depending on the combos, you get a really cool range of color-shifting effects. And they've gone out of production! But I was part of a group order to get some of the goods, and hadn't yet finished a new project. Reader, I went for it.

That purple and green is bananas!!!! It's so hard to photograph, this midnight picture of a few cases is one of my most successful attempts to capture the full range up close. Originally I'd been thinking of trying to evoke imperial gold, but I figured this was still the kind of drama and luxury suited the book, and also something something the hidden colors suited Qi Yan's character. I tied it back a little to the imperial gold with the endpapers, then titled them in silver foil, since the endpapers had silver in them.

But once the books were made, I felt like it wanted something... more. Something like a BOX!

And me, I chase novelty. A set this large would be tricky for anything clamshell, but a slipcase for all seven would leave books tipping all over if it was wide open, but putting walls between slots would be demanding in terms of precision and would risk similarly-sized books getting stuck in the wrong slots. Then I remembered learning about slipcases where you could put in a little insert to support the weight of the text block, and the concept SNAPPED into place.

Colors aren't going to photograph well at midnight, but I made the supports using the scraps and off-cuts from my endpapers, to tie it back into the bindings. The back of the case is lined in more of the duo, and the walls are lined with a faux leather bookcloth I like a lot, it feels buttery smooth and seemed like a good neutral material to tie the papers and bookcloth together. I listened to some of the DEEPEST layers from the nine-hour conspiracy theory iceberg video while I was working on this, haha, it was a TRIP.

And in the end, each of the supports is sized to comfortably sit in the smallest of the volumes, and evenly spaced, so I believe it will take the books in any order with no problems. It's easy to grab the books without having to cut notches into the walls to grab them from. And even though weight is less of an issue for quarto sizing, the books in here have their weight supported no matter what angle the box is at! I'm so, so pleased with how this concept worked out and definitely plan to do more with it in the future.

So there we are! Jing Wei Qing Shang! I had such a fabulous time with this project, and I'm so excited to get to share it with all of you. The story was fun to work with, the bindings and box were fun to make, and everything here came together just as well as I could possibly have hoped. I'm so proud of this, and incredibly, incredibly excited to show it to you!

[emilykaldwen]

FFWAD 24 - Sins of the Father by @selfproclaimedunicorn

For my first foray into this yearly celebration with @renegadeguild, I picked the brilliant and fantastic story, Sins of the Father by @selfproclaimedunicorn. Misa has taken the fantastic AU premise 'What if Daemon Targaryen and Rhea Royce had kids?' and has run with it in the most delicious and satisfying way. The story isn't complete, but the first 'arc' has a good stopping point at a whopping 160k words, which made for the chonkiest book you could imagine.

This was the twelth book I've bound (both fic and rebinds of old favorites) and I tried several new techniques for it including rounding and backing the spine. I also stretched my legs in the formatting department and went all in with the interior. That meant ordering some special springhill paper to do these fantastic maps for the endpages. Full details behind the cut!

Typesetting: Normally I've kept my settings pretty minimal as I got used to the ins and outs of InDesign (during this, I did purchase Affinity Publisher and might end up moving to that, but I'm finally getting the hang of ID and you can pry it from my cold hands). I really wanted to mimic some of the interior of Fire & Blood for this, so I hunted down the fonts used and took an image of the decorative banner you see on the sides to use for the chapter openers. I also wanted to include timelines and family trees in true historically inspired fantasy tradition.

The family tree was created based off of the author's spreadsheet in Google Drawing, which I found to be the easiest thing to use when it comes to creating chaotic family trees like this (In the past I'd used lucid chart for a printable version, but google worked better here).

the timeline is honestly my favorite thing and I learned how to use tables in ID for the first time. I'm incredibly pleased with it. The formatting is based upon the line of kings in the source. The timeline covers the events of the first arc as printed in this particular story.

The chapter openers are some of my favorite! As the children are proud to be House Royce, I wanted to reflect that. The runes you see behind the Chapter number and title are the Floki font and name the character whose the POV for each chapter.

Since there's plenty of High Valyrian spoken and the author doesn't include the translations within narrative, it was the perfect moment to set up footnotes. I'll absolutely be doing this for my own story when I bind it!

Rounding and Backing: So this was a total adventure, but I really wanted the old book feel. I made the mistake of pressing the book for too long and lost a lot of the swell in the spine to round but it worked out AND I managed to back it a little bit. Since I wasn't doing cord tapes for the spine (this was a version of the three piece bradel), I had to troubleshoot. I ended up cutting strips of the leather cord I bought from michaels and laminating those pieces together and placing them on the oxford hollow on the spine (given how thick the book is, I wanted to give it as much structural strength as possible). The 'leather' covering you see is actually the craft leather (polyester) from Dollar Tree and it's pretty awesome but definitely has difficulties staying put with glue. I followed the normal procedure and slathered both sides up and used twine to compress the bookcloth along those leather pieces. there's a little gaping in some places which I think would help if I'm able to properly apply backing paper to the polyester.

HTV do's and don'ts: Hi! don't be me and forget to apply your teflon sheets before applying the HTV because then you fuck with the polyester but it's not too bad. The other pro-tip is to gently apply the iron to the cover so it's warm before applying the HTV so it can start to stick. I had to apply the front cover in three pieces and do the title twice. Also, it's really difficult to apply HTV to a rounded spine so I'll have to figure out how to set up the spine and cover before applying (since there's a certain amount of stretching the bookcloth over the spine). The spine might end up having to be regular adhesive vinyl for that. Also, it's stupidly hard to find metallic HTV in bronze.

Front matter and final thoughts: The bronze dragon was a lucky find through an extensive google search, and the runes surrounding it are 'we remember with fire and blood', a combination of House Royce and House Targaryen's words. Seems fitting four Yorick, Ella, and Aemon! The copyright page is mimicked off the source's style, including the AO3 information, the creative commons and fair use information, the guild stamp, a QR code to the AO3 page, and my own press stamp! The summary is pulled from AO3 as well.

All in all, I made this book twice and I loved it and learned so much every time.

I'm so happy with this project and I'm so excited to do the next arc! Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful story, Misa!

[canon-in-too-deep]

Free Dingbat Font Book For Dinkuses

I love dingbats. When typesetting, these little guys are so so useful. They can be applied as scene dividers (dinkuses), ornaments for headers/foots, borders/frames for chapter titles, flourishes for title pages, etc. I prefer working with dingbats over images, because, since a dingbat is just another font, it can be easily added and adjusted using paragraph styles or the normal font settings. Below the break are some examples of how I've used dingbats. So I love dingbats. But I hate sorting through them to find that one perfect vintage looking line to use. Thus, I threw this sample book together in a single morning so I could see all the dingbat options I had more easily. For the file, I wanted to make the dingbats large and easy to see, and wanted to be able to pick up a page to compare one font to another. As such, this font 'book' is formatted for regular letter paper, not my usual half letter folio.

Edit: I FORGOT TO WRITE WHERE TO GET THE FONTS! 😅 All these fonts I got for free. Most of them are from either dafonts or creativefabrica. Link for my sample book for dingbats here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XU2hAu94e9tXXe5ZQFkzB6wcNcriuBUH?usp=sharing Please leave a like/reblog if this was useful!

^Dingbats for decor. I love a good splatter dingbat.

^Dingbats as ornaments in the title page.

^Scene divider example. This is also called a dinkus, which is just a delightful word!

^Another scene divider example. This was for a Cthulhu story, so I went with something that reminded me of tentacles.

^I don't normally add decorations around page numbers, but in this case I thought the flourishes worked well to compliment the whimsical nature of the book.

Anyway, these are just some of the ways I've used dingbats. Dingbats are great, they're easy to work with, and have a ton of uses for typesetting.

[gargoyleandgremlinpress]

How Ray Got His Groove Back by Aristide and Bone, due South, Fraser/RayK

A quintessential due South RayK fic and a classic of the fandom for a reason! I knew when I started this whole crazy adventure of binding fanfic that I wanted to make hard copies of things across the fandoms that have been a part of over the years, and due South will always have a special place in my heart, since that's where I met my wife.

I'm to be able to share this fanbind with @the-cimmerians just in time for Fanfic Writers' Appreciation Day! (And thanks to @renegadeguild for encouraging us all to share with the authors we love this day in particular.)

The title of How Ray Got His Groove Back is a riff on the movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and the fic even has its own fanlore page. Because it was imported into AO3 from another archive as part of an Open Doors initiative, you too can enjoy some genuine vintage formatting as part of the reading experience! (Get your pre-AO3 mailing list flashbacks right here...)

The spine is Duo magpie bookcloth, and marbled paper found by chance in a household gift shop last winter (I wish they'd restocked it!), and the lettering is stencilled acrylic paint.

I leaned into the romance novel vibe for the typesetting, using the notorious yellow paper of the great paper misorder of 2023 for an aged paperback vibe, and a flowery frame for the cover. Gelli-plate printed endpapers, and a hand-sewn double-core endband in hot pink and purple thread to match.

And about that marbled paper and the stencilled title... this was the book where I discovered that the other paper I had stencilled on with no problems (mulberry fibre Lokta paper, it's lovely) is the exception rather than the rule, and some emergency repairs were needed when the stencil vinyl started to pull up the paper. I did my best with some paint and a fine-tipped maker and a pencil, but hoo boy. We won't be trying that again with this paper.

I'm glad to have this piece of personal fandom history, and also to say, happy Fanfic Writers' Appreciation Day, Aristide & Bone!

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Hey there! I just found out about you this morning while looking for more Bloodborne videos (it's a special interest) which is how I found out about the Bloodborne essays you've compiled. Do you have any plans to release/sell a physical version of them? And do you have any thoughts on people printing/binding them for their own PERSONAL use? I figure the uhhh compensation might be a bit convoluted if it was for sale given the amount of contributors, but I figured I might ask anyway. Hope this ask finds you well!

I don't have the rights to either print or sell physical copies of any of the essays that were featured in my video, so that's a no. Nor would I have any way to share the income or profits from such a sale with the authors of the original essays.

I see nothing wrong with printing the PDF out for yourself, though, in fact that's really cool, and I'd love to see pictures if you go through with it.

If you feel like you want to pay a bit of money to tip the essayists featured in the collection, a donation to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund (https://www.pcrf.net/) would be a great way to do that :)

[For context for everyone else, this is the essay collection we're talking about, which you can download a beautiful and professionally typeset and designed PDF copy of right here.]

[no-name-publishing]

Tiny Book? Tiny Book. Pt1.

Idk yall I just felt like writing a little how-to of how-I-do my tiny A9 books! So if you've ever been interested, I hope this will be helpful. This will be neither a beginner typesetting nor beginner bookbinding tutorial; as I go through my process I will only be showing my process and providing a few tips, assuming you already have the basics understood. We can worry about the rougher technical skills in another post.

Also keep in mind that this guide includes images of fic I've bound, and you're zooming into these fics at your own discretion. I am not responsible if you read something yucky. I know you have a lot of options out there but thank you for flying No-Name Publishing.

Tiny books part 2; Tiny books part 3

Just like with regular ficbinding, there are layers, and they are:

1 - Typesetting and Imposing 2 - Printing 3 - Cutting, Folding, and Sewing 4 - Gluing, Rounding/Backing, Endbands 5 - Building the Case and casing in 6 - BOOK

In this part we will be focusing on steps 1 and 2. Please feel free to skip to the area you're interested in most.

1 - Typesetting and Imposing

Okay, so this area has some nuances that you don't have to consider so closely with typesetting for more traditionally sized books. To me, these tiny books are not about readability, they are about novelty. As such, I do not prioritize readability. Instead, I try to achieve something that is closer to scale. That said, neither do I want these illegible. But we'll begin from the top.

You want to make a tiny book, but you're wondering, what would be an appropriate word count for a tiny book? Tiny books are the perfect medium for the ficlettes, the shorties, the one-shots. They are also perfect for the mid-sized, 10-15-20k fics, in my opinion. Here we can see,

On the left we have a fic that is exactly 12,771 words, typeset on a 1.5" x 2" (37 × 52 mm) document, with .3" margins, 6pt Garamond font, and 5pt line spacing. This book is only approaching 1/2" (13mm) wide, and only took 5 sheets of Letter paper to print. On the right we have a fic that is exactly 1,939 words, typeset to the same specifications. This book is only 4-5mm wide, and took only 1 sheet of Letter paper.

In my opinion this format of book begins getting unruly around the 300-page mark. However, making any combination of margins, fonts size, and line spacing will yield different page results for different word counts. For example:

Like the above, in each of these examples I typeset in Garamond font @ 6pt size and 5pt line spacing. Typesetting on an A9 page, this is about as small as I felt comfortable sizing my font while still being legible. But notice the rivers between the words--the rivers of white space bisecting the lines, due to the Justified alignment battling the admittedly tiny work surface. At this scale, with the font at this size and alignment, those will be unavoidable. Over time I began disliking this in my own work, so I pursued a different method, which was typesetting on a quarter letter page (4.25" x 5.5" / 108mm x 140mm), and allowing my imposer to scale the PDF down.

Have you ever seen anything sexier. THIS looks like a tiny book. Little to no rivers, still legible (hand-wobble), and preserves the novelty feel that I desire from a tiny book. This method of scaling down (specifically from quarter letter to A9) does change the final shape of the book, from A9 to A9-ish in this case. Specifically, from 1.5"X2" (37 × 52 mm) to 1.625"X2" (41.3mmX52mm). You're achieving something closer to a square shape, which is delightful to hold. All this to say, you have some freedom with word count, with font size, with page size. I've done as many pages as 376 and as few as 17. The fantastic thing about tiny books--their structure will not be load-bearing, meaning--the only thing stopping you are your tastes.

Quickly, some more examples of features in a regularly sized typeset and their tiny counterpart after the imposer has scaled them down. First, scaling half-letter down to A9, a little-over 4X shrinkage:

And from B6 to B9, smaller by 3x:

You notice the compression of every element, and too how entirely unparcable the text in the first example is, sometimes not horrible, sometimes very. Make your decisions dependent on your tastes!

You have decided on the fic you'd like to bind into a tiny book. I will be using my own fic as the typesetting example, and I will be using Word 365 for PC. I'm sure many of my pointers during this process might not apply 1-to-1 if you are using a different word processing software, but hopefully you can adapt the concepts to your program of your choosing.

Kay, next you will do your typesetting. Since this is not a typesetting guide I'm trusting that you have your preferred methods, but I will go through my key steps for setting up a tiny typeset:

First, for every typeset I delete each default Style, create mine own, and dictate the document size. For this example I will be doing my preferred quarter letter method, setting the custom page size to 4.25" wide and 5.5" tall, and .5" page margins all around (except Gutter; leave 0"). On the Multiple pages dropdown I will select Mirror margins (however, as all my margins are the same size, this is redundant, though may not be the case for you). My body text style will be Cardo font @ 11pt size and Exactly 15pt line spacing, with a .2" first line indent and Justified alignment.

You can use whatever body font you like, I only encourage you to do many many test prints to refine your preferences. Your favorite font for half-letter books might not translate to tiny books. After ~30 tiny books I've found I like Cardo at this size and spacing. And if you're using A-paper sizes, consider doing quarter A4 instead of quarter letter, which is technically A6--4.1"X5.8", or 105mmX148mm. Follow your heart~~nyah 🐱♥

Now I will go to my fic and download the HTML file. I hugely prefer copying from the HTML file rather than the browser itself. It kind of standardizes any goofy formatting that might try to make its way over otherwise, while still preserving the italics and bolds, etc, and makes for an easier editing process. It was important I made my body Style in Word first, so that once I paste the text into my document that Style is automatically applied in one fell swoop (if not, you can change that in your Word settings. Advanced -> Cut, copy and paste -> Merge Formatting. It is a huge time saver.)

Now you've gone through your typesetting process, you have a liddle quarter letter Word document that you're happy with. Gets real close to you. Listen to me--listen, you're going to Export as PDF. Not Save As PDF. Not Print to PDF. Export. It's in--listen--it's in File, then Export, then Create PDF/XPS. You need to Export. Especially if you selected Bookfold instead of Mirror margins in your page settings because we need an unimposed PDF in order for this to work right and exporting to PDF is going to solve 99% of your pdf formatting woes with Word. Okay, I love you 👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨

Now, your EXPORTED pdf should look something like mine. Straight, unimposed.

Now what we're going to do is take this PDF back to my penthouse and freak it. Go to this link for the Renegade Bindery-created and -curated imposition tool. This has been will be is such an incredible FREE asset to you, maintained by a crew of intelligent, skilled Renegade Bindery members who understand the importance of community and accessibility. If you find someone hiding this link behind a paywall of any kind it is not with the creators' permission, so shame on them.

Anyway I will be assuming that you know what imposing your document means. If you've never used this site before, it's very straight forward, and here are my settings for making Tiny Books.

1 - Upload your unimposed exported pdf. 2 - ignore 3 - Select the paper size you will be printing on. This is not the FINAL size of the book, this is what paper you are printing on. These instructions are for Letter sized paper. Don't change any of the other settings right now, I will explain more about the Single-sided vs Duplex option in a bit. 4 - Skip aaalllll the way down to Signature Format. Under Wacky Small Layouts, click on the bubble next to Little. You'll notice there are a lot of options here. I encourage you to play with these settings later on as well, there are so many things you can make with this tool.

Once that's done, scroll down to the very bottom. You'll see the Signature Info area, telling you the results of your imposition. In the case of using the Little option we've selected, 1 sheet of our paper will make 40 book pages. 3-signature-sets of 3/3/4 folio configuration. That's a lot of pages per page.

Anyway for our document today it will cost us 2 sheets of Letter paper, and will make 6 signatures. Math says that's 80 pages. Now, you may be concerned because your typeset PDF is not formatted in a number equally divisible by 40. And why would it be. The imposer is doing that math for you in the background, organizing your pages regardless. In my case, my finished typeset is 62 pages, which means that from my second page, I will only be using my 3 folio segments, and discarding the 4 folio segment. This will make more sense later. Click the Generate button, and save the zipped folder wherever you want. Don't change the name of it.

Unzip that baby, and inside you'll notice 2 files--(filename).pdf_little_packed_backs, and .pdf_little_packed_fronts. Appropriately named as one file contains one side of the sheet that will be printed, and the other file the other side.

And when you open them up, they will look like:

2 - Printing

We are manually duplexing this bad boy, because working at this scale amplifies and compounds every millimeter of difference. Manual duplexing will keep printer skew to a minimum, as the printer will not have to perform gymnastics in order to print on the reverse side of your page. Here are some examples:

Two auto-duplexing examples of skew, one horizontal and one vertical, dependent on which direction my paper was loaded into the feeder. There is significant skew. Not a horrible issue on full-sized books but these will matter much more on our tiny books, the key issue being that we do not have much to work with in the margins department. Trimming 5-6-7mm of margins of your half-letter sized textblocks might not be much of an issue; however, here, in order to remove all the trim lines during the cutting process, you will be significantly impacting the margins of your tiny textblock.

Now here is an example of the skew from manual duplexing:

MUCH subtler. Your skew with manual duplexing will range from this--less than .5mm--to no skew at all, and you will have to cut off far less of each page to remove the trim lines, maintaining the consistency of appearance of your tiny, beautiful pages. This is why during step 3 of the imposing process we selected Single-sided (which is MANUAL duplexing), and not Duplex (which is AUTO duplexing) appropriately. This will result in you either getting two files for manual duplexing, or one auto duplexing file.

Your next consideration when it comes to printing your liddle book will be whether you want to use an inkjet printer or a laser printer. I've until recently only had a laser printer available to me. I can say after about 6 or 7 little books on an inkjet printer that I prefer the laser printing on tiny books. Here is an example of why:

On the left you have a tiny book printed from an inkjet printer printed on the highest quality setting, and on the right is a tiny book printed from a laser printer. These were both printed at the same scaling, same font size, same line spacing, everything. The inkjet printer, printing at this scale, introduces pretty glaring feathering on the letters, whereas the laser printer is crisp as can be. I've said before that to me tiny books are more for novelty rather than readability, however I do still want to make out the word I'm looking at, you know what I mean? For this reason I prefer printing my tiny books from a laser printer. Use what you got though, you'll get a tiny book regardless. Make sure you're flipping on the short edge with these tiny books too, and double check to make sure your page numbers line up. And when you're done you got...

BOOK(-adjacent).

Continue on to part duex.

[mythrilthread]

Work of All Saints by @kaikamahine

What is fanbinding if not an elaborate system of fic recs? A while back my esteemed colleague @pleasantboatpress recommended this story, and I really wanted to try my hand at binding it.

🏵️ I knew I wanted to give the typeset an old-fashioned vibe with some fun twists, referencing both el Día de los Muertos and Mexican culture in general; hence marigolds used for endpapers, frontispiece portrait frame, and scene dividers.

🏵️ Choice of drop caps was inspired by papel picado, and then I decided to just go apeshit on it, and cut out actual an papel picado banner for the cover. So I did! By hand! With a modeling knife! And backed it with black paper for added contrast.

🏵️ I need to maybe back off of foiling for a bit, because the tip of my index finger is loosing sensitivity, but! Still used it to title the spine (note two more marigolds).

🏵️ I actually decided to try a new method of edge decoration on a whim, and I couldn't be happier with the result. Transferring digital prints on the book edges has its limitations, but it's also quick, easy, and relatively mess-free and painless when compared with my usual adventures with acrylic paint.