fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6324 ]

[ SECRET POST #6324 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6324 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01. [repeat, woops]

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[LJ ONTD]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 32 secrets from Secret Submission Post #904.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Genuine question: how do you get into bookbinding without knowing this? I can’t think of any beginner resources that don’t at least mention different sizes.

Did you get into binding via typesetting? Because I’ve seen that mentioned many times in FS and I’m guessing you’re the same anon. Is binding a hobby for you or is this a fandom outlet like those people who bind other fans’ fic? I’ve tried asking variations of these things before because I have loads of resources that could help you depending on what you’re trying to do.

SA with some more questions.

How are you binding books and then discovering the typesetting is wrong?

And what do you mean by typesetting? Are you outsourcing the formatting of the books and then printing and binding them yourself? What are binding?

I’ve never been able to figure out what you’re talking about and I can understand that some of that might be a language barrier but it actually seems like you’ve learned from someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

I highly recommend you focus on learning how to bind plain notebooks and then graduate to lined notebooks. You will learn how to format and size both your documents and your book. You’ll learn about paper grain and weight.
Once you have a grasp on those things, practice printing and sewing ten sheets of text. Then start getting creative with fonts and artwork.

There’s no reason to outsource any of your work at this point. Once you’ve mastered those basics, you might consider outsourcing printing if you do not have a laser printer yet. But if you do that more than a few times, you will have wasted the cost of an entry level Brother laser printer and 250 sheets of quality paper.

Not OP, but I love how invested and helpful you are here.

Hahaha OP has been living rent free in my head since around Christmas when they first mentioned wanting to learn how to do it. I got the impression then that they’d been led astray before they even started. I hope they’re not dealing with a modern day snake oil dealer. Even if they are, they can still learn an incredibly satisfying skill and likely develop another skill that they think they have to pay someone else to do.

Geniune answer: I didn't think things throught 😆

I didn't realize something was wrong because people don't always use the same margins when they format fanfictions and because the size of US letter is close to the size of a A4 (standard paper size in Europe) so the problem wasn't obvious in Word.

I'm not sure why you have difficulties with the term binding if you are binding notebooks. Bookbinding is very similar to binding notebooks.

Typesetting takes time, if by chance, someone has already formatted the fic I want to bind and I like it, I'm not going to waste time.

I feel you are not familiar with the ficbinding community: people share their typesets freely so others can also bind their favourite fics. There is no question of outsourcing, it's done within the community.

You should check Amateur Fanfic Binding on facebook or even the Renegade Bindery discord, they have a lot of ressources!

AYRT

You’re right that I’m not familiar with the ficbinding community. I am very familiar with bookbinding though. It was your use of “typesetting” that didn’t make sense to me but I understand now. I’ve never not done my own formatting because that’s just one of the natural steps in bookbinding.

I hope you can figure out how to make the typesettings work for you :)

AYRT

I don’t make notebooks, I’m suggesting you learn bookbinding starting with notebooks. It sounds like you don’t know the basics.

By outsourcing, I meant that you aren’t doing the work. I understand you’re getting it from others in the community but it’s still outsourcing. Someone created a document file based on their equipment, materials, and finished book size.

If the Americans in your group are just using regular US Letter size, they’re doing it wrong. If they are using tabloid size paper and cutting it down to US Letter, then they’re doing it correctly. But it still doesn’t help you unless you get tabloid size paper.

Unless you buy the same size sheets and prepare them the same way they did, your work won’t turn out correctly. If you’re making A5 books, then you need to start with short grain A4. That’s really the only way to use A4 paper in binding unless you want tiny books, like fit in the palm of your hand size.

You are better off using A6 paper and cutting it in half. But no matter what paper size you use, you will still need to define custom document sizes and custom margins no matter who formatted the document (you or someone in America).

This is why I say you should really learn bookbinding before trying ficbinding. If you learn bookbinding, you will learn how to adjust the typesets shared by others.

The far easier solution is to change the paper size of the document in Word 😉

I'm not sure where you get the impression I'm not familiar with the basics of bookbinding: my secret is about the second fanfic I bound. It was a sucess except for the weird margins in the text block.

I did every step myself:printing, sewing, rounding and backing and casing. There was noutsourcing 😇

Using someone else’s formatting or what you keep calling typesetting is outsourcing. If you knew the basics of bookbinding, you never would have printed the document let alone actually bound it. You would have known about paper sizes before ever buying supplies. You should also know about grain direction, which it doesn’t seem you do if you’re printing on A4 paper and learning from people who print on US letter.

I’ll just let you get on with it and wish you good luck. I hope you get results that are worth the time, effort, and expense that you pour into them.

Thank you for your good wishes.

It's really funny to meet someone who has the same hobby as you but in a completly different context 😆

If you don't know, typesetting is arranging a text on pages for printing, it goes beyond just formatting.That's why it's a very common term in the fanfic binding community.

And I'm going to disagree with you: the fic binding community is a community build by fans and sharing typesets is part of what makes it a community.

You may think that using a typeset made by someone else is lazy because it's a shorcut but fans who share their typesets do it to support other fans in their ficbinding journey.

+1, this is a big thing in all kinds of bookbinding and papercraft! I'm not in the US or Europe but resources generally mention the size of the paper. Maybe they got a file that was already fully formatted to US letter or legal size then tried to print it on A4? Is that what "a typeset" means?

I *think* by typeset they mean they’re having someone else format the documents for them. And I got the impression it isn’t just a plain text thing, that they’re also getting specialized text like chapter headings, maybe some artwork, things like that.
Binding is a little weird when it comes to paper because you print onto sheets, not pages. The sheets make leaves. How many total pages you have will determine how many leaves and therefore how many sheets that you have. The pages are what the reader reads; the leaves are what the typesetter formats, the sheets are what the binder sews. Typically the typesetter and binder are the same person and there’s no reason to outsource that work. It’s super easy using Adobe to do the printing layout. There’s no shortage of free fonts out there and any money spent outside of the materials would be better spent toward art commissions. Then the binder would fit that in however they want (top of the chapter pages, as one side of a leaf, inline with the text, or across the end pages).

The tricky bit with sheets is that usually we all buy paper that’s twice the size of the sheets we print. The reason being is that the grain needs to go head to tail on your finished leaves. But you’re going to print 90° to that. So you buy paper twice the size and cut it in half. Then you print on the half sheets and you’ll have the correct grain direction. This is another reason why it’s better to do your own printing; outsourced printers want to print efficiently and as a binder you need to print correctly, which is the opposite of efficient. If you don’t print correctly, the pages of your book will get all crumpled and wrinkly towards the spine and the pages won’t do that nice little puffy billowing draping thing they do in nice books.

SA I meant to mention that in binding you also make textblocks or noteblocks or folios or cards or notecards (all the same thing). Basically, you print ten sheets. This doesn’t mean pages 1-10, it’s probably going to be one blank page, one partially filled page, and eight pages of the first chapter but not pages 1-8. You put them in order and fold them, then do the next ten sheets, fold, and keep going. Once you have all of your blocks together and ordered, you see them together. The methods all do pretty much the same thing, you sew the first and then incorporate the next on top of it and basically daisy chain them. It’s so much easier than it sounds!

Sheets become leaves that are sewn into blocks to make a book that has pages.

It's exactly what happened 😁

Most of the ficbinders are from the US, they are going to format the text of the fanfiction for a US letter size, it's obvious but it completly escaped my brain.

I hate how letter size is just ALMOST THE SAME but not

*not a bookbinder but a designer so I know the struggle

Are you printing four pages on A4? Or are you cutting the A4 in half horizontally and printing 4 pages on each half (total 8 pages)?

When I print my pages, I select the option print in booklet and recto/verso. That way, it automatically print 4 A5 pages on an A4 sheet.

A5 is the size of an A4 paper cut in 2.

Yeah, that’s not the right way to do it. I’m sorry. Please save yourself future heartache and at least learn about grain direction. If you’re going to the trouble to do all this because you want a beautiful copy of your favourite fics, you are going to be very disappointed in a short time to discover how important grain direction is to what you’re attempting.

Great questions honestly. I learned this in middle school so I thought it was common knowledge like miles vs km.

To be fair to secret OP, it’s a little more complicated with binding because whatever finished size pages you want, you need double that size paper. But double that size paper makes terrible pages for a book so actually you need quadruple that size, then you cut it in half and your individual pages end up on quarter sheets. If they’re a beginner and someone is selling them typesetting services but isn’t a binder themselves, I suspect it’s a case of two people not knowing everything necessary to accomplish what OP envisioned.

Usually for beginner binders we just say grab some sheets of paper out of your printer and start learning how to cut, fold, and sew them. Once they master that, it’s so much easier to calculate necessary sheet size and do their own typesetting.

How has OP never printed a physical page without knowing this? There are always print settings in everything from Word to Photoshop with options for A4 (UK) and Legal (US).
At least they're admitting their mistake so others will learn?

Yes there are print settings but how often do you actually check them? 😃

If you are in the UK, you expect your word document to be in A4, if you checked it and the paper size was US letter, you would be surprised.

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