I recently got in to the hobby of printing out entire books; you know, those books that are outrageously expensive to get a physical copy of, because it's a scarcely read book published by a US uni, sold overseas as rarely as it is read.
Brrt goes the university printer, brrt goes my university money, albeit way less than buying the book and shipping. <10$ for a 400 page book! Yeah! Woohoo!
So with all of those A4's I have the entire book. But it's a lot of A4's, and contrary to Air Force (A4s) sneakers, these A4's are clunky with difficulty to sort. So I want to give these books a back. Are there any resources to check out for this type of stuff? There's gotta be a bookbinder culture somewhere, just like our train culture here.
Also, also, also, also: I print out a lot of articles. Would be nice to be able to group a set of articles by the same author or perhaps subject to one. But the problem in this case is: book grows as time goes. I want to be able to bind the book quick and easy, and I'm unsure if a folder works best here. Or perhaps there are nice folders for these uses. Idk.
Sorry for writing like this, it's 4am and I'm starting this thread, with no regard to whether it'll be shit or not.
The easiest thing to do would be to take your A4 pages to a copyshop and pay them to put a spiral binding on them or glue the spine. However I guess you're looking for a DIY option.
You have several options. If you want to get all fancy you can print out booklets, sew them and make a real hardcover book. It's a lot of work though and requires some tools and materials to work.
A more approachable and affordable option would be to look into Japanese book binding methods where you sandwich your pages between two sheets of heavier cardboard, poke holes through the stack where you want the spine and sew the book with ribbons or thread. You can find examples online of the sewings being done in very decorative ways and instructions on how to do them.
Want to preface this by saying that I am not a bookbinder. I've read about it, I've watched a lot of videos, I sewed a single textblock and never bound it because I realized I needed some sort of board or cardstock for the cover and just never went out and bought any. But this is what I've seen.
Reddit.com/r/bookbinding is pretty good
https://www.youtube.com/c/DASBookbinding is my go-to guy for bookbinding videos. Though I feel like you run the risk of information overload there because he does a lot of stuff, from simple beginner projects to stuff that seems pretty high level.
Specifically regarding loose-leaf pages that aren't able to really be sewn into a textblock I've heard of something called the double-fan method for perfect binding (which is how they make paperback books. Basically you slather glue on one edge and wrap a cover around it). Check out this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO6NGw8oNCQ
One thing that I kinda resent about bookbinding as an interest of mine and something that's stopped me from pursuing it further is that I've always been interested in making big, textbook size books, where each page is a4 size. The problem is that if you want to do this in the traditional manner you need to be able to print on at least A2 size paper, so that you've got four A4 sized pages that you fold around so you can flip through them. And being able to print on A1 size paper would be even better. This is, of course, completely unfeasible for the home binder. A wide-format printer that can handle large paper starts at $600. Some of them go for several thousand. These are printers meant for professional print shops, not home hobbyists. Using A4 sized paper you can bind something that's roughly 6x9, which is cool, but it also feels limiting. I've considered contacting local print shops to see if they could print something bigger, but I never have since I've never been ready to pull the trigger on actually committing to a project.
Anyway, what I've done, though it's a little janky, and might not work for a full 400 page book, is take a few binder clips and clips them along the edge where a spine would be in a book. Works okay but I've never tried it with more than 50 pages.
A lever arch is probably the most sensible option, but then you've got to perforate all your pages with holes. Doing that for long projects, keeping them somewhat neat while you do it, is a pain in the ass in my experience. Unless the university printers can do that for you, then it's a no-brainer.
Edit: random, but I just remember one of my favorite youtube videos. It's "Men in Sheds" - The Bookbinder. It's not a tutorial, it's just a committed craftsman doing his craft, and I love it.
Youtube just recommended me another video on the double-fan binding, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCha1O1-fUc.
Good video, simple instruction, shows the process from start to finish.
Years ago I got an ancient laser printer (old enough to have a SCSI cable iirc) and wore it out printing off public domain books.
I got some program (don't remember the name of it) that would print four pages on a single piece of letter paper folded in half, but you had to feed the pages in a certain order and orientation so it would print the right pages on the front and back. I bound them paperback style by folding all the pages in half, stacking them in order, and gluing a larger piece of cardstock on the spine for the cover. You can also sew the pages together and put on a hard cover if you're feeling fancy.
Oh yeah the question about printing: is it weird, sus and noticeable when I use the printer to print hella pages from a pdf straight from librarygeniuses.ru (or .fun)
Thank you all for the informative answers, I think I'll go for some of the quicker glueless methods and bind the longer books by chapter. Maybe I'll post results, sufficient or bad. >glueless
