Memoirs of the Self-Published: Part VI - DIY Book Binding

My uncle helped me greatly with my self-publishing. He sells book-binding machines and book cover printers and let me use them to complete my book. Friends and family also helped me out over two weekends assemble and bind 1,000 books.

I'm very lucky to have a cousin who's a printer and an uncle who's a book binder to make my self-publishing dreams come true. I realize that not everyone has these resources, but self-publishing is about using what you do have to make your dream of publishing a reality. Your own self-publishing could be achieved by reaching out to a local copy shop, print shop, or perhaps putting up an ad on Craigslist for an experienced editor to help you assemble an ebook.

There are many routes to self-publishing, and below is a step-by-step process of how I did it with the help of friends and family.

Step 1: Use a paper trimmer to cut the manuscript in half.



Step 2: Start printing covers with gold-foil printer, and also cut the covers in half.


Step 3: Fold page an extra page to put in back of book, so it creates a pocket for the crossword puzzle insert.


Step 4: Assemble covers, pages, and pocket into complete, unbound books.



Step 5: Insert black binding strip into special gold-foil spine printer. This prints the title of the book and author names on the spine. After printing, this device feeds the strip (which has glue on the unprinted side) into the binding machine.


Step 6: Load the binding machine with the unbound book and press the green button. This squeezes the pages tight and calculates the exact width the book needs to be bound. After the spine is printed, the spine printer automatically inserts the strip into the binding machine.


Step 7: It takes about a minute or so for the glue to get heated and pressed very tight against the pages to make the bind. After it's done, the binding area releases the book, and you remove it and set it on the rack above the binder for the glue to cool.


Step 8: Once the books are cool, you can put them in boxes, and they're ready to sell!


A future blog post will dive into marketing and selling the book and also making it into an eBook on the Google eBookstore.

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