Quick & Cheap Perfect Binding

When you try to find info about bookbinding online, you tend to find a lot of info from bookbinding communities. They'll teach you complex techniques that use expensive equipment. Rightfully so; bookbinding is an art and stitching together your book and case binding it will make it last generations.

But what if you just want a cheap booklet?

If you ask a bookbinding community, they'll cry over the concept of a perfect binding using cheap school glue. The materials aren't perfect, and the technique doesn't last very long. If you don't plan to pass down this printed-out RPG module to your children, you're probably fine going the quick and dirty route. Here's the methods I use, with different complexity.

For the quick and dirty method, I give the "recipe" and then show pictures of the process. For the fancy method, I only have pictures of the results right now, but the process is mostly the same.

Quickest & Easiest but Lowest Quality Method

This probably works best for smaller booklets. Think a TSR module, 40-some pages with no cover.

Materials needed

1. School glue (the white stuff, any PVA glue will do)
2. Printed out pages of the booklet
3. Two sheets of plywood or some kinda flat thing
4. A clamp or two for the plywood
5. Wax paper or other release paper
6. (OPTIONAL) Sandpaper / nail file

What do

1. Print out the booklet, and add an extra blank/scrap page to the front and back (two total)
2. Align the sheets as perfectly as you can, and sandwich them between the plywood, with the to-be spine sticking out a few millimetres
3. (OPTIONAL) Sand down the spine edge. Just go at it with sandpaper or a nail file. If you have the nail file, try to saw out some "grooves" across the spine, just 1-2 mm down. This whole step gives the glue more surface to hold on to.
4. Put school glue on the spine edge. Work it in with your fingers, remember to have a clean rag nearby. Really massage it in, if it's sanded the paper will readily absorb the glue and you might do a second application. Watch out that the glue doesn't get on the plywood, but you can wipe it off. Pinch the paper together to get excess glue out.
5. Let it set for a few minutes. Carefully un-clamp the plywood (a binder clip or two on the paper helps), and use the plywood to clamp down on the spine, using wax paper to prevent it from sticking to the plywood. The pages can get a little misaligned at this point, so watch out for that. Let it harden for a few hours.
6. After it's hardened, put the paper back into the plywood as it was when you were applying glue. The pages are glued together now, but it needs a few more layers for structural support. Repeat step 4 another two or three times, letting it dry each time (you probably don't need to clamp it down at this stage). This builds up the spine.

After all of this, you should be good. Carefully tear away (or cut away) the blank pages on the ends. The resulting booklet should lie flat. It's very possible it breaks in half, since school glue isn't very high quality, and your technique might not be the best at first. It's fun practice.

Pictures

I printed out DCC's Moon-slaves of the Cannibal Kingdom. Unfortunately, I didn't realize my printer ran out of paper right at the last page, so this booklet is exactly one page short.

I added a scrap page to the front and back of the printout, since I keep all my paper in a bin instead of tossing it for exactly reasons like this.

I put the stack in between two pieces of scrap wood I had- not plywood, but they were big enough. This is a good amount of sticking-outing.

As you can see, I actually wrapped the plywood in wax paper. It helps with releasing it after the initial gluing, but is not necessary if you're mindful of cleaning up.

Anyway, glue time.

Really work it in there. You want it to seep in between the pages, so it should "disappear" on the first pass as it goes in. The 1-2mm of paper sticking out ensures the glue goes down into the pages, but doesn't go down too far. If you've sanded it, it will absorb even more, so I'd recommend a second pass immediately.

Above is roughly what it should look like after this. Let it dry fully, and then do the couple extra coats to strengthen the spine. Then you should be good. Tear away the scrap pages.

Finished. It should look roughly like a saddle-stitched/stapled booklet, and lie just as flat, but with a crustier edge.

I did this method with no sanding and only one extra layer of glue, and to my surprise, it actually worked better than I thought. It laid perfectly flat and the spine didn't crack at all.

Perfectly serviceable at the table. Definitely will survive a few sessions, as I am yanking on the pages with moderate strength and it's surviving. Of course, you could tear it apart if you wanted to, but the fact is that this took minimal effort and maybe $5 worth of supplies (scrap wood is free if you know where to look), and is nearly indistinguishable in use from a stapled booklet. Anyway, if you want to make it actually durable, here's the "full" method:

The Much Better But More Expensive And Effortful Method

Since you already know the most minimal method above, I won't mark anything as optional- everything here is optional unless it's in the above method. Every step you skip just makes it a tiny bit less durable or presentable.

Materials Needed

1. School glue (the white stuff, any PVA glue will do)
2. Printed out pages of the booklet
3. Two sheets of plywood or some kinda flat thing
4. A clamp or two for the plywood
5. Wax paper or other release paper
6. Sandpaper / nail file
7. Saw of some sort
8. Twine/yarn/other thread
9. Cheese cloth/gauze/similar thin cloth

For the cover

1. Three sheets of cover stock (I like 110lb / 300gsm, note that 110lb card stock is different and much thinner. But 110lb card stock should be fine too, just thinner)
2. Blank piece of thicker paper, this should be flexible but durable (I use 32lb laser printer paper)'
3. Rubber cement, glue stick, or other non-warping easily-cleanable glue
4. Full-page sticker paper, spray glue, printer that can handle cardstock, or other method to get a cover on the cover stock

What do

1. Print out the booklet, and add an extra blank page to the front/back, and another extra blank/scrap page to the front/back. This is four sheets in total. Note that the interior extra pages need to be blank, these are the "end pages" and we will glue the cover onto it. If you're not using a cover, you can stick with just one.
2. Align the sheets as perfectly as you can, and sandwich them between the plywood, with the to-be spine sticking out a few millimetres.
3. Sand down the spine edge. Just go at it with sandpaper or a nail file.
4. Using the saw, saw in some grooves about 1-2 mm down, every inch or cm or so. Put some of the threads from the twine into these grooves.
5. Put school glue on the spine edge. Work it in with your fingers, remember to have a clean rag nearby. Really massage it in, if it's sanded the paper will readily absorb the glue and you might do a second application. Watch out that the glue doesn't get on the plywood, but you can wipe it off. Pinch the paper together to get excess glue out. If you sanded it, you might want to do another pass with glue immediately afterward, remember to pinch excess glue out.
6. Let it set for a few minutes. Carefully un-clamp the plywood (a binder clip or two on the paper helps), and use the plywood to clamp down on the spine, using wax paper to prevent it from sticking to the plywood. The pages can get a little misaligned at this point, so watch out for that. Let it harden for a few hours.
7. After it's hardened, put the paper back into the plywood as it was when you were applying glue. The pages are glued together now, but it needs a few more layers for structural support. Cut a strip of cheese cloth and glue it to the spine edge. Let it dry and cut off any excess. The cheese cloth adds extra support.
8. Repeat step 5 a couple times to thicken the layer of glue on the spine.
9. Tear away the outermost scrap piece of paper. You might need to cut it if the cheese cloth has stuck to it.

For the cover

1. Get two pieces of your cover stock and prepare them with a cover. I use full-page sticker paper because it's cleaner than spray glue and my printer can't handle cover stock. It can be as simple as a label maker label though.
2. Line up the cover stock with the text block, and glue the covers to the blank end pages of the book. I cover about a third of the page.
3. Once it's all dried, measure the thickness of the book, and cut a strip of cover stock about as thick to act as a spine. This is optional if your booklet is too thin for a spine like this.
4. Cut a strip of the thicker paper and glue the spine to the middle of it, so it has about an inch or so of thicker paper extending from both ends. I use the easily-cleanable glue at this stage.
5. Put the spine up to the spine of the book, spine facing inward, and fold down the flaps over the book to test the fit. It should look like the spine on a composition notebook, kind of just covering the end of the book. If it looks ready, glue the flaps down (not the spine itself!) and you're done.

Pictures

Here's some pictures of the results, but not the process:

Oh, yeah. It can handle 300 page rulebooks. I'll be real, I don't know if they'll handle table scrutiny, but they've all survived me reading through them over a few reading sessions.

It lays perfectly flat, but this attempt was not perfect, so the spine looks a little funny. If the spine breaks, the cheese cloth will keep it together. I've heard that proper bookbinding PVA is more flexible than Elmer's, and I might upgrade, since I've had a few spines break (but remain together from the cloth and threads).

The spines for these are all blank currently, but nothing stopped me from printing a label on the spine paper when I was making them, or adding them on now with sticker paper or a label maker.

If you noticed, the bottom one doesn't even have the spine piece, it was an early one I made as I was discovering this process. The spine piece is mostly to keep it flat to be able to put a label on it.

I hope this post helps someone.