Binding a booklet at home is easier than it sounds and harder than it looks. The folding and stapling take twenty minutes. Getting the pages to come out in the right order, and the block to sit flat instead of fanning open like a deck of cards, is where the craft is. This walks through the method most people should start with, then the alternatives.
What you need
- A long-arm stapler, sometimes sold as a saddle stapler or booklet stapler. A normal desk stapler cannot reach the middle of a folded page. Around twenty pounds or dollars, and it is the one purchase worth making.
- A bone folder, or the back of a butter knife. It gives you a sharp crease instead of a soft one.
- A metal ruler and a craft knife, if you plan to trim.
- Paper. Text weight for the interior, 24 lb or 90 gsm is comfortable. Card stock for the cover, 65 to 80 lb.
Optional but useful: a bulldog clip to hold the block while you work, and a scrap of soft eraser, for a reason that will make sense in a minute.
The saddle stitch, step by step
Saddle stitch is the fold-and-staple method, and it is what almost every chapbook you have held was made with. Despite the name, no stitching is involved. It suits anything from eight to about forty-eight pages.
Step 1: Get the page count right
Your total page count must divide by four. One sheet folded in half is four pages. There is no way around this, so if you have twenty-two pages of poems, you have a twenty-four page book with two blanks in it, and that is fine.
Step 2: Impose the pages
This is the step people skip, and then wonder why their booklet reads out of order. When the sheets are folded together, the pages do not print in sequence. On a sixteen-page book, the outermost sheet carries page 16 and page 1 side by side on one face, and pages 2 and 15 on the other. The next sheet in carries 14 and 3, then 4 and 13. The pattern is that each pair adds up to one more than the total page count.
Do not work this out by hand. Word’s book fold setting, InDesign’s print booklet, and most PDF readers with a booklet printing option will all do the imposition for you. Print two pages per sheet, double sided, flipping on the short edge.
Step 3: Check the paper grain
Paper has a grain, the direction the fibres lie, and it folds cleanly along the grain and crackles across it. Tear a spare sheet in both directions: the tear that runs straight is with the grain. You want the grain running parallel to the spine. Get this backwards and every fold fights you and the finished booklet will not lie flat.
Step 4: Fold
Fold each sheet individually, not the whole stack at once. Line the corners up, hold them, then run the bone folder along the crease from the middle outward. Then nest the folded sheets inside one another, working from the innermost page out, with the cover last.
Step 5: Staple
Open the booklet flat, face down, and lay it over the arm of the long-arm stapler so the crease sits on the centre line. Two staples, each about a quarter of the way in from the top and bottom of the spine. Press firmly and in one movement.
No long-arm stapler? Open the booklet face up on a soft eraser or a folded towel, push a standard staple through from the inside by hand, turn it over, and fold the two legs down flat with the back of a spoon. It is fiddly and it works.
Step 6: Trim the fore-edge
On anything thicker than about twelve sheets, the inner pages push out further than the outer ones when you fold them. This is called creep, and it leaves a stepped, ragged front edge. Lay a metal ruler down the fore-edge and trim the whole block with a craft knife, taking a few millimetres off in several light passes rather than one heavy one. That single cut is the difference between a booklet that looks homemade and one that looks made.
Sewing it instead: the pamphlet stitch
Thread instead of staples, and it looks considerably more expensive than it is. The three-hole pamphlet stitch is the simplest version: pierce three holes along the fold, one at the centre and one a couple of inches from each end. Go in through the centre hole from the outside, out through the top hole, back in through the bottom hole (passing the centre on the inside), and out through the centre again. Tie the two ends in a square knot around the long stitch, on either side of it, and trim the tails. Waxed linen thread holds best.
There is a fuller walkthrough on sewing chapbooks by hand.
The other methods, and when to use them
- Staples — the default. Fast, cheap, right for almost every chapbook.
- A sewing machine — a straight stitch down the fold. Very fast once set up, and it gives you a run of identical copies with a nice industrial look.
- Coptic binding — exposed stitching across the spine, no glue, and it opens completely flat. Slow, beautiful, and better suited to a one-off or a small special edition than to fifty copies.
- One sheet, eight pages — a single sheet, folded and cut once, with no binding at all. Perfect for a giveaway at a reading.
Perfect binding, the glued square spine you see on paperbacks, is the one method I would not attempt at home. It needs a proper glue, a clamp and a press to survive being opened, and home attempts tend to shed pages within a year. If you want a square spine, get it printed.
Mistakes worth avoiding
- Folding the stack all at once. The inner sheets shift and every page ends up misaligned. Fold them one at a time.
- Too many sheets. Past about twelve folded sheets the spine bulges and the staples struggle. Split it or have it printed.
- Ignoring creep. Trim the fore-edge, or design with a slightly wider outside margin so the text does not sit at different distances from the edge on different pages.
- Skipping the proof copy. Make one complete booklet, all the way through, before you print fifty. You will find a mistake. There is always a mistake.
If you have not laid the interior out yet, do that before you touch a stapler: DIY book design for beginners covers the margins, type and imposition settings you need. And if the whole booklet is still an idea rather than a stack of paper, start at how to make a chapbook.
Common questions about DIY book binding
What do I need in a bookbinding kit?
For booklets, less than the kits sold online suggest. A long-arm stapler, a bone folder, a metal ruler, a craft knife and a cutting mat will cover every method on this page. If you plan to sew, add a bookbinding needle, waxed linen thread and an awl to pierce the holes. You do not need a binding press, and you do not need a guillotine.
What are the main book binding methods?
For short books there are four worth knowing. Saddle stitch, which is folding and stapling through the spine. Pamphlet stitch, the same fold sewn with thread. Coptic binding, an exposed stitch that lets the book open completely flat. And perfect binding, the glued square spine you see on paperbacks, which is the one method that really needs equipment. Saddle stitch is the right default for almost every chapbook.
Can I bind a book at home without a long-arm stapler?
Yes. Open the booklet face up on a soft eraser or a folded towel, push a standard staple through from the inside by hand, turn it over, and fold the legs flat with the back of a spoon. Or skip staples and sew it, which needs nothing but a needle, thread and something to make the holes. Both work; the stapler just makes it faster if you are producing fifty copies.
How do I bind a book with string?
Use the three-hole pamphlet stitch. Pierce three holes along the fold, one at the centre and one a couple of inches from each end. Go in through the centre from the outside, out through the top hole, back in through the bottom hole passing the centre on the inside, then out through the centre again. Tie the two ends around the long stitch and trim. Waxed linen thread holds far better than ordinary string, which stretches and frays.
What glue should I use to bind a book?
PVA bookbinding glue, which stays flexible when it dries. Ordinary white school glue goes brittle and cracks along the spine within a year or two, and a hot glue gun fails faster than that. Honestly though, if you are asking about glue you are attempting perfect binding, and that is the one method I would send to a printer rather than try at home.