This really belongs as an addendum to the introductory “Do-It-Yourself Book Press” article I wrote for No Media Kings, but for some reason I’m having trouble submitting forms on that site. So, hopefully people looking there will end up seeing this here:
I’m about to give a bookbinding tutorial next weekend, so I’ve gone back and revisited my process and looked up some info, so here’s some updated material.
First, a great YouTube video of one fella’s perfect-binding process (using low-budget materials, but with very nice results):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcwwQDIlCKE
And now I must bow before a far superior effort and move out of frame: I found a website offering a book about perfect-binding at home, and it contains nearly everything I’ve learned over the past two years and then some. Three caveats about it, before I give you the URL:
- It’s a commercial product and costs $49. But I would very happily pay that to go back in time and hand that to myself, sparing me from a lot of trial and error. As it is, I picked up a few new ideas from it. So it’s $49 for an e-book, but I still think it’s well worth it.
- The website is one of those hellacious late-night infomercial-types that uses many fonts, many large fonts, and promises you absolute salvation through “super-secret reports”. You will feel as if you had a bath in Coca-Cola after looking at it.
- For such an incredibly detailed and useful guide (the author even includes ISO and North American paper sizes for every example), I’m amazed that no one spent half an hour grammar- and spell-checking the thing. As someone who writes copy for a living, I had to keep suspending judgment to accept that the content was still of excellent quality.
Okay, here’s the site: Easy Bookbinding.
Finally, for my self-publishing friends in the UK, here are some pieces of information about officially registering your book:
- Where do I get my ISBN?
http://www.nbdrs.com/isbn_sernew.htm - Where do I get my CIP data? (The Cataloguing-in-Publication information for the inside of your book.)
http://www.bl.uk/services/bibliographic/cip.html - Facts about legal deposit (the National Library requests that all UK publishers submit one copy of their work for archiving):
http://www.bl.uk/about/policies/legaldeposit.html
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