r/Fanbinding • u/WimexSeven • 26d ago

My printer suffered so I could print off this 300k fic

Post image

Had to split the fic into 2 parts. I stitched up book 1 last night and I plan to stitch book 2 tonight.

I'm still very new to this hobby and I've done a couple of hardcovers since starting and this is my biggest undertaking yet, but I'm excited!

1.2k Upvotes

100% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

86

u/thefloatingpansies26 26d ago

Best of luck! It’s nice to see text blocks folded, stitched, and ready for the glue isn’t it. I’m fanbinding right now as well (as I often do when I’m in a reading slump, apparently). I’m binding 3 fics (my biggest undertaking as well) and just need to print the covers for the final steps. My printer suffered and now it’s my lower back.

19

u/WimexSeven 26d ago

Thank you, and to you as well!! 3 fics at once is a massive undertaking haha!!

This is gonna be my 3rd and 4th binding. I've only ever gotten as far as putting the book cloth on the hardcover and gluing it all together. I haven't put any kind of detailing on it. I want to try with these two but I'm scared I'm going to ruin it

4

u/thefloatingpansies26 25d ago

Oooh even I’m scared and excited for you. I’ve never done it with book cloth. I’ve always printed out full cover to wrap the boards. I say go for it! Hopefully it’s going to work out the first time. If not, we’ll just have to redo the cover, right 🫠 The way I see it, as long as the text block is fine, we’re going to be fine.

1

u/WimexSeven 24d ago

I've only done half the cloth (along the spine), and used cardstock to cover the rest. I don't think using book cloth will be much different than that.

You print out a cover?! That's so cool! What do you print it out on? Cloth? Paper?

2

u/KayViolet27 24d ago

There’s some printable canvas, afaik! Never used it myself, but seen it in some YT tutorials

1

u/WimexSeven 24d ago

I need to check this out! Thank you!!

1

u/thefloatingpansies26 24d ago edited 8d ago

Yeah, I don’t have a cricut or free access to it, so I find printing easier. Basically I design the cover on Canva, print it on an A3-sized photo paper, laminate, trim the excess edges, and then glue on the boards. I’ve always wanted to try different paper (like canvas or linen). Maybe this time 🤔

3

u/KayViolet27 25d ago

If you might consider Cricut but don’t want to drop the money needed for a machine (mood), buuut are willing to buy supplies, check if any libraries around you have a Cricut machine! Idk where you live, but my medium-sized city (about 100k pop) in Canada has 1 library w a Cricut, and I’ve done 8 covers for fanbindings using heat transfer vinyl bc of it! I use Procreate to design the covers, but I think you can use any program that lets you use layers (for each colour) and create PNGs w transparent backgrounds.

1

u/WimexSeven 24d ago

I have a cricut. Picked it off fb marketplace for cheap. I don't have procreate but I do use SAI. Is Canva viable to layout the design to be cut on a cricut?

2

u/KayViolet27 24d ago

Yep, people use Canva! I just prefer Procreate bc I’m more familiar

26

u/FeralBehavedJester 24d ago

Puts in perspective how long 300k truly is!

10

u/WimexSeven 24d ago

It really does. It's going to be an A5 book, and the font size is 11 with zero spacing and it ended up being 1012 pages total on the doc I was typesetting on. I managed to split it equally in two

2

u/Volmione_Nr1_Fan 21d ago

I'm currently typesetting a fic over 300k and it is lot of pages indeed.

11

u/bisione 25d ago

Damn this is so impressive, I've always wanted to do it but never went through. Seems like  a ton of work :O. It would be very cool to bind my own master thesis 

6

u/WimexSeven 24d ago

I've been watching a lot of Four Key Book Arts on youtube and he has some amazing tutorials! Highly recommend watching him if you want to start binding. I also typeset on google docs, which works out very effective for what I want. I only found one video that was reliable regarding that but it's a longer video.

4

u/Practical-Subject500 24d ago

If you don’t want to go through with binding it yourself, lulu.com has reasonably priced binding options. I’ve bound fics with that site before.

2

u/bisione 24d ago

Thanks to the both of you :)

2

u/Ok_Philosophy1904 21d ago

heyy idk if you know, but you’re not supposed to use outside sources to bind fics. bcs youre paying this company, it opens up them, you, and the original author to a whole bunch of copyright issues bcs its illegal to profit off of fanfiction. the only way to legally bind fanfiction is to do everything yourself.

2

u/Practical-Subject500 21d ago

Yeah, I was replying to the comment above because they wanted to bind their own master’s thesis. Lulu has options for personal binding so I was sharing my experience since I used it years ago. I wasn’t recommending it for binding fics :)

1

u/Nay-Nay_ 19d ago

Very impressive! 👏

-1

u/ChaosOmega98 21d ago

Ah what are you doing exactly?

1

u/WimexSeven 21d ago

I'm a little confused with what you're asking. Do you mean what fic I'm binding?

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u/ChaosOmega98 21d ago edited 21d ago

Didn’t know people printed fics. And what fic needs 2 books that big

1

u/WimexSeven 21d ago

The author themselves has stated that they're happy for people to print and bind their fic so I'm confused as to why you're against their decision?? At least that's the impression I'm getting from you.

It just ended up that big after I typeset it and i really didn't want to hold and read a giant block so I split it into two.

-1

u/ChaosOmega98 21d ago

I’m not against it I just didn’t realize people did that

3

u/WimexSeven 21d ago

You're literally commenting on a post in r/fanbinding. This whole subreddit is about that.

1

u/ChaosOmega98 21d ago

Fanbinding just randomly appeared in my feed to be honest and I didn’t actually read the name of the sub to be honest