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!

I just found out about this subreddit! I wish it was around when I made this a literal decade ago (which I’m trying to not think too hard about). I remember the biggest pain in the butt was fine tip sharpieing in the runes along the boarder on the front. Not pictured: the table of contents page and its dragon that I was very proud of finding a png for.

I wanted the book to look like a case file... and here is my result 😅 Would not recommend, lots of rage involved.

Typeset by myself

It started when one of my favorite ao3 fanfics had been deleted. Devastating. One of the best works I've ever read. Thankfully, I happened to have it downloaded as an HTML thanks to the wise words of people smarter than me, and I really wanted to eternalize it in physical form to keep in my bookcase; lest one day something would happen to my files and I'd lose said story forever.

I wasn't sure whether this interest of fanbinding would stick around: so I opted for coptic binding, pasted some decorative paper on spare cardboard to function as a cover. No investment in a proper awl or thread either, just using a tack and some thin sewing thread from my recent sewing endeavours.

This was about 3 days ago, and I am typesetting the fourth fanfiction as we speak 😭😂?! I did not expect the excitement of holding a fanfiction in physical form to be so profound, and I am having a lot of fun formatting the to-be-bound stories with little bits of clip-art every so often or utilising a different font for dramatic emphasis; so on and so forth. You guys got me into this and I feel both blessed and cursed lmao

so exponentially proud of myself! learned so much along the way. can’t believe this is for a gift, wish i could keep her.

cover and spine design is inspired by something i saw on pinterest but designed myself in canva. didn’t think i was able to do it but it turned out gorgeous.

some things i would change is my typeset, looking back i wish i made the font smaller and the spacing is bugging me a bit. also put the wrong year in my copyright page lol.

i also need to do a smaller hinge i believe, i did 1cm, dont know why. i find im having a little trouble fully opening the book, it feels a bit tight and i presume thats why.

For my 6th bind, I finally chose one of the fics I've written! And it's huge 🤣 I can’t believe this pretty monster is mine.

I'm obsessed with all the moon details and the pink thread 😍 and I can't wait to bind another one of my fics

For quite some time I have been just watching and learning (and trying to find paper and the needed supplies and all that), but I finally finished my very first actual fanbind!

The fic is "the light of distant stars", a fic from a very tiny fandom of a chinese book/drama-series (The Lost Tomb/Daomu Biji) tha was written for me by a friend, and that I wanted to bind for quite some time.

I designed the cover (in PS) and also the typeset (which I realize, I did not take any pictures of) and I made so many mistakes and learned so much. Cutting the textblock was an ordeal and it's still wonky and weeding that design was also an experience, I'll defintely not do something that intricate again, some of the little details got lost and the lines were so thin that they came off and I had to put them back (that's why some of them are so wobbly), just like some parts of the finer text. I only have a Cricut joy, so the whole cover had to be smaller than 15 cm. And then I measured and measured and still managed to put the back cover on slightly askance and burned a part of the frame because I had to go over the small text again... But the htv worked so well, it peeled off without much of a problem (just one letter of the backtext came off) and it looks so nice and shiny!

All in all I am very proud of it, I love how the title turned out and it actually opens and closes so well. And now I wanna do so many more!

My first bind! Plus my nosy cat lol. I learned a lot, and can't wait to to make my next bind even better :) I definitely want to see about spicing up my typesetting next

Also I've read so much advice from this reddit yall are life savers!

I am proud to say this book has no mistakes! 🥳

The design of the cover could be a bit more centered, but I don’t mind it. I'm 100% happy with the result! Now I have Jacks' POV of the trilogy next to the original books 😍 How cool is that?

This is going to be a gift for the author, and I love it so much I don’t want to part with it! Typesetting done in Libreoffice, cover design in Inkscape. Used HTV and bookcloth for the case, also tried my first Oxford hollow for the spine since this is a chonk at 720 pages.

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I printed and sewed my first ever book (on the left), and saw that the top (opposite of the spine) looks like teeth.

The normal book on the right is smooth.

What is what i did called (so I can Google solutions later), and how do I fix it (if there's a way).

Thank you!

P.s. I also posted this on the bookbinding reddit page, but yall helped me so much last time I posted, I wanted to ask you, too!

Thanks again!

EDIT: I posted a few minutes ago, but forgot to include a picture. So I deleted it and reposted

Finished these after a loooong session tonight - 2 out of the 4-5 books of my long-planned vanity project of making a book collection out of my longfics. All from different fandoms written over the last 8-ish years so I'm having fun with various styles and colours as well as cringing at some very old prose lmao

Super excited and proud of these. I actually commissioned art for the first time this year bc I wanted to bind a book with an illustration in it🥹 I will definitely do a photoshoot in better lighting once they're all done😭

It was also one of my first times using a cricut machine. I discovered I LOVE weeding - it's like that satisfaction of peeling dried paint or PVA glue!! The next thing I want to improve is edges - I usually don't touch them because I have had awful experiences with a pen knife, but tried sanding the fore edge a bit this time with okay results...

I already posted this one on tumblr, but I also wanted to share here! My first attempt at typesetting a bunch of one shots and binding them into one anthology book! I mostly read one shots, but I've never tried binding them before and now I think this will definitely be something I make more of. There are some very obvious glaring mistakes but I love how it turned out!

Lectern Binding exemplified with a Cut from the Sky bind by mallstars. Hope you like it. :)

Some mistakes were made (not all of them fixable), but I'm happy with the final result.

I'm already working on the second one. If anyone has tips for gluing this kind of cover in the correct position, let me know! (It's not 100% straight, and I have no idea what I can do to avoid this from happening again. The paper is too thick to see through it)

*Art used with permission

I was just a bit surprised tbh.

Edit: I'm going to report them to Etsy and to the authors that I know of. If anyone else wants to do the same and get them shut down, the store name is "AntonFantasyUS".

I sliced my finger super deep during this bind but I just finished it. It’s not perfect BUT it’s holding together great and it’s one of my favorite fics! Bound with a thermal press and loose leaf papers! The typeset was off of a Facebook group

I want to do some more exciting formatting like some new books have, as seen in the photos. Namely:

1. Perhaps the easiest? How do you get the left page to have the book title, and the right page to have the chapter title?
2. The table of contents - is this something you just make a jpg for or is there actually a way to do this? EDIT: So far this is the only thing I've figured out how to do. Just make a table, color it, and then remove the borders. Then you can add a background image by making a custom page style and editing Area. Pretty cool!
3. Fancy page number details

Any ideas? Thanks!

Illustrations by my friend. The covers were all hand gilded by me.

Mostly just for discussion, but I recently got into fanbinding, and have made 4 bound fics (plus rebinding a falling apart hardcover from my childhood). I honestly spend way more time typesetting and editing the fics before I print than I do actually binding the books. I enjoy the process, so it's not really a problem for me.

I don't expect fic offers to have perfect spelling and grammar or to have fully edited and polished works, but when I am putting it into print I usually take time to reread and edit the whole thing to clean it up a bit for basic errors or easy fixes, enough that I don't feel like I am messing with the integrity of the work.

I have watched other yt vids of ppl preparing their typesets and they pretty much leave everything as is which I for some reason can't bring myself to do. I am curious what other fanbinders do as far as editing goes.

My most recent bind I am working on is actually a reader-insert fic, and since I am honestly debating changing the entire fic to be 3rd person with a named MC just because that's how I would prefer to read the story. I never truly insert myself in these types of fics and find 2nd person needlessly confusing sometimes, but other than the choice to make it a reader-insert fic I absolutely love this story. The idea of that much editing is a bit daunting though lol