Book Design, 101

I believe every writer must know how to make a chap­book, and should have a friend who can make her a perfect-​​bound book. At first, for empow­er­ment, self-​​made legit­i­macy, and a lit­tle extra scratch. But later, for edit­ing. There is no bet­ter way to see your man­u­script than as a book.

Sure, you could hand it off loose-​​leaf, in the stan­dard copy shop box – and it’s ful­fill­ing to take part in lit­er­ary tra­di­tions – but the trans­la­tion from man­u­script to book is pro­found. Your sen­si­tiv­i­ties to qual­ity and coher­ence kick up a notch. Typos and non­sense read much worse. And what bet­ter serves edit­ing than forc­ing the shit to the sur­face? (It’s like dredg­ing. Ha.)

My process has involved about half as many fevered, late-​​night lay­out ses­sions as edit­ing cycles. I have over a dozen drafts of Well­wa­ter Dredge, each with its own edits and sequence, and a port­fo­lio of design ideas. (The table of con­tents took sev­eral drafts to make any sense at all.) I’ve perfect-​​bound four ver­sions – about 30 copies in all.

For every writer, basic book­mak­ing is essential.

So here are the basics of lay­ing out, print­ing, and assem­bling a chap­book. I stand by chap­books because they can scale. Sim­ple to ornate, cheap to pricey – you’re in charge. We’ll dis­cuss in detail the cheap­est way to get your work in print, and I’ll make a few sug­ges­tions of how to take your gal­leys to the next level.

Refer to the menu above for each entry in the series.