Making pamphlets / booklets

[Cramulus]

Between the Chao te Ching and the Om Nom Nomicon, I've put together a lot of text this week!

After I printed out my copy of the Chao Te Ching, I suddenly got the itch.

It's SO EASY and SO FUN to create booklets / pamphlets / etc. They're cheap to print, easy to trade or give away, and make me feel like I added some Quality to the world.

I'm hooked! I want to make more!



Two questions for the crowd ---

1) What's the best format? Should I produce a PDF on 8x11 paper and let people figure out how to assemble it into a booklet themselves? Or should I output something which can be printed and folded in half, voila it's done? In the latter case, it makes the document a bit harder to read online, but easier to enter meatspace.

2) What's the best venue for these things? Do you guys know of any people or places which collect homemade media? I want more people to read these. I used to just leave them all over the place. But is there a better distribution point?



also - this is a rallying cry to the community - let's get back into output mode and create some stuff which will really shake people up. We have the tools, we have the talent, let's blast some creativity into PDF form and print 1000 copies.

[Iason Ouabache]

1) I prefer PDF on 8X11 but only because I'm a Kindle spag. It's hard to read weird PDF formats on it.

2) Obvious online answers: Scribd, Amazon's publishing service, Digg, Twitter, Facebook. I've got nothing.

[Triple Zero]

I, for one, would be very happy if they'd also be published on A4.

Or A5 which is exactly half of an A4, you can easily make a 4 page mini-pamphlet by double-sided printing an A4 and folding it in half, I'm sure the 8x11 fahrenheit papers also have this feature.

[DiscoUkulele]

I've always liked standard 8 1/2 x 11, simply because it's very easy to print booklets if the file is not too much longer than 100 pages. Then you can fold them like a book, and use the stapler + eraser trick to make neat little books. That's how I printed all of my Discordian lit.

[Cramulus]

what's the stapler / eraser trick?

[DiscoUkulele]

what's the stapler / eraser trick?

You fold your pages to make the booklet, then flip the book over (so the front and back cover are on top), and put an eraser under the crease where you want to staple. Then you open up your stapler and staple through the pages and into the eraser. Then, you can flip the book over, yank off the eraser, and fold the ends of the staple down.

It helps you staple booklets without one of those fancy super long staplers that are made for booklet binding.

[Cramulus]

fuckin WOW man
dude I've been making booklets for YEARS and never thought of that!

[AFK]

Heh, I wish I'd known about that trick when we did the 1st ed of BIP.  I didn't have one of those big staplers so my stapling job was, um, interesting. 

[Triple Zero]

+5 mittens for DiscoUkelele

that is brilliant!!

another trick, if you want to make your booklets look extra ++PROFESSIONAL:
If you have more than 8 pages or so, when the booklet's closed the middle pages will stick out, right? meaning, the edge will be an inverted V cause all the papers are equally sized but the middle ones are folded inside the outer ones.
well if you have a proper good paper cutter, you can cut off those last few millimeters (micro-inches), just the sticking-out bit. the effect is subtle, but the booklet ends up looking a lot neater and professional.

[Dimocritus]

Would it be too much trouble to have texts available in both formats? 8 1/2 by 11 for those who prefer electronic media, and double sized for those who would want to assemble a physical copy. Options are always a plus.

As far as producing some collective content, I'm all for it (Just as soon as my basement is back in order). It'd be nice to have some new content on the home-page for visitors that may not be interested in participating in forum discussions.

[Placid Dingo]

Slight deviation; as stickers, along alleys/paths.

[Triple Zero]

Would it be too much trouble to have texts available in both formats? 8 1/2 by 11 for those who prefer electronic media, and double sized for those who would want to assemble a physical copy. Options are always a plus.

I don't follow?

You can always print a PDF "scale to fit", or electronically view a PDF "fit to screen", so it shouldn't matter too much, would it?

In which case I'd prefer them being released "optimized for print", since printers are sometimes less forgiving than PDF readers* in viewing options.



* for those who have the choice (i.e. able to install software), if you're still using Acrobat Reader, get rid of it and get FoxIt PDF instead. It's not opensource, but commercial and free (disable the ad in the options menu). It loads much faster than Acrobat and because of its lesser features [which nobody ever used in Acrobat in the first place, trust me], it's more resiliant against exploits. For complete security against Acrobat-based exploits, be sure to explicitly uninstall it using the Remove Programs windows config thing [cause it has the tendency to linger resident even if you don't use it--frees computer resources too].