Booklet printing at home can really be a chore sometimes. Whether you are printing a small instructional manual,
a program primer, or even a short work of fiction from your imagination, the actual booklet printing and binding can be a stain over the whole experience.
Besides the usual hurdle of making content, formatting them and printing the pages, binding the whole thing altogether requires a set of skills as well (which you may not have) and a significant amount of patience. Any wrong move, especially in binding can lead to the whole booklet looking distorted and therefore unfit for distribution.
That is why professionals do usually custom booklet printing and binding. However, if you still want to save money and produce your booklets at home there are a few tips we can offer especially about the binding of booklets.
You can use several easily purchasable tools to bind your booklets together:
Using Staplers: Staplers are the most common tools that you can use for binding booklets together. They are easy enough to use that most people will not have trouble in dealing with them. For most booklets, this is the most apt tool since you usually do not need to bind many pages together. A stapler can handle a 15-20 page booklet easy, especially if you buy those large staplers and staple wires.
Be sure however to buy something with a long “neck” or body. Some staplers out there are even labeled as “booklet staplers” so that they can be easily identified. These kinds of staplers are long enough so that there is no trouble for the staple teeth to reach the centerline of the booklet pages. They should be strong enough to punch through several sheets of paper as well while still being able to close or clasp enough together for a fine and tight bind.
Ring Binding tools: As an alternative to staples, you can also use page punchers and a ring binder as your preferred choice of booklet binding. You can buy a simple puncher at office supply stores as well as a ring binder for your pages. You just need to punch through the pages with the puncher and insert the pages one by one into the binder. This mode is a bit more time consuming but you can get a more secure booklet binding this way with metal rings especially.
Comb Binding tools: Also, another way for home booklet binding is through a “comb binding machine”. This may be even more expensive than ring binding, but comb binding is a good investment especially if you plan on a booklet printing on a more massive scale. Comb machines have a puncher feature that punches equally spaced rectangular holes in pages.
Then it has a device where you can attach “plastic combs” into these holes for a nice simple binding. Plastic “combs” and the binding machine can easily be bought at office supply stores so you can easily acquire one for your own use at home.
Online booklet printing and binding: Lastly, if you are a little iffy with doing the binding yourself, you can actually just go online and have your booklets printed and bound there. The extra cost is negligible and you will have less to worry about in your booklet production. Simply go online and search for a booklet printing service. There are a lot out there, you can simply send your booklet layout to them via email, and you will have your booklets arrive within days.
Those are your options if you want to bind your booklets at home. Just choose the right one that matches your skills, budget and of course your patience. Good Luck!
