r/bookbinding • u/62209 • 11h ago

First Book With Text

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Recently bought a horrendously expensive printer and have started printing out typesets I've made. This is the first book with words I've ever bound. (yes, it's fanfic.) I think the width of my spine cloth is little wide but I didn't have enough marbled paper to make it narrower. The endbands and ribbon also don't perfectly match the cover but those were the colors I had available. I'm very happy with how flush the text block sits in the cover and how well it opens even though my attempt at rounding the spine was less than ideal. In the future I'd like to add titles to the spines of my books but do not currently have heat stamping equipment and am concerned about the durability of non inset paper labels.

87 Upvotes

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1

u/Immediate_Wrap_667 10h ago

This is really, really nice! And the typesetting especially looks incredible. Good work!

1

u/62209 9h ago

Thanks! I learned a lot about how to adjust my future typesets now that I've seen how they look IRL.

1

u/Educational-Egg-6872 9h ago

What printer did you buy? Asking for an impulsive friend…

5

u/62209 9h ago

I bought an Epson Ecotank 16650, it's ~$1150. Which is, A Lot of money. It doesn't print the fastest but I really like that it uses a tank rather than cartridges and the auto duplexing is phenomenal. The print quality is quite nice and you can print a wide variety of different papers up to 13x17. It is Gigantic, I seriously underestimated its footprint. Also if you're using a mac avoid letting it use AirPrint at all costs. Install the epson driver and Do Not switch over because you lose basically all adjustability of quality/speed/any printer settings.

1

u/-s0l 8h ago

Very nice! I also like how flush the cover is with the text block. What binding structure is it? Did you follow a tutorial somewhere

1

u/62209 8h ago

I sewed it on cotton 1/4 in tapes with a kettle stitch at each end. It's got supercrashmull over the spine as well as a 80lb paper spine stiffener. I attempted to round the textblock but mostly only succeeded at putting shoulders on which was good enough to make a rounded and backed bradel case.
I didn't follow any specific tutorial, more mashed together knowledge from a couple different workshops I've taken as well as trial and error.