#typesetting template

[canon-in-too-deep]

Free Typesetting Template

So while I try to get some designs set, I thought I'd clean up and share the template I use for typesetting!

Templates save lots of time, and let me keep 'tools' where I like 'em. Free template here on my google drive ✨.

(As with all my stuff, Personal Use Only!) This file is for Affinity Publisher ONLY. I highly recommend getting Affinity Publisher if you're doing a lot of typesets and want a high degree of control over details. It has most of the features of Indesign, and far more capabilities than Word or Google Docs. There is a learning curve at the start, but overall it is a great program for typesetting and is a one time purchase, versus a subscription like other services. Please note, this template is set for my own personal preferences, and I always adjust it according to the text I'm working on. You can make whatever changes you want to suit it to your needs; I just included the normal settings I tend to use. See below the break for template details! (How to use/notes)*

This template is sized for half letter pages.

140% Leading, 11pt Font Size (Body Text)

The baseline grid is set for these exact preferences. If using a different font size/leading, I change these to match and play with the text boxes for 'Master Body' to make them look nice.

The template has the text boxes set up for where I usually insert text, copy, and headers/footers. I usually fill these out with the relevant details, and adjust the placements and sizes as needed.

I put X down where I usually write my name/imprint. The copyright page has a lot of blank space because I like to include my personal logos on there.

The copyright page also has the Project Gutenburg info I like to include, since I mainly do public domain works from there. If I'm doing a fanfic, I'll replace this with the tags/details from the fic's AO3 page.

Main text gets copied and pasted into page 9, then flows into the rest of the pages.

The paragraph and character styles I use are all included.

Very important, after pasting in your text, go to Find and Replace, and turn all italics to 'Emphasis' character style to preserve them.

'Body Divider' is how I include dinkuses.

'Special' paragraph styles are for when texts have things like letters or songs included.

Typically, I use 'Chapter Heading' + 'Chapter Character' for chapter titles, and set a table of contents on page 7 using these settings.

You'll notice that on page 9 I have a text box that links into the Master Body pages. This is my sort of 'test' page for chapter titles. I can freely change the size and layout on this specific page. I move it around based on what design I come up with, then copy that design into my 'Master Chapter Heading' spread to apply to the rest of the chapter title pages.

At the very end of a file, I'll usually put in a colophon. This is not in the template, but it's just a blank page at the end with my stamp and notes on the size of the typeset and what fonts I used. *I don't have a fully written tutorial at this time, but I recommend joining Renegade Bindery's discord, where a lot of very talented people have shared their tutorials, and provide very helpful live answers. Edit 9/20: Tutorial post here!

[starblightbindery]

Star Wars Fanfic Template for Affinity Publisher

Affinity Publisher really intimidated me until @mourningmountainsbindery shared a sample typeset template for me to try out. It helped so much. I’m paying it forward, by sharing my own templates for Star Wars binding.

If you’ve been hesitant to learn Affinity Publisher, I hope this template helps you dive on in. This typeset template is perfect for fans of Reylo, Kylux, Stormpilot and other Star Wars sequel trilogy fanfic.

My favorite part of this template is the Star Wars title page, which you can customize with whatever images you want to fit your fic!

This template is intended for personal, not-for-profit, transformative use ONLY.

It has been made available at no cost to the fanbinding community to help make home bookbinding more accessible for everyone.

Affinity Publisher is owned by Serif Europe. Star Wars is owned by a company that has decided to cater to alt-right dudebros. The licenses for the fonts are owned by their respective publishers.

If you’d like to support my work, please consider keeping the attribution, share widely, and do not monetize what has been made freely available. Also, check out my online shop for fanfic bookbinding supplies!

Thank you and happy fanfic binding!

Visit my LinkTree to grab the template!

[sedumlineare]

Typesetting is one of those things where it's fun when it works and it's hell when you can't figure out the single setting that would make everything work properly

[snifferish]

I've been book binding for about 4 years as a hobby, but I've mostly just bound my own sketchbooks.

Since I go back into reading this year I've been converting some of my paperbacks to hardcover and it just feels like a completely different process. However, I then decided, "hey! I have lots of friends who read fanfiction and online not-published works, I should ask them if they want anything bound!"

Long story short, I spent a whole day creating a "professional level" typeset template in word. It's so amusing to me how in school I barely wanted to do anything and now as an adult I'm like "Oh yeah I'll spent six hours formatting a document."

[serpentsnestpress]

Here's the bind I did of @mythrilthread's typeset of @psychofink's fic Falling Like a Flip of a Coin.

I picked this one up for Renegade's Tiny Books Bang (after completely failing to typeset anything myself, cry) and immediately knew what I needed to do with it. It needed to be a coin. The story loops, and I wanted the book to have that similar over-and-over vibe, so I took Ril's perfectly reasonable left to right tiny book typeset and printed it so the pages flip up. When you reach the end of the book, the natural action is to flip it over (and start again).

It was quite tedious to punch the spine and cut out the circles; I made a template out of vellum tracing paper to frame the text when punching holes and tracing the circle for cutting. I roughly trimmed the sewn and glued text block with a craft knife, then I clamped it between book boards cut to size (and shape) and finished it with a belt sander. The belt sander (while effective) left the edge a little toasty, so I painted it with acrylic gouache.

The endpapers are mercury glass paper (from a scrapbooking pack), the bookcloth is Duo 105 (Graphite/Brikett/Briquette), the cover decoration is silver iron-on vinyl cut on my cricut. The knotwork design (from the title page) is repeated on front and back.

I used a lot of new techniques on this book, including shaping, sanding, and edge painting. This is also the first book I've made that isn't my usual case structure, as the spine piece was made separately and attached prior to the boards.

Overall this was a really fun if challenging project, and I'd definitely try it again if I had a book that really called for that sort of shape!

[tiredeg]

What is LaTeX? I’m working so hard on this like… LAnce/Toto/alEX? LANdo/pierre gasly number TEn/maX?

Oh God nooooo LaTeX is a scientific typesetting software, when I said niche I meant niche 😭😭

This is a Max/Daniel fic that I occasionally add to where they're both in academia... People take LaTeX really seriously, like it's cool when you start using it for stuff and then it's so flexible and nice looking that some people use it for everything, like I've received wedding invitations written using TeX (which was so cute)

You can set templates and most people I know use the same template for most things, like I still use the article template I got from someone my first year of undergrad, and the presentation template a girl from the year above me gave me during my masters etc etc

In my au, Daniel is a postdoc in the lab where Max does his undergrad capstone thesis, so they're working together a lot and they really click, like they immediately get on and really enjoy working together. It's a 10 week thing so they get quite close and Max is very obviously into Daniel and Daniel's not technically his Boss™ but he is senior and has like soft power over Max and it would be bad to date an undergrad no matter how weirdly obsessed he is with Max. BUT by the time Daniel realises all of this, they've been flirting for like 2 months and he's accidentally an asshole about it because he just switches it off and flips a switch and starts acting different around Max and it's disorienting and accidentally gaslighting and unpleasant for Max

Max has to write up a dissertation and at the start of this Daniel had shared his own template with Max, so he uses this even though he feels weird now but it reminds him of when it was better

ANYWAY Max is a really good researcher obviously and applies to a PhD in this lab, let's call it the Horner Lab, and gets funding and is excited to start and get to work with Daniel again and maybe they can get back to where they were and it can be good again and he can ask Daniel out now BUT oh no Daniel has been courted away and accepted a position in another university that seems to have a better grant, lets call it the Renault lab

Max is really disappointed at this but he did like the work too so he tries to put it out of his mind, works hard, and generally excels... He definitely bumps into Daniel at a few conferences and they slip back into their same rapport and Max loves those weeks, always tries to drop hints to Horner to send his work to conferences that might overlap with Daniel's topic... They get drunk and kiss one time in the hotel after the conference dinner but Daniel isn't in a great place, has accepted an assistant prof job in a department that he's really not clicking in and doesn't think they'll keep him on past his current contract even though it's tenure track and his work is good, let's call them, um, McLaren. And Max is doing SO WELL, like his research niche has exploded and he's been right at the cusp of some really cutting edge stuff, it's so impressive, and they only ever see each other at these events and Max is always winning poster prizes and talk awards, and Daniel doesn't feel like he can deal with this right now

Max, of course, is using Daniel's template to make every presentation and to draft every paper, and it makes him feel warm every time he creates a new file by making a new copy of the template file called "from_daniel.tex". He still has the original email Daniel sent him with the template, he emails it to his personal email just in case his institutional email ever gets deactivated. He's a bit sick of Daniel going hot and cold on him but he doesn't know why or how to fix it (Max is perhaps a bit blind to other people's career worries, especially because Daniel is still doing good work so it's not obvious from the outside what's going on). Mainly he thinks that if they got to spend more than two weeks a year together and weren't constantly surrounded by their coworkers, they might have a chance to properly talk.

Fast forward a few years, Max is a postdoc now still at the same university (bro go get some experience elsewhere, I know I know but this is for the narrative!) and Daniel comes BACK! He gets hired to fill in for someone really last minute and takes the role and it's tenure track and he's really excited about it but also really nervous about working around Max again... Especially because his last job went so badly for interpersonal reasons, not competency, so he's scared that he fucked things up with Max who is obviously the one in this lab with the clout, so if he acts cold to Daniel the rest will too. And Max is a bit absent for the first while, he also doesn't know how to act, from his perspective they kissed and Daniel ghosted him and it reminds him of their first time around working together, BUT Max fundamentally just likes Daniel so one time Daniel catches him hiding away somewhere making a presentation, and notices Max is using his template still from all those years ago, and he tries to break the ice by asking about it but Max is so tired he just straight up admits to it. They actually talk and realize that they're on the same page and they're both scared for different reasons but they both want the same thing and then they kiss about it and maybe have sex in the bathroom about it, who knows, they're academics, they're both working late

THEN they co-author a paper together and it's a brilliant piece of work that starts a partnership that they keep up forever and they get tenure track positions together at a different university and they write their wedding invitations in LaTeX using Daniel's template and they live happily ever after

[junypr-camus]

AYYYYYYYYYY

that makes me so happy :DDDD

I hope you enjoy it!!

(and yeah percy jackson is pretty good too)

@junypr-camus hihihi we don’t really talk much- BUT GUESS WHAT

I have it. In my hands. I’m so excited to read it (my newfound Percy Jackson obsession may keep hold of me until I finish it) but I am reading it the first chance I get!!!

[justarandompersononthehellsite]

So... @muffinlance wrote a really awesome story. I read a post from a point in time, though I truly do not remember when since it seems like I've been working on this project forever, saying that she gives blanket permission for people to print and bind the story into a book (I think there was an also addendum saying that they do not give permission to be sold, since selling fic is illegal). This fic has had total control over my whole brain since it was sent to me (@creatorofthemind I believe it was you, so thank you forever for tuning me into it) back during the days of like chapter six or seven.

So here I am now, sharing this amazing journey of my first ever bookbinding adventure. Further reading below.

So to give you an idea of what's going on, this is a fanfiction about Zuko (Avatar the Last Airbender) (animated show version, the LA show did not exist yet and we do not speak of the movie) being adopted by Hakoda, Father of Katara and Zuko. (This might have also been what kicked off the Give Zuko A Parent craze, but don't fact check me.)

Overall, the characters from the show stick very well to the cannon versions, but where MuffinLance really shines is in the rich backstories and fleshed out feeling of all the non cannon elements. Especially the background characters. I would argue that the writing in this peice of fanwork could easily rival the cannon show at many points of comparison.

Now that you have context, we can get into the actual process.

To start, I used this guide to figure out where to even begin, and fount the included resource list to also be quite helpful. I cannot for the LIFE OF ME figure out where I found the template I used for the front matter and such, but it must be somewhere and I will link to it when I inevitably come across it again.

Then I began to typeset. This step took... a long time. I worked in chunks from about September of 2022 to late March of 2024. I would get a big section done, sometimes even the entire thing, but then find I hated the way I had done it and give up for months at a time. Such is the life of ADHD and flitting interest in projects I suppose.

And then finally, step one was done, and I was left with pages on a word document that look like this. (And do please let me know if you want the link to the document. It was so much work, and I would love to not be the only one to use it.)

Next step was printing out this beast. Ended up being about eight pages of front matter, and about 630 pages of body text.

That I printed wrong.

Twice.

Before finally getting it right. And then not getting a picture of it, because I finished at 4 am and had work at 7, and am also an idiot.

Then I simply stitched along, putting everything together into a beautiful text block.

And came up with a design for the cover.

Yes the glue did end up lumpy. Ignore it.

Yes I did have to sketch out the design onto a scraped page several times before I figured out what I was doing. Ignore that too.

The cover design does wrap around the entire cover. No I did not get a picture before I glued the thing down. See again: I'm an idiot. And just... massively impatient.

Finally, we get to the stage of gluing. Behold, my bookpress.

Of course, topped with Madam MuffinLances own actual professional-people book, Fox's Tounge and Kirin's Bone. It is Excelent. Here is the LINK so you can go and support this amazing author with the real-monies as well as the internet-kudos.

Then, once everything is glued together, one must give the book its "gilt" edges.

[no-name-publishing]

Cleaning Out the Rooms by bitochondria

After all this time I'm finally calling this bind complete. The concept was a radial pattern with intersecting shapes of desaturated materials in the same tone. I think it was mostly successful, but it was time to move on to other things and stop fucking around with this lol. If you like Disco Elysium and Harry/Kim consider giving this fic a read if you haven't yet. More pictures of the final result and progress pics under the cut.

The colored marbled paper is mine own creation, marbled in my kitchen. I created the black and white version of it simply by scanning the image and printing it on a black and white laser printer lol. It gave me the truest transition into the desaturated colors of the marbled paper, and I used both as references in the endband, where the colored pattern of the threads transitions into it's base tonal iterations.

The body font is typeset in Sina Nova font. Decorative title font is Roti. Images were sourced from the Disco Elysium wiki. Everything was arranged and designed in Word.

Little video displaying the bind and the typeset.

The order of events from laying the paint in the water for marbling the paper, to creating the template for the cover pieces, cutting each of those 91 pieces out, then cutting them out AGAIN from the cloth and the paper. Gluing it all on, to deciding I didn't like the buckram cloth I'd originally planned on, and tearing it off. Cutting out the pieces AGAIN and gluing them on AGAIN. Luckily buckram is so coated in acrylic that I was able to peel it up with next to no issues.

Overall this bind was very experimental for me, and I'm glad to have done it! Excited to move on to simpler projects though, I'm sure you understand.

[ostrichmonkey-games]

Ostrichmonkey Hack: Layout Behind the Scenes

Been procrastinating on this enough! So here is a look at some of the process and decisions that went into doing the layout for the Ostrichmonkey Hack.

Let's start with the goals I had in mind:

Keep it simple.

Keep it easy to make.

With those goals set, next step is gathering materials and resources (not all of this was done as cleanly as I'm making it out to be, but this is the gist).

Materials used:

Classic Explorer Template

Affinity Publisher and Photo

Fonts

Art

The text itself

The Classic Explorer Template was critical in getting this layout done efficiently, since it does a lot of the work for you. It's not a replacement for having a rough idea on how to do layout, but it can serve as a nice tutorial/explainer on different elements of layout and typesetting, and honestly, is worth its (digital) weight in gold. There's a free version available if you want to check out what it offers.

I use the Affinity Suite for my layout work. It's a nice set of programs with a manageable learning curve, but there are plenty of other alternatives so go with whatever works for you (one of my favorite elements of using multiple Affinity programs is that within Publisher, you can access both Designer (vector illustration) and Photo (photo editing, illustration etc) functions, which is just a nice workflow).

Here's what my setup looks like, with all the guidelines/base grid stuff turned on;

Normally I start with some style tests and “sketches” to get a feel for what I want the layout to look like, but the Classic Explorer’s does a lot of that heavy lifting for me already so I get to skip this step for this project. Speed and efficiency is one of the main reasons I wanted to use the template - this was envisioned as a “I just need to get something done” kind of project.

So next up on getting it done, fonts!

There are lots of great places to get fonts from, just make sure you're getting them from legitimate sources. Do your homework and make sure that "free" font is actually free to use in commercial projects.

I pulled three fonts from the depths of my collection.

One for the title and main headers (Wallau Deutsch)

One for the second header (Rakkas)

One for the body text (PT Serif)

Technically a secret fourth font for some "bullet points" (1651 Alchemy)

I picked these fonts out because they work together well and are readable. The title/main header fonts are comparatively less readable, but you can get away with that since headers are Big and used less frequently. The second header (Rakkas) is a nice middle ground between a full on blackletter font like the main header, and the classic-y serif of the body text. It creates a transition between the two fonts.

I used PT Serif since it was already in the template, but it also had the bold/italics versions I knew I would need, is readable at a variety of sizes, and had all the special glyphs I would need (it actually did not, but whoops, we'll get to that later).

Normally when I start layout, I do a quick "sketch page" where I try out different fonts and style tests that can look something like this;

But that wasn't necessary for this project (another advantage of the using the template).

Now, let's get to some choices in formatting the text itself.

Each time a key term came up, it was highlighted by bolding and italicizing it. Any time after that, it was just normal text. I went back and forth on highlighting it every single time, but the current format just looked cleaner so it won out.

Additionally, in several places in the text, rather than introducing a third header (which just broke up the page too much, disrupting the flow and clean look), I instead put what would have been the new third header (HP or WOUNDS in the above example) in all caps and behind a colon. This ended up not disrupting the text too much, and was only necessary a handful of times. But when it was necessary, I made sure to stay consistent. Consistent and organized formatting is one of the key ways to make your layout look nice and clean.

Aside from changing some font choices, one of the other ways I tweaked the template was with some spacing (between "sections", like in the above text, introducing an extra line break between the Attributes and Staying Alive sections) and the "bullet points".

The large bullet points that accompany the second headers are actually a glyph pulled from a different font. I picked that one out specifically because its just a little irregular and handwritten looking (1651 Alchemy is a handwritten styled font), and it also helped pull you to the start of new sections, further enhancing the second header. It helps make each section discrete and more "modular".

Back to extra spacing for a second now. So each "chapter" of the text uses the main header to designate it as a full "chapter".

"Characters" up top there is one of those chapter headers. It's nice and big and special, and also takes up a good chunk of space. One a full spread, this also means that the second page of text begins higher up than the text on the first page (compare where Attributes starts vs where Dying starts).

I played around with the format of spreads that did not have a main chapter header on them, starting the first page text up toward the top to have it line up with the second page. Which, probably would have been totally fine, but I preferred the look when each spread had the same kind of spacing. But repeating the main header on each spread was too clunky. So the solution;

Bam! A line!

Blank empty space looked too empty, but slapping a quick line there took up just enough visual space for it to work. Then, I carried that line-design-language to other places (to separate footnotes from the body text, within the tables, and sort of on the cover). This then made the line choice feel even more cohesive and purposeful.

And speaking of footnotes, that was another extra tweak/flourish I added not present in the template (the sidebars are part of the template, but sidebars rule so they would have happened regardless). The footnotes served as a way to share specific references as an informal "works cited". A lot of NSR/OSR design is super iterative, so I thought it would be cool to shout out some of the more direct inspirations and references I used when making my game.

But the footnotes were also kind of not really my downfall. Turns out PT Serif didn't seem to have all the necessary footnote glyphs, nor did it want to make proper superscripts of integers past 3. So, rather than trying to find a new body font (or deal with the headache of using a font solely for superscript notation), I just fudged the formatting some and stuck to asterisks, and restarting "numbering" on each spread. Oh well.

Let's now briefly touch on laying out tables.

It sucks.

My advice is find an example of a really nice looking table and then try and figure out what makes it look nice, and then doing that forever. Luckily, the template saves me again by including multiple examples of tables, ripe for tweaking. Which ended up looking like this;

Nice and clean! Hooray!

Okay, there's a lot of small decisions that goes into making text properly formatted and look nice, but I skipped some of those decisions and didn't go ham on typesetting, but whatever. That all about covers the important parts regarding the text. Now let's talk about art.

Public domain art is your best friend.

I went and trawled through a bunch of art I've saved from the Met's Open Access collection (there's plenty of great open access collections out there, just happened to have some from the Met handy), and settled on this piece;

Which I then dropped into Affinity Photo and played around until I ended up with this;

Nothing too wild, but it Felt Right, so it's done.

I then immediately dropped that onto the cover page, slapped the title on, added a quick border (and also spent some time trying to fix some weird issues that ended up being solved by just rasterizing it, whoops) and bam;

And that's the only art piece used throughout the zine! But I made the most out of it. Between each chapter, I had a single splash page and dropped in different zoomed/cropped versions of the art. Like so (and even on the back cover!);

The original image was high resolution, so zooming in worked, plus the effects/distortions I created hid any imperfections.

So that's the art sorted and the zine finished!

Now, this is getting pretty long, so if there's anything anyone reading this is interested that I didn't touch on, shout in the notes!

[canon-in-too-deep]

A Tutorial On Typesetting In Affinity (With Template)

This is an semi-abbreviated guide to typesetting in Affinity Publisher, using the template I posted here.

While this is not a comprehensive tutorial, I tried to be as detailed as possible, and hope this help folks with their typesetting journeys! Note: there are different ways to to do this, these are just the ways I've used personally. (And by 'used', I mean all the features and functions I've bashed my head against till something readable came out). Second Note: these steps do apply specifically to the template I posted. This is the template I use to save time when typesetting, as it already has all the Paragraph and Character Styles and text boxes and margins I've made in previous works. Warning: wall of text below the break!

Part 1

Importing your text into Affinity. First things first, this step all depends on where you are getting your text from. If you are typesetting something from Project Gutenburg or a similar site, copy and paste the text into Google Docs. If you are typesetting from AO3 or a similar site, download an html file of the text, then copy and paste that into Google Docs. Once in Google Docs, download the file as Rich Text Format (.rtf). Open the .rtf, and copy and paste that into the Affinity Template. Just stick it into any of the body pages on page 9 or up. It'll 'flow' automatically to fill the pages. Whew. Okay. Now, you can actually work on your text in the template.

Document size (optional). So the template I made is for half letter (letter folio). Letter is the size of the page I would be printing on, and folio is the imposition (which means if I was making it into a physical book, I would fold that page in half. Folio = the page is in halves. Quatro = page is in quarters. Octavo = page is in eighths etc.). You want your document size to be the size of one single page in your book. - Now, again, the template I have is all set up for a single page size equal to half letter. If you want to change the size, you can go to File -> Document Setup -> Dimensions. If you change the size, you will have to go in and change the text boxes and margins I have left in the template to fit your new dimensions.

How to Auto Flow your text. You will notice that the template only has 50 pages. Chances are, you can't see all your text. To get it to automatically appear, just hold down Shift and click the red triangle on the right of one of the text boxes with your body text in it. It should automatically generate the pages you need with your text. - If you need to manually get your text to flow from one text box to another, just click the little triangle on the right of the text box your text starts in, and then click the text box you want it to flow into. Bonus: To make a text box, click the image of the T in the white square on the left, and draw it on the page. This is the Frame Text Tool, or the text box maker, To add a picture, click the rectangle with an X through it. This is the Picture Frame Rectangle. Draw a frame, then go to File -> Place, and add your image.

Your text is in the template. Time to get it dressed. Okay, now you need to set up your Text Styles. Text Styles should be located on the right hand tool bar. Text Styles are essentially how you tell Affinity how you want the different parts of text to look like. You can change your fonts, spacing, justification, etc, by playing around in the settings of a Text Style (to do so, just click the three lines next to the text style's name, or create a new one by clicking one of the + symbols at the bottom of the Text Style tool bar. Now, there are two types of Text Styles: Paragraph Styles (have the backwards 'P' looking symbol) and Character Styles (have the underlined 'a' symbol). Think of these like jackets and shirts for your text to where. The Paragraph Styles go on over the Character Styles, but you can still see the Character Styles underneath. - First thing to do is go to Find and Replace. It should be next to the left hand tool bar. - Click the cog to the right of 'Find'. Then click 'Format'. This should bring up the screen below. - Click the box next to Italics so it turns into a check mark. Now hit Ok. This will now allow you to find all Italics in your text. - When you find the Italics, you can now Replace them. Hit the cog next to 'Replace with'. Click Character Style. Click Emphasis. -Find and Replace all.

This will save all your Italics while you work on the text. Note, do NOT select all your text and use a Character Style on it. It will override and remove your Italics. You can only have one Character Style and one Paragraph Style applied to specific text. Because of this, I don't really use any Body Character Styles, and make all my changes usually in Paragraph Styles. Part 2

Chapter Headings. Find and Replace is one your best friends in Affinity. After I have Italics saved, I do the Chapter Headings in the text next. I Find and Replace the Chapter Headings if I can, or manually select them. Then I apply the Chapter Character Style to them. Now, if I ever want to change them en mass, I can just Find them using that Character Style to apply a new Paragraph Style or whatever I want to them.

Body Text. Now is the time to finally use a Paragraph Style. I select my text, and apply the Paragraph Style labeled Body to it. While I have it selected, I can change my font type, size, and leading to whatever I want. If I change leading, I do have to go in and edit the Paragraph Styles to have the same leading across all of them. The template is setup for 11 pt font and 140% leading. - To change leading in a Paragraph Style, click the three lines to the right of the Style -> Edit 'Name' -> Spacing -> Leading. - If you change font size/leading, you will need to change the Baseline Grid. Baseline Grid is the underlying grid that your text will snap to (you can disable this in a Paragraph Style, but I like to use Baseline Grid to make sure the Body Text is all lined up the same). To change Baseline Grid, click the button in the top middle of Affinity that looks like an A with blue lines behind it. Then go to Grid Spacing. I usually set it to whatever is my body text leading equal to.

Back to Chapter Headings. At this point, I usually use Find and Replace again, and Find the Chapter Headings with their Character Style. I use Replace to apply the Paragraph Style 'Chapter Heading' to them.

Other Styles. Okay, so Chapter Headings are set. Body text are set. But there's still text that need different formats, like where there's a body divider/dinkus, or the start of a chapter where there's no indent. From here, I manually go through the text, and start setting the little things that weren't covered by the Body or Chapter Heading styles. I use Body No Indent Drop Cap (Paragraph Style) for the first paragraph of each chapter. I use Body Divider (Paragraph Style) wherever there's a section break. I use Body No Ident (Paragraph Style) wherever there's a new paragraph after a section break. And I use Body Special as needed, if there's unique bits of text in the work, like letters, or poems, or songs, to make them stand out more. - This part of typesetting is a lot of me just going through manually, while scrolling through and checking the original text I am typesetting to see if there's any places that need special attention or different paragraph styles. Lot of side by side scrolling and comparing how the original author/publisher had the fic looking, and making sure my typeset matches in a way that I like.

More on Body Dividers. You can check out my book of dinkuses for potential fonts for section breaks/dividers. Once I find the dinkus I like, I copy and paste it into my text, or use find and replace. Just make sure that the Body Divider Paragraph Style is applied to whatever you put. - Now, you may need to adjust the dinkus because it's not centered or spaced how you like. To do this, click the three lines to the right of Body Divider under the Text Styles tab on right hand side of your screen. This brings up the Text Style Editor Box (see the picture below). - To get the divider looking how I want, I go to Paragraph and then adjust the Leading, Space Before, and Space After until the Body Divider looks how I want. Sometimes you might want a section break with a lot of space, sometimes you might want it narrower. This is the place to do it.

Part 3

Next step: Working in Master Pages. Master Pages are great. You can apply them to your text to make your text look uniform. Whatever the Master Page is, the other pages must follow. -To apply a Master Page, right click the page you want on the left sidebar under Pages. Then click apply Apply Master. Then choose what Master to apply. The body text pages all have the Master Body text applied to them already, but you may need to change one because it's the start of a new Chapter. -If you want different margins in your text, this is where to do it. I have mine set up for .8 outer and inner margins, and slightly narrower on the top and bottom margins to account for leading. If you want to change this, just drag the text box to whatever size you want to fit your margins.

Headers/Footers. In the Master Page titled Master Body, you can change the placements and formats of the headers/footers. I usually just have these all centered, but you can put them and size them however you like here, and it will apply to all the main body pages of your text. - The template is setup so you can just fill in your title name and author name in the header locations of the Master Body pages. Click the text boxes and type in whatever you want. If you don't want to use these, you can delete them on the Master Pages, and they won't show up at all.

Master Chapter Heading. The Master Chapter Heading pages are not applied to the text. In the template, you will see that page 9 does not have the Master Body applied to it. This is because I like to play around with different text box sizes and chapter heading designs here, then copy and paste them into the Master Chapter Heading when I have one I like. Then, I can just apply the Master Chapter Heading to wherever there is the start of a new chapter.

Part 4

How to add a Table of Contents. Okay, once all the Chapter Headings are formatted and everything is on the page they should be on, you can put in a table of contents. To add a table of contents, put a text box down wherever you'd like your table of contents to be located. This is usually on page 7 of the template for me, but it may be different for you based on your text or how you do your front matter. - Click in that text box. Then, click Text (on top of your Affinity Screen, towards the left). Go to Table of Contents. Then Insert Table of Contents. - See the picture below. Your screen should look similar to this. - On the left, you can see we are in the Table of Contents tab now. Under Style Name, check the one that says Chapter Heading. Now, everything that had the Paragraph Style Chapter Heading will be in our Table of Contents. - Click the three lines to the right of where we checked Chapter Heading. You can then check Include Page Numbers here.

Part 5

Alright! Now we have pretty much everything done. Almost. There's just the front matter to do now. These parts are pretty much just pasting/typing in your information. The front matter in the template I made is set up for Project Gutenburg public domain stuff. When I typeset things from AO3, I put the stats here instead.

Front matter. What is it exactly. The front matter included in the template is as follows: bastard title page (just the name of the book), blank page, full title page (title and author; you can include publication/imprint info here as well), copyright page, book bound by page (this is not an official thing, just something I decided to add to my templates since mine as free to use), blank page, table of contents. Sometimes a text has a preface or dedication. You can add these pages to the front matter, and if you need more pages to add them, just right click on the left hand side under Pages wherever you would like the new pages to go, then click Add Pages. I use Master A for front matter pages. These are just plain, blank pages with nothing on them.

Title Pages. Title pages. You can pretty much do whatever you want here. I've posted links before to places you get free to use images/art, but you don't need to include any images/art at all. It's all totally optional, I just like to have a bit of fun on my title pages and put in little extra bits.

Anyway, hope this helps and I didn't ramble tooooo much (this started as a short post to just talk about how to import text). If you're looking for more detailed help, I do recommend joining the Renegade Binder discord. I learned how to use Affinity Publisher from someone's tutorial there. I can also try to make more posts in the future further explaining things.

[moonshinebindery]

Book No. 27

A charity bind for @dr-girlfriend, and coincidentally a fic I adore, which is a lovely bit of fortuitousness.

Finished on the 20th of October, according to my binding journal, but only reached the lovely Dr. G today! I was so delighted when she reached out and asked if I would consider binding a copy of this fic for her — it’s a longtime favourite of mine, and it was a fun work to typeset. I wanted to lean into the setting as far as I could without tipping over into outright cheesiness, and while I don’t know that I fully succeeded, it was fun to try.

The foiling on this was a pain, mostly because I wasn’t very clever how I went about it - the sheets of heat-transfer foil I was using weren’t big enough to cover the whole design, and I when I tried to use the cricut, it didn’t take where I used tape to cover the join in strips of foil. Stencil vinyl, my beloved for foiling, also didn’t work as the design was too big to place on the foil without buckling.

I ended up cutting templates out of sticker card and using those on top of the foil, and used a heated pen tool into the crevices of the stencil. It’s still not 100% but it’s better than previous attempts.

My favourite thing is probably the endpapers — the gold touches in them are really shimmery in person, if not in photos. I also used it to line the slipcase I made, which was a last-minute addition made when I was panicking that the cover was a little too floppy for this book. (The cover ended up firming up compin the press, and the case apparently got a little damaged in transport and is protecting nothing 😅, but I still think it’s a fun touch.)

[boin-de-bindery]

Borrasca - C.K. Walker

This is a /r/nosleep story published in four parts in 2015, with a subsequent fifth part shared by the author on their blog.

Morbid choice for a first bind—it's not dissimilar to Manacled in terms of dark content—but as a tale I read back in my creepypasta phase and recently rediscovered, I thought it'd be fun to have a physical copy for my shelf.

The case is bound in green bonded leather, courtesy of an amazing local store that has a plethora of bookbinding supplies. Gold adhesive backed vinyl for the cover text, while the corner-guards are from a random Amazon seller.

The text block is bog standard A4 printer paper. Body text is in Noto Serif 12pt with titles/headings/pagecount in Bahnschrift. 59,000 words and 387 pages total.

Reflections on mistakes and lessons learned under the cut with more pictures.

I learned a LOT about typesetting, booklet printing and using a Cricut in making this. I still made a few silly mistakes with my next projects, but not so many as I did with Borrasca.

It's a rookie's first bind and it shows—the text block fits rather badly in the casebinding, because I goofed and made the spine support too wide. This doesn't look too bad from the front or the spine, but in opening the book the textblock shifts rather awkwardly.

I also scuffed the leather in parts, and totally misstuck the title on the spine. This is before I realised what transfer tape was for 🫠 Having the title running from bottom to top is novel, but I didn't want to risk gumming up the cover further by fixing it (not to mention my horror at the thought of repositioning everything by hand).

I'm pretty happy with the handsewn headbands though! I followed chezlin's tutorial and used tissue paper to secure the twine to the spine before sewing on embroidery thread. While the thread used was a little too thick, the headbands add a nice touch.

I had no idea what to put in the copyright page, ahaha. I've put a template together now, which does a better job at identifying the resources used and linking to the source material.

[fandomtrumpshate]

FTH 2024 - By the Numbers

With just a few days to go (signups close on MONDAY!), we have an incredible 524 creators signed up to offer 720 auctions in 260 fandoms! We're counting 107 listed and 153 unlisted fandoms, plus 90 folks offering to work in ANY fandom.

The breakdown of offers by type looks like this:

473 Written fanwork (fic, fan poetry, etc)

102 Fan art

80 Fan labor (beta services, translation, Brit-picking, typesetting, etc)

43 Podfic

14 Other Digital Fanwork

7 Video

When it comes to choosing orgs, creators are overwhelmingly leaving the choice up to their bidders. For those that have selected specific orgs, the numbers look like this:

173 Middle East Children's Alliance

119 Sherlock's Homes Foundation

102 Never Again Action

99 In Our Own Voice

89 National Network to End Domestic Violence

87 Any/All Environmental

76 Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center

74 Life After Hate

61 Violence Policy Center

56 Razom

55 Spread the Vote

44 VoteRiders

43 Coral Restoration Foundation

37 Pollinator Partnership

35 Bellingcat

20 Wildlands Restoration Volunteers

14 Deploy/Us

10 Together Bay Area

And the most unique category, 'other digital fanwork', currently includes offers of:

Discord server creation & starter management

Playlist

Icons

Digitally produced orchestral music min 5 minutes long

Webpage template

Moodboards

Calligraphy

Animation

Conlang basics

Complete song based on supplied lyrics

Stay tuned for updates on both listed and unlisted fandoms later today!

Signups are OPEN!

[howlepalmerbindery]

Returning to bookbinding after a...six? Six year absence whoops. Going to share the good, the bad, and the ugly as I re-learn this hobby, starting with "Do Not Go Gentle" by Senlinyu.

Not the work of this author you see most often bound in fanbinding, but an excellent fic that I adore. This was my first quarto ever, and the first work I bound after my accidental multi-year break. I started it back in the early spring of 2024. I used the quarto template created by @neatfreakgeek (doesn't seem active on tumblr, but that's their username on both IG and TikTok) to typeset this. It was my first time using HTV in this manner and I wayyyyyy over cooked it, as is evident by the adhesive stains on the cover. I will almost certainly re-bind this at some point.

[jackshiccup]

Hey I just gotta say your bind of OTNWAS is GORGEOUS! Do you mind explaining how you formatted the pages? <3

hello, thank u sm <3!! and yes ofc i can :)

i used Adobe InDesign to do all my typesetting! the document i have has a total of 948 pages (475 spreads) which all include: title page, contents page, chapters, and a few customized + blank pages.

starting with document size first — mine is in A5 (so that i can print A4 spreads) you can play around with the margins, i recommend having at least 3mm added on to it if you’re going to trim it (the bleedline basically). my margins are 15mm left, 20mm right, 15mm top, 20mm bottom.

i had 2 chapter templates - one for short titles (i.e. jack flies) and one for long titles (i.e. jack and jamie uncover the hidden dangers of hide and seek). if you look at the pictures i posted, i added a snowflake as part of that template as an indicator of whose pov the chapter starts in. i designed one for hiccup and jamie too so i change it accordingly! i also use it as dinkuses whenever there’s a pov change within the chapter.

my body text size was 10pt with a 12.5 leading (justified + hyphenated) but honestly that also depends on the font you choose and your personal preference in terms of how spaced out you want your body text to be. i suggest doing test prints so you can adjust !! standard book fonts are: caslon, garamond, minion and palatino.

here’s a silly diagram i made for my friends of my exact settings 📖

in terms of actually formatting the fic— i copy-pasted chapter by chapter from ao3 because for some reason InDesign doesn’t recognize italics automatically so i had to do that manually LOL.

what else .. uhhhh i’m pretty sure i’m forgetting something… i’ll just add on when i remember but crossing my fingers this helps!! i know InDesign isn’t what’s the most accessible to people (i have it bc of my job), but there are lots of tutorials out there on how to do it on microsoft word or even google docs!

hope your binding goes well ⭐️