a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by _refugee_
_refugee_  ·  2031 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: October 3, 2018

Self-publishing your own indie art poetry chapbooks at home results in a phenomenal amount of paper waste. It’s simply astounding.

(Part of my problem is I have a MAC for my personal and Windows for work. I’ve been formatting and working the doc in one word program then trying to send it to and print it from another. Yes, I just admitted I’m trying to steal as much paper, ink and electricity as I can for this thing from work. Sue me. 50 copies of 22 pages is an awful lot and that’s without factoring in for all the draft copies, fucked up print jobs, and well yeah those are my only two major factors but still they are quite significant.)

You’d think exporting the file to a pdf and sending it to the other computer would work, but even that isn’t coming out right this morning. I’m trying to print the PDF As a booklet, which adobe has a preset for which is supposed to do just what I need. Welp, the PDF option isn’t working; the printer keeps flipping the pages in the wrong direction so half the book is upside down.

I might have to admit defeat with printing most of this at work and bite the bullet and stock up on printer ink. I’ve been able to print correct copies just fine on my Brother. Somehow two weeks ago I managed to print correct copies here at work too but I don’t want to misprint another 22 pages if I’m wrong. 44 pages of straight waste rather kills me.

I’m very excited about the book project/relaunch of my Etsy shop that will go along with it. It’s my main free time project right now. the book is finally in final print decent as it’s gonna be and way better than I expected edition. 12 copies already printed and bound but their errors are minor and I’m gonna sell them for $5 each anyway. 38-48ish more to go!





user-inactivated  ·  2031 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Welp, the PDF option isn’t working; the printer keeps flipping the pages in the wrong direction so half the book is upside down.

Is there a check/radio box in the print dialog that says something like "flip on short edge" (if your pages are portrait) or "flip on long edge" (if your pages are landscape) by chance?

_refugee_  ·  2031 days ago  ·  link  ·  

So doing that worked on my home computer. Clicking that on my work computer is NOT working.

I may have found a successful way to print but I got distracted by doing work things and I have to figure out which printer is the color one now. Using the PDF booklet setting prevents one from clicking around on the “bind on short edge/bind on long edge” option for some reason.

Keep your fingers crossed.

tacocat  ·  2031 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I just did trial and error. I had your same problem. I think it's the printer software because I had the problem on my Mac

_refugee_  ·  2031 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I got it printing right but now it refuses to print color, Hagar I decided to just shoot off 12 copies and color the one illustration w/color by hand. It’s one color.

I like DIY stuff like this a lot because you can just say fuck it, we’ll do whatever works, I don’t care if I color in 12 red birds by hand and anyone who does care can just go not buy or read it.

Imperfections make the thing.

tacocat  ·  2031 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I have a hand lettered version of my book in part because imposing it with software was a pain in the ass

tacocat  ·  2031 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There is on my printer. I made a book too and there was a lot of trial and error. And now I don't remember which options I chose. I also have a Mac

user-inactivated  ·  2031 days ago  ·  link  ·  

"flip on short edge" for portrait and "flip on long edge" for landscape means you want to open your book vertically, like a calendar.

tacocat  ·  2031 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There's a booklet setting in my page layout options and I don't remember if I had to click that or not. I was also getting upside-down pages. I'm agreeing with the caveat that I remember it being more complicated