Re: Assembling Your Little Brown Books « Reply #15 on Feb 1, 2009, 9:55am »
I guess I should clarify my question.
Say I want to print out a cover which has nothing on the inner cover. In other words, I want to print out page 1 (the cover) and the last page (let's call it page 40) on the same side as page 1; printed in booklet form, page 40 would be on the left and page 1 would be on the right so when the 8.5 x 11 page is folded in the middle, page 1 forms the front of the cover and page 40 forms the back. The other side of the 8.5 x 11 page (which would form the inner covers) are to be left blank.
I'm working with an Adobe pdf writer and don't have access to desk-top publishing software.
Let me strive every moment of my life to make myself better and better, to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it. Let me think of the right and lend all my assistance to those who need it, with no regard for anything but justice. Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and my associates in everything I say
greyharp Guest
Re: Assembling Your Little Brown Books « Reply #16 on Feb 1, 2009, 4:07pm »
It's really very easy. You've obviously worked out how to select Booklet Printing from the Page Scaling drop down box. This opens up a couple of new options. Directly below Page Scaling you will see "Booklet subset", select "Front side only" from its drop down box. And just below that are the two "Sheets from" windows. The first window reads "1" and the second the last page number of your booklet (NOT the page number of the original, pre-booklet document). Change the second number to "1" also and click print. This will give you page one of the document (back cover left, front cover right) with the rear side blank.
After this you'll need to print out the rest of the document and here you may have to juggle things a bit. If all goes smoothly, assuming you haven't got a duplex printer, you'll print even pages first (page 2 onwards), place the paper back in the machine and then print the odd pages. If the original document doesn't have the pages in the correct order, booklet printing can be difficult, for example, it seems to be trendy in a lot of rgp pdf products to make the front and back covers, page 1 and page 2 of the pdf respectively. This can bugger up booklet printing, or at least give you some headaches as you play around with settings trying to work it out.
Let me strive every moment of my life to make myself better and better, to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it. Let me think of the right and lend all my assistance to those who need it, with no regard for anything but justice. Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and my associates in everything I say
Joined: Jun 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 537 Karma: 14
Re: Assembling Your Little Brown Books « Reply #18 on Mar 1, 2009, 4:00pm »
I finally puzzled out this whole booklet thing, although I'm having to arrange the pages manually (printing 16, 1; 2, 15; 14, 3, etc., for example). I've pumped out books 1 and 2 so far, as well as a couple of XRPs Advanced Adventures. The latter printed very nicely and looked great after I shaved the white border off.
Joined: Jun 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 537 Karma: 14
Re: Assembling Your Little Brown Books « Reply #19 on Mar 1, 2009, 8:57pm »
Ta-dah! I did bother to find some better scans of the cover images. The ones in the rpgnow pdfs were a little pixely for my tastes (for a cover). It also annoys me that my printer cut the very right edge off the covers.
Joined: Jul 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 1,307 Karma: 43
Re: Assembling Your Little Brown Books « Reply #20 on Mar 12, 2009, 2:08pm »
Looks good, Random!
I'm now fortunate enough to own an actual "beater" set of the original D&D books and supplements, but before that I became something of an expert at making dupes of the LBBs--I wanted as close to a perfect set as possible so I just kept messing with it till I got it right. It didn't hurt that my old job had a really high-end electric saddle stapler.
I now have a hand saddle-stapler at home that only cost me $40 on Amazon and works brilliantly.
I even made a box for the set; it's actually really easy to do.
Step One: Measurements-- You want the interior of the box to be about 6" x 9", and the sides to be about 3" high. So, step one for the box bottom is to cut a rectangle that is 9" x 12". For the box top, it has to be just a hair larger, so it fits well over the bottom. I suggest adding 1/10 inch to each dimension (thus, 9.1x12.1).
Step Two: Creasing-- Mark the inside of your box with a pencil, measuring in 3" from each side to create your 9x6 rectangle in the middle. I suggest drawing this rectangle using intersecting lines that go all the way to the edge of the square. I found this box pattern online that illustrates what I'm talking about, though in different dimensions:
Cut where the pattern illustration indicates (along the solid lines). This will then allow you to fold the box sides (indicated on the pattern by dotted lines) up and over to tuck in.
Step Three: Assembly-- You'll now need a glue stick or some rubber cement, and 4 paper clips. Simply apply the glue to the inner flaps, fold the box up, and paperclip it together until it dries (a few hours at most will do the trick).
Repeat the process with the box lid, adding as I said just a hair to the dimension so it's only very slightly bigger than the bottom.
A quick trip to acaeum.com will turn up a box top graphic for you:
Not the highest resolution, but they'll do for your own personal use. You'll have to play around with them to get them to size right. Personally I suggest creating a new 5.5 x 8.5 document in MS Word, then copy/pasting the graphic into the header, formatting the graphic to be "Behind text." You can then drag it to size to fill the whole page, and when you send it to your color printer it should print out perfectly sized to glue on to the top of your box (again, with a glue stick or rubber cement. I find these are better tools than school glue or elmer's glue, which are too wet).
Oh, one last thing: I wouldn't use anything lighter than 100# stock for the box. I actually used heavy cardboard, doing my cutting with a box cutter, because I wanted resilience.
Ta-dah! I did bother to find some better scans of the cover images. The ones in the rpgnow pdfs were a little pixely for my tastes (for a cover). It also annoys me that my printer cut the very right edge off the covers.
If these are from PDF's, try selecting "fit to printer margins"; that ought to take care of that problem.
I even made a box for the set; it's actually really easy to do.
A quick trip to acaeum.com will turn up a box top graphic for you
I had a go at this a few months back with very satisfactory results. I agree thegreyelf, it's pretty easy to do and a great way to protect your books, whether they're old originals or homemade print jobs.
Joined: Jul 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 1,307 Karma: 43
Re: Assembling Your Little Brown Books « Reply #23 on Mar 14, 2009, 9:37pm »
Love the supplement box, greyharp. Great minds think alike: I did the same thing, save I wanted my box to have its own identity while matching the trade dress of the old one, so I started from scratch and came up with this:
Joined: Jul 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 1,307 Karma: 43
Re: Assembling Your Little Brown Books « Reply #25 on Mar 17, 2009, 11:48am »
Thanks! I got the price based on the fact that each of the books (I included Swords & Spells) were originally priced at $5.00.
Also, if anyone doesn't want to make a box by hand, I have discovered that white, 2-piece, 2-lb candy boxes are sized great for 5.5x8.5 booklets. If you do a web search you should be able to find a number of distributors.
« Last Edit: Mar 17, 2009, 11:50am by thegreyelf »
Joined: Mar 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 273 Location: Fayetteville, GA Karma: 5
Re: Assembling Your Little Brown Books « Reply #26 on Mar 17, 2009, 7:10pm »
Doing a websearch, it would seem that 2-piece 1lb might actually work well, considering the measurements. I might have to place an order for some of those. I've been wanting to make a lil box for my printed LBBs and supplements and my actual LBBs that have no home (box). I've also been wanting to make an old-school-style box for one of my Corgi Tunnels & Trolls books.
Joined: Jul 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 1,307 Karma: 43
Re: Assembling Your Little Brown Books « Reply #27 on Mar 20, 2009, 8:15am »
I just got my 2-piece 2-lb ones in yesterday (well, the lids, anyways--long story). They are the exact same depth as the original box, but about an inch or so longer (roughly 9.6" rather than 8.6").
If these are from PDF's, try selecting "fit to printer margins"; that ought to take care of that problem.
Yeah, I eventually fixed this and printed out better covers. My totally and obviously non-original booklets make me happy anyways, although I can construct better booklets from other products with more sanely formatted pdfs (because I can clip the white edge off, combine the covers nicely, etc.)
Now that I know how to do this stuff without a saddle stitch stapler, I doubt I could ever bring myself to buy one.
![[Home]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/home.gif "[Home]")
![[New Topics]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/topics.png "[New Topics]")
![[Help]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/help.gif "[Help]")
![[Search]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/search.gif "[Search]")
![[Login]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/login.gif "[Login]")
![[Register]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/register.gif "[Register]")
![[Search This Thread]](http://images.proboards.com/search2.gif "[Search This Thread]")
![[Share Topic]](http://images.proboards.com/new/buttons/share.png "[Share Topic]")
![[Print]](http://images.proboards.com/buttons/print.gif "[Print]")
Author
![[homepage]](http://images.proboards.com/buttons/www_sm.gif "[homepage]")
Logged![[avatar]](http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/6965/avatarpy6.jpg "[avatar]"){kind=avatar}
![[image]](http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/8744/oddbooks.jpg "[image]")
![[avatar]](http://www.elflair.com/images/mainlogo.jpg "[avatar]")
![[avatar]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4qI6i7wKX1c/SdZoRveimpI/AAAAAAAAADI/N5Grto0YRg4/S220/Mage.JPG "[avatar]")
![[image]](http://www.grey-elf.com/dnd/supplementboxcoversm.jpg "[image]")
![[avatar]](http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k58/machfront1/MeGlowFB2_TB.jpg "[avatar]")
