Putting a Booklet Together

Booklets are great ideas for putting together so much information. It could be rules of a private club, guidelines and by-laws of a college club, or the standard operating procedures of consumer based business. Or it could be something instructional, like how to perform massage or karate stunts, etc. While most of these little books are done by commercial printers, especially when a lot of copies are needed, the booklet printing could actually be done at home or in the office, as long as you have a computer and a good printer with you.

In order to put-together a booklet, it is first best to write down all the text that you want to be included. Then input everything in a Microsoft Word 2007 document so that you can easily edit the contents and correct for typos. The program will also help you with corrections as it will highlight those areas that do not agree with the grammar rules that were preloaded in it. Save this text file as the contents of your booklet.

While you are still in Microsoft Word 2007, open another blank document that you will use for the layout of your booklet. Yep, this is good news for most of us that do not know how to use other publishing software except Microsoft Word. You can easily print on a short size bond (8.5" x 11") or A4 paper for this purpose but since the paper will be folded in the middle, you will have to understand that the text area will be just about the size of a ¼ part of the whole page.

You can do the set up quickly because the program does most of the work for you. As you open the document, go the "Page Layout" and change the settings. Set the outside margins to ½ of an inch so that you will have more space within the page to contain your text and image. You will also have to input the gutter margin space to ¼ of an inch. The gutter margin is where the fold and the staple will fall when the booklet is collated and bound. Then select "Multiple page" and then "Book fold". Input the number of pages that you need. Do forget that your paper orientation should be "Landscape." Additionally, you have to remember that one sheet of paper will turn out four pages in your booklet since it is going to be folder. So you have to consider that in your settings.

Paste all your text from your previous file in this new layout and save it as your booklet file. Make the necessary design corrections, like centering titles or increasing their font size. Add spaces between paragraphs or topics so that your booklet will be read easily.

You can then print your booklet on sheets of bond paper using your printer. After you are done, check the collation of the pages before stapling. The Word document does the collating automatically, however, just check so that all pages are present and in order. When everything is fine, fold your booklets in the middle. The fold will be like your guide when you do the stapling. Flatten the fold area so that your booklet will look neat.

Booklet printing at home can be fairly easy. As long as you know how to use Microsoft Word and have a printer, you can make your own booklets for whatever purpose anytime.


Edwin Mullen is a business man using booklets in his coffee shop from commercial printing company, that's why he love to write an articles about booklet printing.

Article Source: Putting a Booklet Together