Half Page Booklet Guide is a product of Matthew Gravelyn and is released

under an Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

For more templates and games, visit http://mr-matthew.itch.io

Attribution
Thank you for taking time to check out my guide. I hope it has inspired
and empowered you to create amazing booklets for your content.

Feel free to utilize this guide in the creation of any content for personal
or commercial purposes. Attribution is not required, but if you feel
inclined to, you can include the following text in your booklet or on the
webpage where your booklet is available:

This work was created using Half Page Booklet Guide by Matthew
Gravelyn. Find it at http://mr-matthew.itch.io/half-page-booklet.

Parting Thoughts
I find creating tabletop gaming content to be one of the great joys of my
creative life. The sheer joy of seeing someone engage with my
content—reading, playing, sharing, displaying—is an absolute thrill. I
encourage everyone to do the same regardless of your background,
skills, or years spent gaming. Hopefully, my guides and templates can
help facilitate that.

If you end up creating booklets, please let me know about them! I

would love to purchase, read, and cherish them. Please send the
relevant links and info to me on Twitter @mrmatthew or via email to
matthew@gravelyn.com.

Thanks again!
Folding & Binding
If all goes well, you are now holding a stack of paper that is just seconds
away from being a booklet. You should be able to just fold all your
pages in half and—voila!—you have a booklet. That said, let’s take a
step back and make sure your booklet looks and feels as good as
possible.

If your booklet is on the smaller side (8 or 12

pages) you can probably just fold them all
together without much slipping. If you have
a larger booklet, you’ll probably want to fold
the sheets individually, or at most in pairs.
This will ensure each page is properly folded
in half, making the edges of your booklet
more uniform. If you have a bone folder,
now is the time to put it to good use.

Once your pages are folded and assembled in the correct order, it’s time
to consider binding—or not binding, as it may be. If your booklet is
more of a temporary item, like a character sheet or throw-away work,
you can leave the pages as-is and be on your way. If you want to make
your booklet a bit more permanent, you can add a binding. The simplest
method here is stapling using a long-armed stapler. You can also get
fancy and sew a binding with a needle and thread, or simply tie the
thread around the spine, loosely holding the pages together.
Introduction
Hello and welcome to my booklet about making booklets. It’s like a
classic internet meme but hopefully also informative. I love making little
books that can be shared digitally and printed at home; my shelves are
full of them! They are a super easy way to get into indie publishing,
whether you’re into tabletop games, fiction writing, or sharing art.

I also love creating guides and templates to help reduce the effort it
takes to get into these methods. I have spent a great deal of time,
energy, and especially paper refining my methods, and I want to share
them with you in hopes that you will go forth and put something
excellent into the world.

As I mentioned, your booklet can be about literally anything. Coming up

with the content of your booklet will be the really tricky part for some,
so spend some time figuring out what you’d like to put into the booklet.
You can also use an existing project to follow along with this guide,
translating your old work into a new booklet form.

Once you have your inspiration, let’s move on to the tools you’ll need.
Materials & Tools
Making half page booklets at home is meant to be simple and
accessible, but there are a few things you need before we get started.
First up, things you absolutely need to have for this project:

Word processor or design app. You need some way to create your
booklet. The most common way to do this is with layout software, like
InDesign or Affinity Publisher, or free options like Canva. You can even
layout your booklet in MS Word, which is what this booklet was made
with. Alternatively, you can draw your booklet by hand digitally or using
traditional methods and a scanner.

Printer. If you’re aiming for a digital-only release, this isn’t necessary,

but I think the ability to print and hold these documents truly makes
them a booklet. Make sure you have a printer to test your files. Your
printer will need to be able to print on both sides of the paper and a
supply of US Letter copy paper.

That’s all you strictly need for this work. There are a few items that are
really nice to have though, including:

PDF editing app. Part of the process of creating a printable booklet is

reordering the pages of the final document. This can be achieved by
creating a second layout in your app of choice, but I find that taking the
basic PDF, reordering the pages in an editor, and saving a new version
to be super convenient. I use Adobe Acrobat for this.

Bone folder & long-arm stapler. For crisp spines and

consistent stapling, I recommend these classic tools of
book binders. I picked up a bone folder at a craft store
(it was with the leatherworking supplies) and ordered a
long-arm stapler from a book binder supply website.
Third is printing on both sides of the paper. For this booklet, you’ll want
to tell it to print on both sides and flip on the short edge. If you flip on
the long edge, half of your pages will be upside down. Very important.

Once you have all that set your ready to print. Double check the print
preview if available to make sure it looks alright and give it a go.

It is critical that you do test prints before sharing or selling your work
and be prepared for it to not work out the first time. Sometimes the
text is too small, sometimes an image isn’t in the right place. It happens.
Don’t stress too much about it. Assess what parts look off, update your
documents, and try again.
Printing Instructions
The trick to turning this seemingly unorganized PDF into a printed
booklet is in the print settings. There are three options that you’ll need
to set properly in order to get the desired output.

First is printing at full size. Your printer or app may default to fit the
pages; this could leave unintended white space around the margins of
your booklet. Not the worst thing in the world, but still good to check.

Second is printing multiple pages of your PDF on a single sheet of

paper. Specifically, we’re looking to print 2 pages per sheet. Your app
may include settings for adding margins or padding around the pages,
which we don’t want any of if at all possible.
Creating Printable Booklets
Some apps, like Adobe Acrobat, offer a Booklet Printing option, that will
automatically reorder the pages for you to create a DIY booklet. If your
app doesn’t offer that option, there’s one more step: reordering the
pages. There are two ways to go about this.

If you have access to a PDF editor, you can import your booklet and
reorder the pages. Easy and done! If you don’t have a tool like this,
you’ll want to create a second version of your booklet and copy/paste
the pages into the correct order. This will look like a bit of a mess in the
document, but I promise it will all work out!

Depending on how many pages your booklet is you will follow a slightly
different order for the pages. I have included the orderings for 8, 12, 16,
20, and 24 page booklets here for your convenience.

Once you have your pages in order, export it again as a PDF. I like to
name these files “booklet” or “zine” to differentiate them from the
screen-friendly versions.

A final consideration for printing is ink usage. While some folks are fine
printing in full color at home, it is more likely people will want to print in
black and white. Offering both a color and low-ink version of your
booklet is greatly appreciated by those interested in printing it.
Document Setup
Open up a new document in your app of choice. First thing we need to
do is change the page size. Set the Width to 5.5 and the Height to 8.5.

Next you’ll want to set all the Margins to

0.25”. This is my default margins when
working with this size book, but feel free
to try out other settings—this book has
0.5” margins because I felt it looked
better. The thing to be aware of is that all
home printers have some amount of
space they can’t print in near the edges
of the page, so make sure to test print if
you use smaller margins.

Your document is now set up! This is when you’d do all that creative
work: writing, drawing, designing, etc.

PDF Exports
When you’re done with your booklet it is time to export it to PDF
format. This is the standard for digital document sharing and will also
allow you to make multiple types of formats of your booklet without
having to do a second layout. More on that in a bit.

In your app of choice, look for the option to export your work and save
it as a PDF. There may be additional settings, like quality and resolution.
You’ll want these to be relatively high (300 dpi) if your intention is to
offer the booklet for printing. If your booklet is going to be digital only,
then a medium (72 dpi) is fine.

Your booklet is complete and ready for digital distribution! I like to save
this type of file with the name “screen” to indicate that it is a digital file
intended for viewing on screens. For example, the digital version of this
booklet is called “Half Page Booklet Guide - Screen”.
 8 Page Booklet:
8–1–2–7–6–3–4–5
12 Page Booklet:
12 – 1 – 2 – 11 – 10 – 3 – 4 – 9 –
8–5–6–7
16 Page Booklet:
16 – 1 – 2 – 15 – 14 – 3 – 4 – 13 –
12 – 5 – 6 – 11 – 10 – 7 – 8 – 9
20 Page Booklet:
20 – 1 – 2 – 19 – 18 – 3 – 4 – 17 –
16 – 5 – 6 – 15 – 14 – 7 – 8 – 13 –
12 – 9 – 10 – 11
24 Page Booklet:
24 – 1 – 2 – 23 – 22 – 3 – 4 – 21 –
20 – 5 – 6 – 19 – 18 – 7 – 8 – 17 –
16 – 9 – 10 – 15 – 14 – 11 – 12 – 13