I’ve been wanting to make a hand-bound book forever, and recently I had started getting ideas together about what the contents of said book would be (probably a cookbook). Once I got started on that, I ran across the problem of wanting to be as lazy as possible about printing and trimming pages and signatures but not finding any easy way to get my pages printed in the proper order for making signatures.

Problem may be solved:

CocoaBooklet

This program lets you create a booklet out of a PDF file, which is known as pages imposition. It is a useful tool to reduce the number of pages that has to be printed, which lets you save a lot of paper.

A booklet is book that is bound in the middle. Which means that a booklet has four pages printed on one sheet of paper (two on each sides). If you have for example a PDF file with 8 pages, you booklet will look like this:

First sheet, first side: pages 8 and 1
First sheet, second side: pages 2 and 7
Second sheet, first side: pages 6 and 3
Second sheet, second side: pages 4 and 5

The bottom line is that you simply print your booklet, staple it by the middle, fold it in two and you have a book.

Mac only, I’m afraid, but it is free, which is always a delight. I haven’t tried it out yet, but it’s on the list of things to play with next week. Here’s hoping it works as well as I need it to, because it sure would simplify my book printing issues. I might actually get around to making a hand-bound book this year! I’ve only been talking about it for what, five years now?