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Re: a bit off-topic: book printing

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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On 2/12/2021 2:00 PM, Eli the Bearded wrote:
> Note crosspost. c.l.postscript because I can imagine the people reading
> that group have more expirience with non-home printing, and c.p.printers
> because printers are involved.
> 
> Background:
> There are a _wealth_ of public domain books that have been scanned and /
> or OCRed available on the net now. These are great for reading on
> computer devices, but what if I want a print copy?
> 
> I can, and have, naively send them to a local laser printer and get a
> stack of US-Letter output. I don't really like the look or the usability
> of that. Beyond the page count that I can easily staple, it's not a good
> format.
> 
> I have also tried, once, the process of turning some 500 pieces of email
> into a bound epistolary. (Maybe e-epistolary be correct for e-mail? :^) )
> For that I scoured the net for a good Latex template for the book, and
> finding none I really liked. There were a lot suitable for short
> technical documents, and few good for an entire book. Some pain points:
> formatting chapters, table of contents, the perfect-bound wrap-around
> cover, flowing non-prose text properly (eg embeded poems). I didn't have
> any illustrations to deal with in that book, but that looks intimidating,
> too. Reseach papers have a very different idea of frontmatter than
> novels or non-fiction books. Reseach papers need a lot more support for
> foot or endnotes.
> 
> I did eventually get a PDF built with a "fiction novel" template. I made
> time based divisions of the email into the chapters for for that. Then I
> had Blurb (.com) print the thing for me as a trade paperback size
> perfect bound book.
> 
> It's a lot better than a stack of US-Letter sized pages, but it still
> leaves a lot to be desired.
> 
> Request:
> So with that background, I'm curious if people know good ways to print
> free ebooks. I'll give two links, to two different books at different
> sites (which share the same title) as example texts:
> 
> https://archive.org/details/cu31924002801979
> 
> https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26014
> 
> With the file formats there, and the whole world of printing services,
> what's the easiest way to get a respectable looking printed book, that
> would be conviently sized and sturdy enough to take on a field trip?
> Budget is not unlimited, but not too constrained. Time to prepare the
> document for publishing is more constrained.
> 
> The Batty book, eg, has a lot of detail on making field expeditions to
> collect samples, so that would be a book you might want to carry off
> into the field.
> 
> (I have "vintage" bound copies of both of those, and have read both. I
> present them as examples where I have a known existing thing to compare
> it to. Both have extensive illustations, and the occaisional table of
> data. The Browne volume has a fold out map, Plate V, kinda poorly
> reproduced at Gutenberg.)
> 
> Elijah
> ------
> kinda surprised more people don't want to do this

I use www.lulu.com for printing and binding my five computer software 
manuals.  Each is approximately 300 pages and printed on 8.5 inch by 
11.0 inch paper.  www.lulu.com requires a PDF for the body, the front 
cover, the spine, and the back cover.  Four PDFs.  The cost for each 
manual is around $14.
    https://www.winsim.com/doco.html

Lynn

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Thread

a bit off-topic: book printing Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2021-02-12 20:00 +0000
  Re: a bit off-topic: book printing Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2021-02-18 17:32 -0600
    Re: a bit off-topic: book printing Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2021-02-19 00:55 +0000
  Re: a bit off-topic: book printing not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2021-02-24 22:18 +0000
    Re: a bit off-topic: book printing Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2021-02-24 23:18 +0000
      Re: a bit off-topic: book printing not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2021-02-27 00:53 +0000

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