Only one special tool is needed to make saddle stitch booklets by hand. An "Extended Reach Stapler". These are a bit on the rare side but should be available on the Internet or at any good office supply store. What they are is simply a regular stapler mounted to an extension arm that allows the stapler to reach across the length the paper so that you will be able to staple down the center of your booklet. A good one will have measurements imprinted, either on the arm or the base, and a movable "stop" to assist you in accurately binding your booklets.

Once you have your extended reach stapler, you will need to have the material you intend to publish properly formatted to fit your booklet. "Digest" (8.5" x 5.5") is the most common size because it uses standard 8.5" x 11" paper folded in half to make the booklet. For the following example I will use the digest size.

Saddle stitch booklets produce page counts in multiples of 4. Examples, (8pp) (12pp) (16pp) and so on. This is because each sheet of paper holds 4 pages, 2 on each side of the sheet. When folded in half, the pages become like the ones found in a typical stapled magazine.

If you were to remove the staples from a typical magazine and then view the freed sheets of paper you’d notice that page #1 and Page #2 do not sit side by side. This is because the order of the pages is determined by the number of sheets in the magazine and folding. Folding causes the first and last pages of the magazine to be on the same sheet of paper. This means that when the typical magazine is printed the individual pages must be ordered in such a way that the front cover is on the same sheet of paper as the back cover as well as the inside front cover and inside back cover, and when folded they all must be in correct order.

If this sounds confusing fear not because there is a simple way to get all the pages of your booklet into the right order for printing. What you need to do is make a "Dummy" (blank) booklet by finding the number of pages your booklet must have to publish all of your material and round up to the nearest whole unit of 4. If your material is 23 pages long then you will need a booklet with 24 pages. (the next smallest unit of 4 is 20 pages which is 3 pages too short) Divide the number of pages your booklet will be by 4 and this is the number of sheets of paper you will need. (using the 24 page example above, you will need 6 sheets of paper) Take the correct number of blank sheets of paper and fold them in half like a real booklet but leave them unstapled. With a pencil, flip through each page of this Dummy booklet and mark the pages with notes such as, "Front Cover", Page #1, Page #2, Page #3 and so on until you have marked all the pages of the booklet. Once you have all the pages marked, separate the pages into their individual sheets and observe the page order. This is the exact order in which you must paste up your master copies. Any deviation from your correctly marked "Dummy" booklet will cause your finished booklet to have pages that are out of order.

"Master Copies" are the pages of your booklet pasted up in correct order that you will run through a photo copy machine to produce your booklet. Just like the example of the typical magazine above, your master copies will ensure that when folded and stapled, your booklet pages will be in sequential order. (1) (2) (3) (4) and so on.

After printing your booklet you will need to collate, staple and fold it. Stapling is as simple as finding the correct depth to set your extended reach stapler to and then stapling the book. I suggest you first try stapling a blank booklet or two for practice and to fine tune the measurement. Once stapled together, fold the booklet and you will be done.

If you wish to spruce up the look and feel of your booklet by trimming the "Leading Edge" (the side that opens up) you can do this by using a suitable straight edge and exacto knife.

Daniel Nauenburg.