How to print a booklet at home (duplex, flip edge and collate explained)

A booklet is made of sheets folded in half and nested inside each other. Every sheet carries four pages: two on the front and two on the back, and those pages are not consecutive. For a 16-page booklet the outer sheet has pages 16 and 1 on the front and 2 and 15 on the back. Getting that order right is called imposition, and it is the job of software, not of you.

The second difficulty is your printer. Double-sided printing involves a flip setting, an unprintable margin, a collate option that some drivers leave off, and a small front-to-back misalignment that is normal on home machines. None of these are hard once you know they exist. Foldpic's print PDF already has the pages imposed, and the instruction sheet that comes with it prints the settings card below so you can copy it into the print dialog.

Use these settings for a booklet printed on A4 or Letter and folded to A5 or half-Letter. The paper is landscape because two portrait pages sit side by side on each sheet. The scale must be 100 percent or “Actual size”, because “Fit to page” shrinks the image away from the fold line. Collate must be on, or the printer will give you all copies of sheet 1, then all copies of sheet 2, instead of complete sets.

This is the setting people get wrong most. The rule of thumb is: portrait document, flip on long edge; landscape document, flip on short edge. Because a booklet sheet is landscape, choose short edge. The setting is relative to how the printer driver sees the sheet, so if your driver has already rotated the page for you the correct answer can be the other one. The physical result you want is simple: when you turn the printed sheet over along the fold line, the back page should be upright behind the front page.

Print one sheet first and check. Hold it up to the light: the page on the back should share the same top edge as the page on the front. If it is upside down, reprint with the other flip setting. Foldpic's test page adds a corner letter that only reads correctly with the right flip, and cross-hairs front and back so you can measure any offset.

If your printer has no automatic duplex, print all the side A pages first. Then reload the printed stack into the tray so that the printed side faces the direction the printer prints on, with the same edge leading that came out first. Every printer tray is slightly different, which is why Foldpic's instruction sheet includes a reload diagram with an arrow showing which edge goes into the tray. Print one sheet as a test before committing the whole stack.

Manual duplex actually gives you more control than automatic duplex: you can check the first sheet, fix the orientation and feed the rest with confidence. It is slower, but for a 16-page booklet that is only four sheets.

Once all sheets are printed, stack them in the order printed in the margin, all with side A facing down. Line up the edges and fold the whole stack in half at once, creasing from the middle outward with a ruler or bone folder. Folding the stack together, rather than sheet by sheet, keeps the spine tight and the pages aligned. Open the booklet flat and staple twice on the centre crease at the marks. If you do not own a long-arm stapler, open a normal stapler flat and push the staples through onto an eraser, then fold the legs by hand.

The inner sheets will stick out slightly at the open edge. That is called creep and it is normal; trim the fore-edge with a ruler and craft knife if you want a clean book, or leave it for a handmade look.

Plain 80 gsm copy paper works but shows the other side through when pages are full of photos. 100 to 160 gsm matte paper gives a much better feel, and if your printer accepts it, a 160 to 200 gsm sheet for the cover makes the booklet feel finished. Most home printers jam above about 200 gsm, and laser printers usually want heavy stock fed through the bypass tray.

Page counts must be a multiple of 4 because every sheet holds four pages. Foldpic pads the last sheet with blank pages if needed. The practical limit for a home-stapled booklet is 5 to 8 sheets, or 20 to 32 pages, before creep and stapler reach become a problem.