How to Print an eBook in a Booklet Form

With the digital revolution, eBooks have become a prominent form of literature.  However, eBooks are limited in their scope and reach, as they can only be read from your computer.  In some cases, you may want to take the eBook with you for personal reading, and in other cases, you will want to print its contents to share with the world.  Here is a look at how you can transform your eBook into tangible, physical booklet.

How to Print Your eBook

If you have Microsoft Word, printing up an eBook for your own enjoyment is simple.  Following the below directions will give you a printed book with measurements of 8.5” x 5.25”.  Every printed page will give you four pages of a book, two pages on each side.

From there, you will either need to type your information into a Word document or transfer the information into a Word document.  Give the page landscape orientation with two columns on each page.  Print a test copy, layout the pages in book form, and number them.

Now, you will need to go and open as many Word documents as you have full sheets of paper.  If you would like to have the title of the book and page number in the header or footer, put those in now.  Again, set the document to create two columns, and set the margins to 0.5” at the top and bottom and 1” at the left and right.

Now you have to make sure that your book prints so that it will be readable without a lot of cutting and stapling.  If you look at your sample book, you will see that on the paper that the 1st page is not shared with the second page.  For example, if you have a 12 page eBook, the 1st and 12th pages are on the same sheet, the 2nd and 11th pages are on the same sheet, and so on and so forth.  Using each Word document as a separate layout of pages, copy and paste the proper page contents into the columns.  For example, in a 12 page book, your first layout will be page one in the first column and page 12 in the second.  Save each set as different spread or layout, so pages 1 and 12 would be layout 1, pages 2 and 11 would be layout 2, and so on.

Print another copy.  The eBook should now read like a regular book.

Sharing Your Booklet with Others

If you want to share your eBook with others, there are a few extra steps to take.  You will need to design covers the same way as you did the pages.  From there, you will need to print the book.  When printing, ask that the copies be double sided and then bound.  You will then have a professional looking book for sharing with friends, clients, and anyone else.

If you are using a professional printer to print up your eBook, you will want to contact the printer to see if there are any special layouts that you should create to make the printing process easier.  They may want you to separate the pages into separate documents like listed above, or they may have you send in just the original document.

Important Note

Newer versions of Word do offer “book fold” as one of the templates you can set for your pages.  If you are just printing one version for yourself, this can be an easy feature.  However, editing a specific page becomes difficult in this format, and reprinting a page is next to impossible.  Unless you want to run off an entire book every time you edit, it may be best to do your own manual method or entrust a professional printer.

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