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Typesetting for Fanbinding in Google Docs

Guide/reference document for typesetting fanbinding documents in Google Docs.

Begun by Kimberly. Feel free to ping me on the Renegade Server @Kimberly.

Commenting is turned on, so feel free to add comments, questions, or suggestions. If a question comes up
in the server, please do add it here! Also, be sure you’re displaying comments so you can benefit from the
wisdom other people share here.

Please add your knowledge.

This document is currently in progress.

I mostly followed ArmoredSuperHeavy’s guide “How to Make a Book”

Opening text mostly copied from raindragonwing’s Typesetting for Fanbinding in LibreOffice.

Harvesting Materials
Follow ArmoredSuperHeavy’s instructions.

Typeset Book
Set Up Margins
Go to File > Page Setup.

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Make sure Pages is selected (as opposed to Pageless).

For Paper size, select “Statement (5.5” x 8.5”)”.

Follow ArmoredSuperHeavy’s instructions for setting margins:

Leave the top margin set as 1” because you need room for headers. Bottom margin can be less. I go with
0.7” I like to edge the side margins out a little narrower than 1” too but don’t go crazy. You don’t want words
down in the ditch and you don’t want your thumb to be all over the edge of the lines either. You do need
whitespace.

Apply to whole document.

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Insert Full-Page Images

Follow ArmoredSuperHeavy’s instructions:[a]

Insert any pictures. I like to stick them at the end of chapters to avoid disrupting the flow of the text. I add
artist name below the pic but you could also create an index at front or back of book.

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(Book: Mischief Managed by touchedglitter; illust.: artsy-ems. Illustration not used in actual book.)

Establish Section & Page Breaks

Follow ArmoredSuperHeavy’s instructions:

Use Page break to bust up the beginning pages into:

Half title (just the title words that’s it)

Frontispiece illustration (optional)

Full Title (title of work, author names, publisher name and year)

Front matter (all that AO3 meta stuff and summary)

Table of contents (optional)

To do this in Google Docs:

Insert > Break > Page break or CTRL/CMD + ENTER

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For chapters or sections, this works a little differently.

Insert > Break > Section break (next page)

Use this command with ArmoredSuperHeavy’s instructions:

Stick your cursor in front of the word Chapter and then hit this command.

NOTE this is different than regular “page break” that doesn’t begin a new section.

If you copied from the regular AO3 page rather than downloading the HTML, you’ll need to right click and
remove the hyperlinks from the word “Chapter” each time. (If you copied from AO3’s HTML download file,
you won’t have to worry about Chapter header hyperlinks.)

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Fix Text Encoding Issues
Do some find and replaces to fix text encoding issues. (Some of this section is from ArmoredSuperHeavy
and some from me.)

Do the same thing with a single quote mark/apostrophe.

Find and replace ALL of the space character with the same. This replaces non-breaking spaces with
normal spaces. (This will save you a lot of headaches related to word wrap.)
Find and replace ALL double dash (--) and replace with em dash by copying this highlighted text
— and pasting it into the replace box. (If you double click to select the highlighted text it will add the
space after, so be sure to delete the space before replacing.)[e]
Some authors will use a single hyphen instead of an em dash. You may have to find ( - ) and replace it
with — but be careful because the hyphen belongs inside compound hyphenated words.[f]
ArmoredSuperHeavy says, “Find and selectively replace the non-breaking line break with the regular
paragraph code. Leave these in for quoted poems etc.” There isn’t an easy way to see formatting
marks in Google Docs. You can wait to deal with this until you’re doing line for line typesetting.

ArmoredSuperHeavy also says:

The need to do these find and replaces really depends on the author’s text encoding, what software they
wrote in before they copy pasted into AO3 so just go ahead and do these steps.

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If you skip these steps now, be on the lookout for bad punctuation marks when you go in and do the line for
line typesetting, because changing the marks later will rejigger the lines and potentially make you go back
and reset the text you’ve already gone through. Best to do it now instead.

I also like to look out for italicized text followed by a non-italicized question mark or exclamation mark. It
looks nicer if you italicize the punctuations to match.

This is another thing that is probably easiest to do during line for line typesetting.

Set Your Styles

Styles in Google Docs are not as customizable as in some other software.

Create Body Style

Highlight the first paragraph of text. Click “Normal text.” Click “Apply normal text.”

Follow these instructions from ArmoredSuperHeavy:

Set the color to something OTHER THAN BLACK. I use purple for the body text because it;s still pretty dark
and still legible but obviously, not the final color. That means you’re still working on it.

Select the FONT and POINT SIZE you want. I like Garamond 11 or 11.5 for shorter works and garamond
10.5 or 11 for longer ones. Other typefaces will require bigger or smaller point size, it varies.

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Oh no my book is too long

If you are tempted to economize on paper by using a microscopic font size or no line spacing, please stop
and consider your future older self who won’t be able to read that shit, bro! Make it a fairly normal size! Test
prints are your friend, too!

Google Docs has a font called EB Garamond. If you prefer standard Garamond, click the name of your
current font (probably Arial), then click “More Fonts.” Search for Garamond in the window that pops up. Click
Garamond. A check will appear next to it. Click OK.

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After you do that, Garamond will appear in your fonts dropdown with other fonts.

Click the justification button and select the option with lines going all the way across. This is Justified body
text.

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Go to Format > Align & indent > Indentation options.

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Under Special indent select First line and enter 0.3.

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To create custom spacing, click the button with a double-ended vertical arrow next to 3 lines and then click
Custom spacing.

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Google requires you to enter this as a proportion. To get ArmoredSuperHeavy’s recommended 14.5pt for
11.5pt text, enter 1.26.

Here are some more notes from ArmoredSuperHeavy on indentation and spacing:

If you are using a smaller point size for the font, you may want Line Spacing to be less, but this is a matter of
taste and how compressed you want the book to be. If the book is super long, these adjustments can mean
a big diff in page count, but at the expense of readability, so it’s a judgment call.

A note on paragraph indentation and spacing:

The convention on websites like AO3 is no first line indentation, and a white space between each paragraph
break. This feels very natural in that native medium, but the convention of published prose is NO spacing
between paragraphs, and a first line indent.

Since personally my goal is a very subversive book (looks legit, maybe even old fashioned, but contains
outlaw writing), I’m following established, conservative book design choices as much as I can. Of course
you’re free to format your text however you like, but for me it’s twice as satisfying to see a “respectable” and
“important” book binding containing the absolutely filthy and wild creations of my friends. Because I respect
their work and it’s important!

Highlight the entire first paragraph now that you’ve made all those changes. Click Normal text > Normal text
> Update ‘Normal text’ to match.

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If your document is like mine, now you’ve got a bunch of text that’s the right color and size but is the wrong
font. So follow ArmoredSuperHeavy’s instructions:

Go through and highlight the rest of the chapter by placing cursor at beginning of chapter, then scrolling w/
mouse wheel down to end of chapter, hold down shift key and click at end of last paragraph to highlight it all.

Then do Normal text > Apply ‘Normal text.’

Repeat for the other chapters.

Your front matter might look this way, too. Your headings might be purple and the font you chose. Don’t
worry. We’ll fix all that.

ArmoredSuperHeavy notes:

ITALICS &#$@$!

Depending on how an author originally wrote their story, italics may be coded different ways in the HTML on
AO3. Sometimes they use the <em> tag, which MS Word unfortunately interprets as being their “Emphasis”
style. When this happens, you’ll notice that italicized words in the paragraphs you already “purplized” will still
be in black, and probably display in italic Times New Roman instead of the font you chose (in this example,
Garamond) The point size you select will also not be matched.

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Again, there’s no easy way to fix this all at once in Google Docs, so you’ll have to look out for it when you do
your line for line typesetting.[g]

Setup Front Matter

You’re going to repeat this process for your front matter, except instead of “Normal text,” you’ll use “Subtitle,”
because while that’s not what this is, we can’t make custom style names in Google Docs and Subtitle won’t
show up in the Table of Contents.

ArmoredSuperHeavy recommends a smaller font size, like Garamond 8 or 9, and a different color such as
orange. They also say:

The goal of this Style is to cram all this junk onto the back side of the title page. Keep fiddling until it fits.

If there is an immense number of tags or long notes, put it in the back as a Notes section and trim it out up
front. This page really just tells you at a glance what this story is. What fandom, what ship, summary, the
basics.

Chapter Headings

Repeat this process for the Half Title and Chapter headings, using the style Heading 1.

ArmoredSuperHeavy says:

Again, make it a color, not black.

This is where you have a lot of latitude to design it however.

Apply the Style to all the chapter headings.

Once you have them all set the same way, you can modify them ALL at one time by changing the style.

Google Docs does a pretty good job of spacing the Heading styles, but you can fiddle with the spacing if you
like.

ArmoredSuperHeavy says:

It’s not worth creating a style for the stuff on the full title page, since that is the only place in the book you are
setting the fonts up that way.

Leave the one-off stuff formatted as black text so you know it’s not tied to a style.

In Google Docs, it’s probably worth creating a specific style for Title and using it on the full title page but
fiddling with things like font, size, and color for each item on the page.

Make sure you set the special indent on the Subtitle, Heading, and Title styles to None.

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Page Headers
ArmoredSuperHeavy says:

Oh boy.

The objective here is to have your initial pages NOT have a header, and the first page of each chapter to
also not have the header. Everywhere else, should have a header. And I like to put the page numbers in the
upper outside corners of each page.

Decouple the front pages’ header rules from the actual work text

Go to Insert > Headers & footers > Header.

The header for Section 2 should appear. Click “Different first page.” (Checkbox should be checked.) Click
“Link to previous” to un-link this to the header in Section 1. (Checkbox should be empty.)

The header for Chapter 1 is now broken away from the front matter.

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Click Options > Header format.

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Change Apply to to read “Whole document.”

Click the checkbox for “Different odd & even.” (Checkbox should be checked.)

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Scroll down and make sure “Linked to previous” is unchecked for both odd and even pages.

Set up page numbers

Put your cursor in the header on the second page of chapter 1. You may need to repeat Insert > Headers
and footers > Header to do this, but you don’t need to do anything with the checkboxes.

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Go to Insert > Page numbers and choose the option you prefer. I’m doing top corner, which is what
ArmoredSuperHeavy likes to do. You will need to do this twice: once for odd pages and once for even pages.

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ArmoredSuperHeavy says:

Note whether this is an odd numbered or even numbered page.

The usual convention is this:

Even page: Page number flush on left margin. Author name in center, all caps.

Odd page: Page number flush on right margin. Work name in center, all caps.

Use spaces to center up the words. You can’t use the “Center” command because the page number is left or
right justified. This should automatically be in the Normal text style. You may want to go ahead and change
the color to black now so you don’t have to remember to later.

Make the header in ALL CAPS.[h]

ArmoredSuperHeavy says:

The headers are set in caps because it differentiates them from the main text block and lets the reader tune
them out. Don’t set them in a showy font. Usually it’s best to just use the same font as the text.

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ArmoredSuperHeavy says:

Go through each chapter / section, and check the “Different First Page” checkbox each time. You don’t want
your header words to appear sitting on top of the big chapter title text.

After you’ve done all this, go back and take a look at your front matter. You don’t want a header on these
pages so if there’s one there, go through and delete it. Check back in Section 2 to make sure those headers
are still there. You may need to check odd and even pages separately.

Full Page Images in Own Section

ArmoredSuperHeavy says:

A full page image should not have the running header visible.

Put a section break before each new image. Make sure “Different first page” is checked and “Link to
previous” is not checked.

Go to the next section and make sure “Link to previous” is not checked.

Go back to the image section and make sure the header is blank, deleting an old header if necesssary.

There is not an easy way to take an image beyond the margins in Google Docs.[i]

Line for Line Typesetting

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ArmoredSuperHeavy says:

Have you settled on your point size (purple)? If you weren’t sure it’s time to commit.

Google Docs does not have automatic hyphenation. If you want to do manual hyphenation, follow
ArmoredSuperHeavy’s instructions:

This is a visual judgement call. Look for lines where the justified setting causes large gaps to appear
between the words on a line. This usually occurs because

the next word is too long to fit. Hyphenate the long word if possible.
Weird formatting issues at ends of paragraphs. Just hit enter at the end of the paragraph to insert a
paragraph break and fix the final short line.

Add hyphens to the last word of lines as desired.

Strip out any bold the author might have used, as this is not commonly used in printed books.

ArmoredSuperHeavy says:

If someone screams in all caps in the story, it’s probably best to turn that into regular sentence capitalization,
and italicize.

Insert Blank Pages Up Front

You may need to insert blank pages after: half title, table of contents.

If the table of contents is two pages long, it’s best to have it on an even+odd numbered page so the reader
can view the entire TOC in one page spread.

Chapter 1 typically starts on an ODD numbered page (right side).

Final Tweaks: Line Spacing, Un-Color Text

Last chance to change the line spacing of your purple text

Hit Ctrl+A to select every piece of text in the document and then set the color to BLACK. This will pick up
everything regardless of what styles were used on them, and any text that didn’t have a style or things you
made a color and then forgot about.

Note: This will NOT fix footnote color so if you have footnotes, you need to manually set them to black.

See ArmoredSuperHeavy’s guide for details about separating out images to print better and reviewing your
final page count.

Preparing for Printing

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Google Docs doesn’t have a booklet printing option, so you’ll need to export the typeset document to PDF
and then use Acrobat Reader to print.[j]

Start by Downloading the document as a PDF.[k]

After you’ve saved the document, open it up in Acrobat Reader.

Go to File > Print.

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If you are using a printer that does automatic duplex printing, leave select Booklet and leave Booklet subset
as Both sides.

If you’re using a printer that does manual duplex printing, you will need to do two prints: one where you
select Front side only and one where you select Back side only.

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[a]make sure to use section break next page for this if you'd like to remove the headers/page numbers off
the art pages

[b]google docs in my experience doesn't do this! you'll need to find and replace, but make sure to replace
with curly quotes! this is a different glyph than the straight quotes, so you'll have to copy and paste from
somewhere else

[c]the above may also need to be done in different passes, for beginning quotes vs ending quotes

[d]There is an Addon called Text Cleaner that has a "Smarten Quotes" command. That's what I'm currently
using for this when it doesn't automatically happen.

[e]google docs also doesn't for some reason, break lines with em dashes. another alternative is to use a
spaced en-dash instead witch happens more with uk publishing

[f]you may also have to do this is multiple passes, that is find and replace first " - ", then " -" and "- ) in case
the author by accident missed a space

[g]you can utilize the select all matching text function when this occurs! This is actually how I do my body text
as opposed to using the styles since I find it often takes out all the italics. I highlight the roman text, and
change it to my desired body text. then i highlight an italic that hasn't been changed and use the select all
matching match here too.

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[h]on google fonts, there are often specified small cap families for this purpose. you'll need to add them on.
)see alegreya and alegreya SC)

[i]click on the image and use the fix in position format! you can now adjust the size past the margin

[j]you could also link them to cocoa's imposer instead! if they would prefer to print imposed pdfs, that's the
way to go

[k]I would recommended going to the print>print as pdf option instead here. downloading as a pdf can
sometimes mess up the formatting, something I had to unfortunately find out.

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