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A booklet is not simply two pages per sheet. Once a stack of paper is folded in half, the page order stops being sequential: the outermost sheet has to carry the last page next to the first. This tool works out that arrangement and writes it into a new document.

Use it for anything meant to be folded and stapled down the middle: a programme, a zine, a manual, an order of service, a short report you want to hand out as a small book rather than a stack of loose sheets.

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1. Drop the PDF onto this page.
2. Leave the binding on saddle stitch unless you are having the spine glued.
3. Set the gutter, which is the extra space at the fold that the binding takes up.
4. Press Make booklet.
5. Print the result double-sided, flipping on the short edge, then fold the stack in half and staple the spine.

Saddle stitch is the fold-and-staple binding, and it needs a page count that is a multiple of four. If yours is not, the tool pads with blanks in the right places automatically, which is why the output may have up to three more pages than you expected. Those blanks land where a reader expects blanks - at the inside back - rather than in the middle of the text.

The gutter is the setting people wish they had thought about afterwards. It adds space at the fold so the binding does not swallow the inner edge of the text. Fourteen points is a reasonable default for a stapled booklet; increase it for thicker stacks, where the inner pages creep outward as the fold gets bulkier.

Print double-sided, flipping on the short edge. Flipping on the long edge puts every second sheet upside down, and it is by far the most common reason a booklet comes out wrong on the first attempt. Test with four pages before printing fifty.

Perfect binding is offered for spines that are glued rather than folded. It keeps pages in reading order two to a sheet, because glued spines do not need the folding rearrangement.