Make a booklet
Impose pages so a folded stack reads in order.
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your file is never uploaded, and you can verify that in your browser's network tab. Verify it yourself: open your browser's network tab and watch. You will see one small request asking whether you have tasks left - a tool name and a hash, never the file.
What this does
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.
How it works
- Drop the PDF onto this page.
- Leave the binding on saddle stitch unless you are having the spine glued.
- Set the gutter, which is the extra space at the fold that the binding takes up.
- Press Make booklet.
- 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.
What this tool cannot do
- Links and form fields do not survive, because each page is drawn as artwork onto the new sheet.
- Very thick booklets need creep compensation, which this tool does not calculate - increase the gutter by hand instead.
Questions people ask
- How do I print the result?
- Double-sided, flipping on the short edge, at 100% scale with no extra fit-to-page shrinking. Then fold the whole stack in half together and staple twice along the fold. If every other sheet comes out upside down, your printer flipped on the long edge - change that setting and reprint.
- My document is not a multiple of four pages. What happens?
- Blank pages are added automatically to bring it up to the next multiple of four, and they are placed where a reader expects blanks rather than in the middle of the content. Your original is not modified.
- What is the gutter for?
- It reserves space at the fold so the binding does not obscure the inner edge of the text. Thicker booklets need more, because the inner sheets shift outward as the folded stack gets bulkier.
- When should I choose perfect binding instead?
- When the spine will be glued or clamped rather than folded, as with a thicker book. Perfect binding keeps the pages in plain reading order two to a sheet, since there is no fold to plan around.